The Idylls of the Queen

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  Bellangere sat silent for a moment or two, breathing heavily. Then he said, “Are you for Lancelot and Pellinore’s sons, Seneschal, or for Gawain and Mordred and the sons of Lot?” He might as well have been asking if I were on the side of God or Satan.

  “I’m for Britain and the King,” I said, “and I’d still be for Britain and the King if Lancelot and Gawain themselves ever came to blows. Since that’s not likely to happen, even if all the rest of you choose to overlook the great friendship between your respective idols, the worst danger is all this bloody rivalry itself between men empty and foolish enough to admire either Lancelot or Gawain, or Lamorak de Galis, to the point of blind worship.”

  Dame Lore of Carlisle decided it was time to treat us to some of the fruits of her profound meditations. “An empty man does better to worship some knight greater than himself than to glory in his own emptiness, Sir Seneschal.”

  “What great lady do you worship, then, Dame Cupbearer?” I replied.

  “Sir Lamorak should have been allowed to defend himself in combat before the full court,” remarked Dame Elyzabel, her tact failing for once. Lore and I had almost gotten us clear of that subject.

  “Aye, but he was not,” said Bellangere. “Gawain knew he could not defeat him in fair combat. He preferred to defeat him in ambushment with his brothers.”

  “Lamorak never came back to court to be tried,” I said. “And Arthur himself wouldn’t permit it at the Surluse tournament. But why don’t you charge Lot’s sons of their treachery and prove it on them yourself in full court, Bellangere? Defeating Gawain and his brothers one by one should be easy for the man who almost defeated Lamorak de Galis.”

  “Maybe you’d be willing to act as champion for your friend Mordred against me, Seneschal?”

  “I won’t need that excuse to give you a fall, Sir Proud Knight,” I said. “After the Queen’s name is cleared.”

  “I wonder you choose the company of Mordred,” said Dame Lore, “worshipping our Queen as you do.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Who but Sir Agravain is behind the gossip? And who but Mordred helps him to spread it?”

  “I should have realized that one of your talents is tracing gossip to its source,” I said.

  “It’s a wise talent,” Lore replied. “You would do better to cultivate than mock it.”

  “I have other things to do than pry and poke my nose into every idle tale that goes around.”

  “Sir Agravain will not rest until he’s destroyed Sir Lancelot for pure jealousy,” said Dame Elyzabel. “Even if he must destroy the Queen with him.”

  “The rumors have been going around for years,” I said. “Even before the time of that look-alike witch of a false Guenevere. It’s a little too easy to charge all the mischief-making to the third or fourth most disliked man at court.”

  “It might have been better for Her Grace had she refused to come back to the King,” said Elyzabel. She stopped just short of adding that Dame Guenevere had been living with Lancelot under the protection of the High Prince of Surluse the whole time Artus was wallowing under the spell of her look-alike.

  “You can talk like that, Dame Elyzabel, and then put all the blame for the rumors on Agravain and his brothers?” I said.

  “On Agravain and Mordred,” said Lore of Carlisle. “Never an old tale but they keep it fresh, never a new one but they magnify it, never a chance to lie but they seize it.”

  “Never a stray morsel of gossip but Dame Lore the Cupbearer follows it back to its source,” I said. “Why not charge all five of the brothers?”

  Bellangere, who seemed to have been only half-following the conversation while he brooded on the supposed treachery of the sons of Lot, came out of his own thoughts long enough to say, “Slander Sir Gareth at my table and you’ll pay for it, Seneschal. Sir Gareth shares in none of his family’s sins.”

  “We all know that Gawain speaks always in favor of the Queen and of his friend Lancelot,” said Elyzabel. “I believe you wrong Gawain a little, my lord Bellangere. He behaved wickedly towards the good Sir Lamorak, but he was half-crazed with grief for his mother.” It was what I had tried to point out, but Bellangere took it more gently and quietly from Dame Elyzabel’s lips. “And Gaheris is fair enough to keep his own counsel,” she went on. “But how can you close your eyes, Sir Kay, to Agravain’s jealousy and Mordred’s malice? You know the King. You know what must happen if he should ever be convinced of his wife’s guilt.”

