“Here it lies,” said one of her women. “See, that clump of four apple trees—I came here one summer to take a graft of apples for the Queen’s garden.”
But there was no road, only a little track winding upward on a barren hill, where there should be a broad road, and above it, even through mist, there should have been the lights of Camelot.
“Nonsense,” she said brusquely, “we have lost the way, somehow—are you trying to tell me that there is no more than one clump of four apple trees in Arthur’s kingdom?”
“Yet that is where the road ought to be, I swear it,” grumbled Cormac, but he got the whole line of riders, horses, and pack animals into motion again and they plodded on, rain coming down and down as if it had been coming down since the beginning of time and had forgotten how to stop. Morgause was cold and weary, longing for hot supper at Gwenhwyfar’s table and hot mulled wine and a soft bed, and when Cormac rode up to her again she demanded crossly, “What now, dolt? Have you managed to lose us again, and miss a wide wagon road once more?”
“My queen, I am sorry, but somehow—look, we are back again where we paused to rest the horses after we turned off the Roman road—that bit of rag I dropped, I’d been using it to clean the muck off one of the packs.”
Her wrath exploded. “Was ever a queen plagued with so many damnable fools about her?” she shouted. “Must we look for the biggest city north of Londinium all over the Summer Country? Or must we ride back and forth on this road all night? If we cannot see Camelot’s lights in the dark, we could at least hear it, a castle with more than a hundred knights and serving-men, horses and cattle, Arthur’s men patrolling all the roads about—everything that moves on this road is clearly in sight of his watchtowers!”
Yet in the end there was nothing to do but to have lanterns lighted and turn southward again; Morgause herself rode at the head of the line, next to Cormac. The fog and rain seemed to damp out all sound, even echoes, until, through the foggy rain, they found themselves again at the ruined patch of Roman wall where they had turned about before. Cormac swore, but he sounded frightened too.
“Lady, I am sorry, I cannot understand it—”
“Damnation seize you all!” Morgause shrieked at him. “Will you have us riding hither and thither on this road all night?” Yet she too recognized the ruined wall. She drew a long breath, exasperation and resignation in one. “Perhaps by morning the rain will have ended, and if we must we can retrace our steps to the Roman wall. At least we will know where we have come!”
“If indeed we have come anywhere and have not wandered somehow into the fairy country,” murmured one of the women, surreptitiously crossing herself. Morgause saw the gesture, but she only said, “No more of that! It’s bad enough to be lost in the rain and fog without such idiot nonsense! Well, why are you all standing about? We can ride no more tonight, make haste to camp here, and in the morning we will know what to do.”
She had intended to call Cormac to her, if only that she might have no leisure for the fear that had begun to steal through her . . . had they indeed come out of the real world into the unknown? Yet she did not, lying alone and wakeful among her women, restless, mentally retracing all the steps of their journey. There was no sound in the night, not even the calling of frogs from the marshes. It was not possible to lose the whole city of Camelot; yet it had vanished into nowhere. Or was it she herself, with all her men and ladies and horses, who had vanished into the world of sorcery? And every time she came to that point in her thoughts she would wish that she had not allowed her anger with Cormac to set him to watching over the camp; if he were lying here beside her, she would not have that terrifying sense of the world somehow insanely out of joint . . . again and again she tried to sleep and found herself restlessly staring, wide awake, into the dark.
Sometime in the night, the rain stopped; when day broke, although damp mist was rising everywhere, the sky was free of cloud. Morgause woke from a fitful doze, a dream of Morgaine, greying and old, looking into a mirror like her own, and went out of her pavilion, hoping that she would look up the hill and find that Camelot was, indeed, where it should have been, the broad road leading up to the towers of Arthur’s castle, or else that they were on some unknown road clearly miles and miles from where they should have been. But they were camped by the ruined Roman wall, which she knew to be about a mile south from Camelot, and as horses and men prepared to ride, she looked up at the hill which should have been Camelot; but the hill was green and grass-grown and featureless.
They rode slowly along the road, muddy with the many tracks where they had ridden back and forth half the night. A flock of sheep grazed in a field, but when Morgause’s man went to speak with the shepherd, the man hid behind a rock wall and would not be coaxed out.
“And this is Arthur’s peace?” Morgause wondered aloud.
“I think, my lady,” said Cormac with deference, “there must be some enchantment here—whatever it is, this is not Camelot.”
“Then in God’s name, what is it?” asked Morgause, but he only muttered, “In God’s name, what indeed?” and had no further answer for her.
She looked upward again, listening to the frightened whimpering of one of her women. For a moment it was as if Viviane spoke again in her mind, saying what Morgause had never more than half believed, that Avalon had gone into the mists, and that if one set out there, either Druid or priestess, and not knowing the way, one would come only to the priests’ Isle of Glastonbury. . . .
