Arthur Rex

by Thomas Berger

  “Well,” said King Arthur, “I know now that thou hast always been my best knight, Gawaine, and I undervalued thee of old, perhaps because thou wert my nephew and I would avoid nepotism. Thou properly lovest Guinevere as thy queen and thine aunt, and I know how thou hast rightly always loved Sir Launcelot.”

  And here King Arthur looked as though his heart would break.

  “But thou dost know full well that though we have made gentle many of the harsh laws of the olden time,” the king said, “and no longer are the hands of thieves struck off at the wrists and no man is beheaded for insolence to a superior, there are yet some crimes the perpetrators of which must receive the extreme punishment, else a mockery is made of right rule. And one of them is treason, and Guinevere hath committed it, and therefore she must be burned. It is beyond my power to pardon her from this sentence.”

  And King Arthur wept piteously.

  But Sir Gawaine said weeping, “Uncle and Sire, I shall not obey this command! Let Gaheris and Gareth go if they will, but I shall not arrest the gracious queen my aunt, whom I have always honored above all women and whom I love.”

  And King Arthur would not punish him for this defiance, but he sent Gaheris and Gareth to take Guinevere.

  Now when Sir Launcelot would not hide Agravaine’s body and sat all the night beside it praying, Guinevere believed the end was nigh of their being together. And when she understood this she was no longer spiteful towards him. And in the morning tenderly she commanded him to leave her for his own safety.

  But Sir Launcelot refused, for he said that he must make Agravaine’s death known so that he might have a decent burial in hallowed ground, and that once the king learned of this he would send to arrest them both.

  And Launcelot said that he would willingly accept death as his own deserved punishment, and he would not resist arrest. “But, lady,” he vowed, “never will I allow you to be taken and burned.”

  And they disputed over this matter, with Guinevere refusing to leave the castle and go into hiding, and Sir Launcelot refusing to leave her. And never had they been closer in all their lives together than they were now, when each grieved over the doom that threatened the other, and at last they had conquered their vanity and their envy.

  Thus they were still there when sirs Gaheris and Gareth came to take Queen Guinevere, for this must needs be done first, and as for Sir Launcelot, he was a knight of the Round Table, and they purposed merely to tell him that his honor required that he arrest himself. But Guinevere being a woman could not be put into her own custody, for she had none in the eyes of the law.

  Now they knocked upon the door of the queen’s chamber, and Sir Launcelot opened it with his left hand, for Sir Mordred had grievously wounded him in his right arm, which wound had not healed but had grown worse.

  “Sir Launcelot,” said Sir Gaheris, “greeting.”

  “My dear Gaheris,” Sir Launcelot said. “Thy brother Agravaine is dead, I fear. I loved him as I love you, but alas! we came to blows, and in the sequel he fell. I shall regret this all of my life, and I shall do whatever atonement thou wouldst ask of me.”

  “Nothing,” said Gaheris, “will bring him back amongst the quick, and I know thee for a knight of the greatest worship, and thou art my brother too, in the Table. What we have come for now is not revenge for Agravaine, but rather to arrest the queen in the name of the king, for she hath illegally cohabited with thee and therefore she must be taken and burned for committing treasonous adultery.”

  “Sir,” said Launcelot, “I can not allow this to happen.”

  “Sir,” said Sir Gaheris, “dost thou defy the king’s command?”

  “Sir, I do,” Sir Launcelot said. “And in the name of the only greater power than his, and that is Love.”

  And Sir Gareth, who had not sworn to forgive Launcelot for killing Agravaine, and had not spoken yet but stayed silently seething with hatred against him, now cried, “Felon! Defend thyself! Else I shall cut thee down where thou standest!”

  And though his brother Gaheris sought to restrain him until Launcelot had the time to reconsider his defiance of the king’s command, Sir Gareth found Agravaine’s sword where Launcelot had dropped it after killing him, and this he gave to Launcelot.

  “Now, sir,” said he, “lay on, and be prepared to meet the righteous fury of him whose family thou hast offended!”