  Artus has always been slow to anger, but when his temper does break, he listens to nobody. Not even his own laws and customs are safe during one of his royal rages—it seems to be a trait folk admire in their kings. “Well,” I said, “if Morgan le Fay was never able to convince him about it, it’s not likely he’ll listen to his least favorite nephews. Not, at least, while his favorite nephew, Gawain, is defending the Queen and Lancelot.”

  In fact, I had spent more effort in helping Artus convince himself that the rumors were fools’ fancies than in trying to collect and trace them. I was not going to give Lore and Elyzabel the satisfaction of seeing the doubts they had planted in me now—they who blamed Gawain’s brothers for trying to plant doubts in the King. There would have been rumors about Her Grace and Lancelot if Agravain and Mordred had been killed in their first jousts. If the great Du Lac had never come to Britain, there might have been rumors about Her Grace and the Seneschal.

  We did not linger long over supper. But Dame Elyzabel overtook me in the passageway, motioning the torchbearers a few paces farther on.

  “Don’t tell me you’re trying to start a rumor about us, Dame?” I said.

  She shook her head. “You are not so bad as Mordred, Sir Kay. He spreads his poison behind his victims’ backs. You at least speak openly.”

  “My old nurse warned me to beware of flatterers,” I remarked. “Suppose you and Dame Cupbearer are right—suppose Agravain and Mordred are behind the worst of the gossip. They can’t be behind all of it. Lancelot does a very good job of feeding the rumormongers himself. But suppose Lot’s sons are as dangerous as you say—what do you want me to do about it? Cut Mordred’s throat while he’s asleep? Murder him ‘naked in his bed’?”

  “Discredit them. Discountenance them. Use your tongue against them, not in their defense.”

  “The knights I discredit have a way of turning into the heroes of court and kingdom. Have you forgotten how Gareth Beaumains and Sir La Cote Male Taile got their start? And that holy fool Percival?”

  “At least do not ride with Mordred,” she said. “Don’t appear to favor his company.”

  “I’ve been frequently assured that I am probably the least-loved man at court, as well as the least appreciated. I ought to be doing Mordred’s reputation more harm by riding with him than by avoiding him.”

  That reduced even Dame Elyzabel to falling back on proverbs. “Who touches pitch besmirches himself,” she said, echoing Bellangere’s earlier witticism.

  “Mordred and Agravain are not much better loved than I am. Why should our noble, intelligent knights and dames listen to their rumormongering?”

  “Folk are always ready to hear evil, even from evil tongues. Perhaps they are readier to believe evil tales from wicked tongues than holy tales from saints. Some even repeat the tales as if they were to the glory of Lancelot and the Queen.”

  “It might be a good thing if you didn’t find Lancelot,” I said. “Bors can probably defeat Mador de la Porte.”

  “If Sir Bors fights with a good heart.”

  “Would the hero of the Holy Grail agree to fight with anything else but a good heart?” I said sarcastically. “If you’re looking for a source of the rumors, Dame Elyzabel, keep an eye on Bors de Ganis.”

  “You did not mean it when you hoped Sir Lancelot would not be found?”

  “No, I suppose not. I’d rather see him found than Her Grace burned. I’d bring him back myself at sword point, if I had to. And as soon as he splits Mador’s head, I hope Lancelot goes to the De
vil and stays there!”

  We parted, neither of us overjoyed with the other, and I told my torchbearer to lead me to Mordred’s room. I was ready to forgive Gawain’s youngest brother a lot, in view of that knock on the head or whatever turned him inside-out at the Peningues tournament—but I was not ready to forgive his gossipmongering about Her Grace.

  A time candle was burning in the antechamber, where Lovel, Mordred’s nephew and squire, was sleeping as soundly as if he had been drugged. The inner door was ajar. Telling my torchbearer to stay in the anteroom with the snoring squire, I went into the inner chamber.