They could retrace their steps to the Roman road . . . but Morgause felt a curious growing fear: would they find that the Roman road too was gone, was Lothian gone, was she alone on the face of the earth with these few men and women? Shivering, she recalled a few words of Scripture she had heard preached by Gwenhwyfar’s house priest, about the end of the world . . . I say to you, two women will be grinding grain side by side, and one will be taken, and the other one will be left. . . . Had Camelot and all those within it been taken up into the Christian Heaven, had the world ended, with a few stragglers like herself left to wander on the face of the stricken world?
But they could not stand staring at the empty track. She said, “We will retrace our steps toward the Roman road.” If, she thought, it is still there, if there is anything there at all. It seemed, as she looked on the mists rising like magical smoke from the marshes, that the world had vanished and even the rising sun was unfamiliar. Morgause was not a fanciful woman; she told herself, it was better to move and try to make their way back, than to stand in that otherworldly silence. Camelot was real, a place in the real world, it could not vanish entirely away.
Yet if I had had my way, if Lot and I had been successful in our plotting against Arthur, perhaps the whole land would be like this, silent and desolate and full of fears. . . .
Why was it so quiet? It seemed in all the world there was no sound but their horses’ hooves, and even these seemed to fall like stones dropped into water, muffled and dying away in ripples. They had nearly reached the Roman road—or where the Roman road should have been—when they heard hoofbeats on a hard road; a rider was coming, slow and deliberate, from Glastonbury. They could make out a dark figure through the fog, some kind of heavy-laden pack animal behind him. After a moment one of her men cried out, “Why, look there, it is sir Lancelet of the Lake—God give you good morning, sir!”
“Hallo! Who rides there?” It was indeed Lancelet’s well-known voice, and as he came closer, the homely sound of the hooves of horse and pack mule seemed to release something in the world around them. Sounds carried a long way in the fog, and this was a simple sound, dogs barking somewhere, a whole pack of dogs, perhaps quarrelling over their food after a hungry night, but it broke the unworldly stillness with its simple, normal noise.
“It is the Queen of Lothian,” called Cormac, and Lancelet rode toward them, halting his horse before her.
“Well, Aunt, I had not hoped to meet with you here—are my cousins with you, perhaps, Gawaine or Gareth?”
“No,” she said, “I ride alone for Camelot.” If, she thought irritably, such a place still exists upon the face of this earth! Her eyes rested intently on Lancelet’s face as he said some polite words of greeting. He looked weary and travel-worn, his clothing ragged and not overly clean, a cloak of fustian worse than he would have given his groom. Ah, the beautiful Lancelet, Gwenhwyfar will not find you so handsome now, even I would not stretch out my hand to invite him into my bed.
And then he smiled, and she realized, In spite of all, he is beautiful.
“Shall we ride together then, Aunt? For indeed I come on the most sorrowful of missions.”
“I had heard that you were on the quest of the Grail. Have you found it, then, or failed to find it that you are so long-faced?”
“It is not for such a man as I to find that greatest of Mysteries. Yet I bring with me one who did indeed hold the Grail in his hands. And so I have come to say that the quest is ended, and the Grail gone forever out of this world.”
And then Morgause saw that on the pack mule, covered and shrouded, was the body of a man, She whispered, “Who—?”
“Galahad,” said Lancelet quietly. “It was my son who found the Grail, and now we know that no man may look on it and live. Would that it had been I—if only because I bear such bitter news to my king, that the one who should be King after him has gone before us into the world where he may forever follow his quest unspoilt—”
Morgause shuddered. Now indeed will it be as if Arthur had never been, the land will have no king save for the king in Heaven, ruled over by those priests who have Arthur in their hands . . . but angrily she dismissed those fancies. Galahad is gone. Arthur must choose Gwydion to rule after him.
Lancelet looked sorrowfully at the pack mule with Galahad’s body, but he said only, “Shall we ride on? I had not intended to rest a night by the road, but the mists were thick, and I feared to lose my way. I would have thought it Avalon itself!”
“We could not find Camelot in the mists, no more than Avalon—” Cormac began, but Morgause interrupted him fretfully.
“Have done with that foolishness,” she said. “We mistook the road in the darkness, and rode back and forth half the night! We too are in haste to come to Camelot, nephew.”
One or two of her men present knew Lancelet and had known Galahad, and now they crowded close to the body, with soft expressions of sympathy and kindly words. Lancelet listened to all they had to say, his face sorrowful, then, with a few soft words, brought it to an end.
“Later, my lads, later, there will be time enough to mourn. I am in no haste, God knows, to bear such news to Arthur, but delaying will make it no kinder. Let us ride on.”
The mist was thinning and burning away fast as the sun gained height. They set off down the road where Morgause and her men had ridden back and forth for hours in search of Camelot, but before they had gone very far there was another sound that broke the strange silence of the haunted morning. It was a trumpet call, clear and silver in the still air, from the heights of Camelot. And before her at the clump of four trees, broad and unmistakable in the growing sunlight, lay the wagon road built by Arthur’s men for his legions to ride.