  And thereupon he attacked Sir Launcelot with all his strength, and Sir Gareth was as we have seen one of the most puissant of all knights, and though he had got married and had lived bucolically he jousted for sport with visiting knights and therefore he had kept fit. And Sir Launcelot had not fought in many years, and not even for amusement at tournaments, and his prowess might have suffered from inactivity and his person had gone soft, and he could not use his right hand at all owing to his wound.

  And for a few moments Sir Gareth forced him back, but with one great blow of his sword Sir Launcelot cut down through Gareth’s skull and parted his brains, and Gareth plunged dead to the floor, this fine man who had been knighted by Sir Launcelot and who had once adored him.

  And seeing this Sir Gaheris could not stand by, and he attacked Sir Launcelot with a power which had vanquished giants and monsters, but it was not long before Sir Launcelot smote him backhanded cutting him through mail and flesh and bone, and his bosom opened and his heart and lungs fell out, and he gave up the ghost.

  And Launcelot threw down his sword and he looked at the reeking corses of two more of his friends, and he said weeping, “O my God that it hath come to this.”

  And then he carried Guinevere away from Camelot and he enclosed them both in a castle called Joyous Garde, and he summoned there his cousins Sir Bors and Sir Lionel, and an host of other knights who were his especial friends, and he said to them, “If ye love King Arthur ye will stay with me here in this place and defend it against him when he cometh to take it.”

  And Sir Bors and the others did not understand this at first, and therefore Sir Launcelot explained it to them.

  “Believe me,” he said, “when I say that I love King Arthur and would do him no further harm, and I know I shall suffer in eternal Hell for the offenses I have committed against him. Yet I will not surrender the queen for to be burned! Therefore it is better when the king cometh to besiege this place, to hold it against him, for fewer of his knights will die than if we fight afield. Now I ask ye to repel his scaling ladders with long poles, so that none of his knights will be badly hurt (for they are all our old comrades), and if ye hurl spears, ye shall seek to avoid human targets, and ye must yourselves keep well shielded against his missiles. For remember we are all of us friends, and that this war hath not come about because we hate one another.”

  And Guinevere was there, and she thought to herself, Nay, it hath happened because of men and their laws and their principles! And she wondered whether those who were not knights did not have it better, living according to their appetites, for the common folk and the beasts fought only for food and sometimes their lusts, and being a woman she could not understand honor and justice, for they were invented by men.

  And now that she and Sir Launcelot were truly together for the first time in their lives, they were soon estranged, for he was distracted utterly by the preparations for the defense of the castle of Joyous Garde, and he had no time for her at all. And this reminded her greatly of what had happened when she had married King Arthur.

  But now we return to the grief of Sir Gawaine when he learned of the deaths of his brothers Gaheris and Gareth. And Sir Gawaine had been the happiest of the knights except for intervals of sadness, the which no man born into this vale of sin can escape utterly. And all in all he had lived a very good life, and when young he had fought and wenched as much as any man could ever, and he was loved by all at the Round Table, and he had married one of the most beautiful women in the world, who was almost unique in that she was satisfied to have him for her husband, and he now had six sons.

  But Sir Launcelot had
killed three of his brothers, and Gareth, whom he remembered as the varlet who had worked uncomplaining as a scullion in the kitchens and then endured the disdain of Lynette and overwhelmed a series of the most ferocious knights of all time to win his own knighthood, had been especially dear to him. And though Gareth was now himself a father and the lord of his own castle, Gawaine still saw him as the young squire with bright eyes, and to whom winning a place at the Round Table was the only thing worth doing under the sun.

  And now his brains were splattered across the floor of Guinevere’s bedchamber. And brave Gaheris was dead as well, than whom few knights were more noble, and stout Agravaine, rash intruding fool perhaps, but a good man withal, and all of them bore honorable scars from fighting evil in the cause of virtue.

  Now when King Arthur heard of the deaths of two more of his nephews and of the escape of Launcelot and Guinevere he turned as if to stone.