  It was dark, but by the light that came through the doorway I saw Mordred sitting on the edge of his bed, fully clothed. He seemed to be staring so intently at his own thoughts that he could not be bothered to turn his head. I closed the door and we were in darkness again.

  “So, was I right?” he said quietly. “But you may find you need a light, if you hope to strike true.”

  “I didn’t take the time to go back to my room for my sword,” I said.

  “Did you hope to do the work with your knife, then? Or perhaps with a pillow pressed down over my face?”

  “You can stop playing the martyr, Mordred. If you haven’t recognized my voice, I’m Kay.”

  The bed cording creaked. Mordred was shifting his weight, maybe turning toward me at last. “Did you come to learn whether I was still in the castle, Sir Sensechal? Or whether I were already murdered by someone else?”

  “I came to find out whether it’s true that you and your simpering brother have been spreading filth about the Queen.”

  “Which brother? I have four, and possibly a few bastard half-brothers.”

  “Only one that simpers,” I said. “Agravain the Proud. Well, is it true?”

  “My simpering brother Agravain, the Proud and Handsome. Yes, I like that. How shall we describe the others? Justice-seeking Gawain the Golden-Tongued, innocent Gareth of the Clean Hands, Gaheris… Gaheris the Dedicated Weathercock, I think.”

  “And scheming Mordred of the Foul Tongue.”

  “Can foul deeds be spoken of with a clean tongue?” he asked.

  It was as well we were in darkness. My hands ached to strangle him. I might have tried, if I had been closer to the bed. “It’s true, then? You confess it?”

  “I confessed nothing, I denied nothing. I have invented no tales about Dame Guenevere and her champion. If my simpering brother Agravain the Proud and Handsome has made up any such lies out of his own jealous fancies, he has imposed on me as well as on the rest of the court.”

  “Then you have helped him spread his poison!”

  “Are all the rumors lies? If not lies, then they have a base of truth. Can truth be poison?”

  “Damn your stinking souls to Hell, why are you trying to destroy the Queen?”

  “I am not,” said Mordred, still with no sound of anger. “I have enemies, Seneschal, and enemies I would like to crush, but the Queen is not among them. I love and respect Her Grace—not as much as you love her, perhaps, but enough, in my way, to want to see whoever has endangered her burned into ashes at the stake meant for her.… As for Agravain the Handsome, he is bitterly jealous of the great Lancelot. A jealousy you should understand well, Sir Kay.”

  “Tell your brother he can attack Lancelot any other way he dares, but if he goes on trying to drag the Queen down with Lancelot, then by God I’ll give his pride a fall he’ll never get up from again.”

  “If all goes well,” said Mordred, “you’ll see him again as soon as I will, at Astolat. Shall I give you some practice tilts for love as we travel? Once on a time the noble Lancelot himself used to tell me I jousted very well, for a young knight.”

  “Bad dreams to you,” I said, and left him.

  CHAPTER 12

  Dame Iblis’ Tale of Tragedy in a Pavilion

  “And so he rode into a great forest all that day, and never could find no highway, and so the night fell on him, and then was he ware in a slade, of a pavilion of red sendal. By my faith, said Sir Launcelot, in that pavilion will I lodge all this night, and so there he alighted down, and tied his horse to the pavilion, and there he unarmed him, and there he found a bed, and laid him therein and fell asleep sadly.

  “Then within an hour there came the knight to whom the pavilion ought, and he weened that his leman had lain in that bed, and so he laid him down beside Sir Launcelot, and took him in his arms and began to kiss him. And when Sir Launcelot felt a rough beard kissing him, he started out of the bed lightly, and the other knight after him, and either of them gat their swords in their hands, and out at the pavilion door went the knight of the pavilion, and Sir Launcelot followed him, and there by a little slake Sir Launcelot wounded him sore, nigh unto the death.…

  “Therewithal came the knight’s lady, that was a passing fair lady, and when she espied that her Lord Belleus was sore wounded, she cried out on Sir Launcelot, and made great dole out of measure.”

  —Malory VI, 4-5

  “You should not have wished me evil dreams last night,” said Mordred next day. True to his word, he had refused to break his fast at Arlan; but, fasting or not, his spirits seemed to have risen on leaving Bellangere’s castle behind us.