It seemed appropriate that the first man Morgause should see on the heights of Camelot was her son Gareth. He strode forth to challenge them at the great gates of Camelot; then, recognizing Lancelet, hurried to him. Lancelet flung himself headlong from his horse and took Gareth into a strong embrace.
“So, cousin, it is you—”
“Aye, it is that—Cai is too old and lame to be patrolling the walls of Camelot in these days. Ah, it is a good day in which you return to Camelot, my cousin. But I see that you found not Galahad, Lance?”
“Aye, but I did,” said Lancelet sorrowfully, and Gareth’s open face, still boyish despite his full beard, was struck with dismay as he looked at the outlines of the dead man under the pall.
“I must bear this news to Arthur at once. Take me to him, Gareth.”
Gareth bowed his head, his hand resting on Lancelet’s shoulder. “Ah, this is an evil day for Camelot. I said once before, it seemed to me that yonder Grail was the work of some devil, not of God at all!”
Lancelet shook his head, and it seemed to Morgause that something bright shone through him, as if his body were transparent; and through his sad smile there was hidden joy. “No, my dear cousin,” he said, “you must put that from your mind forever. Galahad has had what God gave to him, and, God help us, so have we all. But his day is finished, and he is free of all human fate. Ours is still to come, dear Gareth—God grant us that we meet it with as much courage as he.”
“Amen to that,” said Gareth, and to Morgause’s horrified surprise he crossed himself. Then, with a start, he looked up at her.
“Mother, is it you? Forgive me—yours is the last company in which I would expect to find Lancelet.” He bent over her hand with a dutiful kiss. “Come, madam, let me summon a chamberlain and take you to the Queen. She will make you welcome among her ladies while Lancelet is with the King.”
Morgause let herself be led away, wondering now why she had come. In Lothian she ruled as queen in her own right, but here in Camelot she could only sit among Gwenhwyfar’s ladies, and know no more of what was going on than what one of her sons might see fit to tell her.
She said to the chamberlain, “Say to my son Gwydion—sir Mordred—that his mother has come, and bid him to wait upon me as soon as he can.” But she wondered, sunk in despondency, if in this strange court he would even be troubled to pay her such respects as Gareth had done. And once again, she felt she had done wrong to come to Camelot.
14
For many years, Gwenhwyfar had felt that when the Companions of the Round Table were present, Arthur belonged not to her but to them. She had resented their intrusion into her life, their presence at Camelot; often she had felt that if Arthur were not surrounded by the court, perhaps they might have had a life happier than the one they led as King and Queen of Camelot.
And yet in this year of the Grail quest, she began to realize that she had been fortunate after all, for Camelot was like a village of ghosts with all the Companions departed, and Arthur the ghost who haunted Camelot, moving silently through the deserted castle.
It was not that she took no pleasure in Arthur’s company when at last it was entirely hers. It was only that now she came to understand how much of his very being he had poured into his legions and the building of Camelot. He showed her ungrudging courtesy and kindness, and she had more of his company than ever she had had in all the long years of war or the years of peace that followed them. But it was as if some part of him was absent with his Companions, wherever they might be, and only a small fraction of the man himself was here with her. She loved Arthur the man no less than Arthur the King, but she realized now how much less was the man without the business of kingship into which he had put so much of his life. And she was ashamed that she could notice it.
They never spoke of those who were absent. In that year of the Grail quest, they lived quietly and in peace from day to day, speaking only of everyday things, of bread and meat, of fruits from the orchard or wine from the cellars, of a new cloak or the clasp of a shoe. And once, looking around the empty chamber of the Round Table, he said, “Should we have it put away until they return, my love? Even in this great chamber, there is small room to move, and now when it is all empty—”
“No,” she said quickly, “no, my dear, leave it. This great room was built for the Round Table, and without it, it would be like an empty barn. Leave it. You and I and the household folk can dine in the smaller chamber.” He smiled at her, and she knew he was glad she had said that.
“And when the knights return from the quest, we can once again make a great feast there,” he said, but then fell silent, and she knew he was wondering how many would ever return.
Cai was with them, and old Lucan, and two or three of the Companions who were old or infirm or nursing old wounds. A
nd Gwydion—Mordred as he was now called—was always with them, like a grown son; often Gwenhwyfar looked on him and thought, This is the son I might have borne to Lancelet, and heat went scalding and flooding through her whole body, leaving her broken into a hot sweat as she thought of that night when Arthur himself had thrust her into Lancelet’s arms. And indeed this heat came often now and went, so that she never knew whether a room was hot or cold, or whether it was this strange sudden heat from within. Gwydion was gentle and deferential to her, calling her always lady or, sometimes, shyly, Aunt; the very shyness with which he used this term of family closeness warmed her and made him dear to her. He was like to Lancelet, too, but more silent and less light of heart; where Lancelet had ever been ready with a jest or play on words, Gwydion smiled and was always ready with some wit like a blow or the thrust of a needle. His wit was wicked, but she could not but laugh when he made some cruel jest.
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