  But Sir Gawaine, who had been a kind and genial man, knew for the first time in years what it was to feel wrath, and in the degree to which he had loved Launcelot over all men, because he was the greatest knight, Sir Gawaine now hated him with all his heart, and he vowed to fight him until one of them died.

  But King Arthur was in his stupor of grief, and when Gawaine urged him to gather an host and to march on the castle of Joyous Garde, the king looked at him as though he did not know him.

  “All is lost,” said King Arthur, “and all we have done is to establish the truth that men can serve but one cause alone, and that is futility.”

  “Well, Uncle,” said Sir Gawaine, “perhaps you hoped for more than any king should, but yet you achieved more than any king ever has. And did we not know full well at the outset that there would be some limit, for are we not Christian knights and not pagans, and is not just that knowledge of the human condition the difference between those who believe in God and those who worship idols?” And Sir Gawaine had never been amongst the most devout of knights, for always he had loved life too much.

  “Nay,” said King Arthur, “we have done nothing, for I see now that mine hath been a shallow philosophy. To the profound vision there is no virtue and no vice, and what is justice to one, is injustice to another. And even God Himself is ruled by Time, for not even He can change the past.”

  “Well,” said Sir Gawaine, “’tis true enough that the interests of men are oft naturally opposed, and that only one knight may be the greatest and only one woman the most beautiful, and only one king can have the most power, for do not human beings think only in superlatives? And can envy and vanity and wrath and sloth and all the other modes of sin ever be abolished? And yet does not each of them have its peculiar value if exercised in a certain degree? Is it not envy which doth cause us to strive towards the attainments of our fellows? And is not vanity an incomplete step towards acquiring self-respect, which is a good?”

  And King Arthur came out of his stupor then, and he said, “And now thou wouldst go to kill Launcelot, Nephew, and what can be the purpose in that? Our reign can never be restored again to what it was once, and thy brothers shall remain amongst the dead.”

  “Yea,” said Sir Gawaine, “you call me back to a sense of duty, Uncle, and therefore you still rule as a great king should. I am wrong to feel wrath against Launcelot, and I know that. Yet I am an human being, and I know that but for him my brothers should live. Is it not human for us all to have two minds, the one that sees an aspect of eternity, the other that must deal with the life which is measured in Time? According to the former, I do forgive him for doing what he could not refrain from, but whilst I live I shall seek his ruin.”

  And King Arthur then said, “Launcelot hath ever been ruined, since the first, as have I. But thou, good Gawaine, hast a command of reality the which I think will be a better model to those who come after. Therefore I should not want thee to die untimely. And reasonable man that thou art, thou knowest that thou canst not defeat Sir Launcelot at arms.”

  “Well,” said Sir Gawaine, “is that a good reason why I should not fight him? And if he kill me then he hath the blood of us all on his hands!”

  And said King Arthur, “It is true that to Launcelot that would be the worst revenge, for he doth not value his life at all. But does that justify the commission of the mortal sin of suicide?”

  “Nay, Uncle, pray do not misunderstand me,” cried Sir Gawaine. “I do not go to die. Launcelot hath not taken the field in years. Surely his great prowess hath not gone unaffected by the sloth in which he hath lived. I have some merit with lance and sword, and I have kept fit. But beyond all of that I fight in a righteous fury, and what moral mettle be left to him now?”

  “Yet,” said King Arthur, “it is written that he can not be overcome—”

  “Where?” said Sir Gawaine. “And by whom? Some lily-livered scribe who hath never held a sword? Some romancer who would confine us to a myth? I defy such augury! And now I have asked too many questions. I go to provide an answer.”

  And Sir Gawaine thereupon caparisoned himself for to go and besiege Joyous Garde singlehanded. But in love for him, and great concern for his life (and not to take Guinevere and Launcelot for a condemnation of death), King Arthur called in all of his knights who had not gone to help Launcelot, and he marched on the castle which Launcelot held against him.

  BOOK XX

  How Sir Percival and Galahad came to Camelot in King Arthur’s absence and met Mordred; and of the colloquy between the king and the queen; and how those two great knights Sir Launcelot and Sir Gawaine fought together until one of them fell and gave up the ghost.