  “My wish took hold, eh?”

  “Fortunately, no. Evil dreams can be dangerous, when dreamed by kings and kings’ sons. How many infant boys drowned for a nightmare of our liege lord Arthur, that year I was born?”

  “Merlin’s malicious prophesying had as much to do with that as Arthur’s nightmare. Anyway, I never heard that King Lot needed any bad dreams for an excuse to lead his people into war.”

  “And King Lot’s youngest son is never likely to be in a position to make a whole kingdom suffer for the sake of a bad dream, is he?” was all Mordred said to that. He took implied insults against his father much more coolly than those against his mother.

  We stopped that night at a convent of white nuns not far from the neighborhood of Malmesbury. The prioress, who had taken the veil on the death of her husband, was a cousin of Lancelot. I judged that Dame Iblis deserved to hear the latest news, such as it was. Since we seemed to have outstripped the rest of the search, it was not likely she had already heard it from anyone else. I also hoped Mordred would be on better behavior in a house of holy women.

  Arriving midway through Evensong, we had to wait at the gate with the portress until the nuns returned from chapel. Then an aging lay-sister came to lead us to the guesthouse for knights and other male travelers. I asked for an interview with the prioress.

  “Aye, aye,” said the lay-sister, nodding. “And glad enough she’ll be to sup with you, too. Aye, our goodlady loves knightly talk and news of arms.”

  “A pity, then,” Mordred murmured, aside to me, “that she does not have more graceful conversationalists for her knightly guests.”

  Dame Iblis joined us with the elderly Dame Cellarer as her companion. Aside from the prioress’ ring of office and the cellarer’s ring of keys, they were habited identically; but whereas Dame Cellarer’s white clothes hung on her like a peasant kirtle and cloak, the prioress wore gown, scapular, and wimple with a studied modesty that came little short of high court fashion.

  Mordred was standing at the window, watching the sky darken, his face turned away from the fire, gold hair shining in the firelight. When Dame Iblis first glimpsed him, she stopped in the doorway and gasped. “You!”

  He turned to look at her inquiringly. “Yes, madame, I am myself, but what am I to you?”

  “Nay, nay, lady,” said Dame Cellarer, “this is not he. I mind the other one well. This is not he.”

  The prioress recovered herself and came forward to greet us. “Your pardon, my lord. I mistook you for another. You might be a brother to Sir Gaheris of Orkney.” She mentioned the name a bit too casually.

  “The family resemblance is strong.” Mordred bowed to kiss her hand. “Since the sons of Dame Morgawse are known for their beauty, I take your mistake for praise.”<
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  “Then you are one of the sons of King Lot and Queen Morgawse. The noble Sir Gareth, perhaps?” She must have been able to see he was too young to be Gawain or Agravain. On learning he was Mordred, the youngest, she welcomed him with, “You rode with my kinsman Sir Lancelot for a time, did you not? He spoke highly of your prowess at arms.”

  Dame Iblis and I had met once or twice before, though she either remembered me, or pretended to, more clearly than I remembered her. I had not thought it especially surprising, at the time, that Lancelot’s cousin should retire into a convent upon being widowed by robbers. Now, as she sat conversing with us over richer fare, presumably, than she usually shared with her sisters in the refectory, all of us saving less pleasant talk for after the meal, I grew more and more puzzled as to why this fine dame had left the world. She might have been widowed thrice over and never found difficulty in getting a new lord. She might even have had several waiting their chance to wed her. Nor was she any landless, dowerless younger daughter to be forced into the cloistered life; even un-remarried, she could easily have ruled her first husband’s lands. And though she seemed to have a glowing reputation in the neighborhood for good works among the poor and sick, her supper talk was worldly, sometimes worldly enough to make poor Dame Cellarer pay noticeably strict attention to her food, while Gillimer and Lovel laughed and let their serving duties slip. Dame Iblis might be getting along well in her convent—she would probably become abbess as soon as the chief place was vacant—but God had not fashioned her for the cloister, even to rule it.