  NOW ALL OF THIS trouble had happened before Sir Percival had come to the castle of Pelles the maimed king and had healed him inadvertently by asking the right question, the which had been much too simple for any other visitor to think of in fifty years, but Percival was too naive to do the expected.

  And King Pelles knew of the tragic matter amongst the knights of the Round Table, for it was the worst thing that had ever happened in all the world, and the fall of Rome to the heathen was as nothing to it, for this was the only time that a king had set out to rule on principles of absolute virtue, and to fight evil and to champion the good, and though it was not the first time that a king fell out with his followers, it was unique in happening not by wicked design but rather by the helpless accidents of fine men who meant well and who loved one another dearly.

  And there were many who did blame the woman, for without her King Arthur and Sir Launcelot would still have been friends, and some of these persons who blamed Guinevere were themselves women and their motive was envy, for they would have liked themselves to have brought down a rule of men. But most of her accusers were men, and for many their motive was lust, and they would have liked a beautiful woman for themselves, so that they might betray their best friend for her, but not having one they spitefully wished that the queen would be burned for adultery.

  And everybody everywhere in the world knew of this sad matter, and all disputed over it and took one side or the other, except for the wicked, derisive persons (who abound in all eras) who believed it laughable that the greatest king of all time should realize the great dread of all husbands, which is to say, to wear the horns of the cuckold. (And in France the malicious wits did jest as follows: that when Guinevere was taken and burned, Launcelot’s grief would be the worse, and to console him King Arthur would say, “Dry thy tears, my friend! I shall soon marry again.”)

  And Princess Elaine, the mother of Galahad, had known of Launcelot’s sinful love since the time when she had cured him of his illness, but never had she told anyone about it but her handmaiden Brisen, by means of whose magic potion she had taken him into her bed, and she did not meanly exult now that it had become a scandal. For she knew that Launcelot could love none other than Guinevere, as she Elaine could love no one but him, and she believed that no great love could be enjoyed unconditionally and forever. Therefore she believed herself fortunate to have spent one night with Launcelot, and she was the only w
oman aside from Guinevere to have had that much of him, and it was even so much more than the queen had got, for Elaine had borne his only child.

  And now this son would leave home and become a knight of the Round Table when that table had broken into two parts! But Elaine his mother could not find it in her heart to tell Galahad what had happened, and neither could his grandfather King Pelles, who was no longer maimed but whole.

  And therefore she kissed Galahad and wished him to go with God, and she bade Sir Percival farewell, that good knight who was armed with his ignorance, and they left the castle of King Pelles.

  And the king accompanied them to the gate, and he was so pleased with his newfound ability to use his legs after fifty years that he did not walk slowly but rather scampered ahead like a young varlet, and he confessed to being quite giddy over having the opportunity to ride again and to do all the things a king should do but which he had not done for five decades. And he could not thank Sir Percival enough for having asked the proper question.

  But he did not say that now he had been cured of his wound, he did not regret having swyved that little maiden before her husband had got to her (though he was sorry for having slain him subsequently), for she had the sweetest flesh he had ever enjoyed, and King Pelles was of the old school of monarchs, of before the coming of Arthur, and who knows if he were not the better for it, for he loved the life God had given him and he had paid for at least one of his sins while he lived.

  Then Sir Percival and Galahad traveled to Camelot, but when they got there they found it a deserted place, for King Arthur and all his knights were at Joyous Garde, outside it with the besiegers or within amongst the besieged. But Sir Percival, who knew nothing, did not know this, but he believed that if King Arthur and his knights were away, then it was as it should be, and therefore he saw no reason for worry.

  And he took young Galahad into the castle and he showed him all that was there to be seen, and the youth marveled, and finally they went into the great hall where the Round Table was kept. And Galahad felt faint (for he was dying, which no one but he and his mother knew), and he must needs to sit down and to rest, and therefore he drew a chair to him, and he sat down upon it.