The Idylls of the Queen

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  Although Lancelot grieved publicly for Lamorak as a dear friend and a warrior second in arms only to himself and Tristram, he also, at the same time, clove to his dearer and older friendship with Gawain, maintaining his opinion that by the will of Heaven, justice, however tragic, had somehow been done; and Lancelot’s publicly expressed opinions, as well as the King’s affection for his favorite nephew, helped quell the further reprisals and challenges that might otherwise have come from Lamorak’s brothers and kinsmen.

  Or else the feelings had been driven underground, to fester for years and finally break out in an attempt to poison Gawain. But why now? Why not years ago, before the Grail Quest, when the killings were fresh? Maybe old Saint Nascien’s warning was coming true, and those knights who had gone looking for the Sangreal unworthily, as they demonstrated by failing to find it, really had returned more sinful than when they started.

  * * * *

  Meanwhile, Dame Nimue had remembered to ask Beaumains if he had any token of Lancelot’s that we could use to find the Queen’s champion. He had more than one: a comb and a small dagger Lancelot had given him when he was masquerading as my kitchen knave, the swordbelt and plume Lancelot had presented to him on dubbing him knight, and even a fragment of the first spear Lancelot had broken on him. But all these relics were either back in his rooms at court or laid up in silver caskets at his wife Dame Lyonors’ castle. So, since we still had a day before the appointed meeting at Astolat, and Gareth and Pinel had planned their journey cannily enough, we spent that day poking into nooks and crannies at a naturally slow pace and, naturally, finding nothing but a few bees and wasps.

  “It’s that Pagan woman with us,” said Pinel when we stopped for the evening, although he was careful to say it while she and her husband were out of earshot, overseeing the pitching of their large, comfortable pavilions, in one of which Pinel would spend the night.

  “If you say such things to a person’s face,” I remarked, “you’re called a churl. If you say them behind the person’s back, you’re merely called a courtly gossip.”

  “And if you were merely to think them, never speaking them at all?” Mordred asked, lying on his stomach and molding little structures of twigs and earth. “How would you be called them?”

  “Probably a model of politesse,” I said.

  “Aye,” Mordred replied, “but is not politesse, then, closely akin to hypocrisy?”

  “Aye, sit there and speak lightly,” said Pinel, “but I tell you both that Heaven will hardly prosper any search undertaken with the heathen in our company.”

  “I notice you’re keeping your sweet voice low, Pinel,” I said. “Very unusual for you. Afraid the Pagan woman will overhear and make you spend the night in your own tatty pavilion?”

  “The Vespers of the Pagan’s woman’s priest,” said Mordred, “sounded remarkably like those of our most Christian King’s own chaplains and bishops.”

  “The worst sin of all,” insisted Pinel, righteously picking at a frayed place in his tunic, “is to mix true and Pagan practices. It is high heresy.”

  Gareth put in, “We had no better success in finding Sir Lancelot before Dame Nimue joined us.”

  Pinel shook his head. “God knows the deeds of men beforehand, and that you would welcome her into our company before the search was over. We understand these things at Carbonek, where the Fisher Kings guarded the Sangreal through the centuries, while the rest of your world outside weltered in heresy and heathendom. Why do you think so few of you found the Sangreal?”

  Mordred sat up to face Pinel, not quite seriously. “Ah, and is it true that the Holy Grail is no longer with you, having chosen to quit this sinful world—even the castle of Carbonek—forever? Granted that Heaven knows our deeds beforehand, Pinel, and speeds us accordingly; but has Heaven turned Its back on the entire body of searchers because one small, separate group of them, unbeknownst to the others, has taken a woman of questionable creed into its company? Or may it not be that we are, quite simply, looking in the wrong part of the country, and Heaven, declining to bring Lancelot into our way through miracle, has left him wherever he is, to be found by some other searchers?”

  “That’s right!” Gareth said eagerly. “He might be found already. He might be in London even now to save the Queen.”

  Pinel tossed it off. “Well, and if he is not… Yes, Heaven knows all, and will find means to save the Queen if she is innocent.”

  “She is innocent, Sir Mudhead of Carbonek,” I said, tempted to go on and tell him how we knew and where we had watched the poison sprinkled on the fruit. But that might put him on his guard, if he had known anything about it before now.

  “Innocent of the poisoning, perhaps. Did I charge her with the poisoned fruit? But of some other secret sin… Who but Heaven, after all, knows for what sin Sir Patrise was killed?”

  “If Dame Guenevere has a sin,” I said, “the sin is in being gossiped about by the likes of you. Go out and talk to the common people, De Carbonek. When have they had a better Queen, or one they loved more? Ask the common folk how they knew which was the true Guenevere when that look-alike witch took her place for two years and let the kingdom slide to waste and wrack. By God, if it were legal, the commoners would rise in a body and fight Mador to save their Queen, whether they thought she was a poisoner or not!”

  “The commoners also have a high opinion of brother Gaheris,” Mordred murmured, “to judge by Cob the charcoal burner. Although good Dame Iblis would disagree with him.”

  Pinel made one of his rapid veerings to another side of the question. “Even if Dame Guenevere were the most guiltless woman born of the race of Eve, is she not a source of scandal and dissension? You prove it yourself, Seneschal. Might not the Divine Wisdom take her early to Itself for the welfare of our King and court?”

  Mordred put his hand on my shoulder just in time to hold me down. “Calm yourself, Sir Kay, calm yourself. Remember he is but a buffoon, unaware of his own folly.” In a louder voice, he said to Pinel, “Is it not strange, knight of God’s own country, to maintain that the wicked die for offending Heaven and the good die because Heaven wishes to bring them to their reward, even though both wicked and good die equal in age and equal in agony? Might we not say of Sir Brumant the Proud—you remember, that Gaulish knight who chose to sit in Galahad’s Siege Perilous? Of course you remember; we’ve all heard you talk of him at some length—might we not say of him that, far from punishing his pride, Heaven welcomed him, like the prophet Elias, up to Itself in a pillar of fire?”

  We did not realize that Dame Nimue had come up behind our circle. Maybe she somehow held our eyes from seeing her until the moment when she said, “And do you really believe, Sir Pinel of Carbonek, that poor Sir Patrise died in divine punishment for some secret sin?”

  CHAPTER 27

  Sir Pinel’s Tale of the Dolorous Stroke

  “And so as they were even afore King Arthur’s pavilion, there came one invisible, and smote this knight that went with Balin throughout the body with a spear. Alas, said the knight, I am slain under your conduct with a knight called Garlon; therefore take my horse that is better than yours and ride to the damosel, and follow the quest that I was in as she will lead you, and revenge my death when ye may. That shall I do, said Balin, and that I make vow unto knighthood; and so he departed from this knight with great sorrow.… Then they rode three or four days… and by hap they were lodged with a gentleman that was a rich man and well at ease. And as they sat at their supper Balin overheard one complain grievously by him in a chair. What is this noise? said Balin. Forsooth, said his host, I will tell you. I was but late at a jousting, and there I jousted with a knight that is brother unto King Pellam, and twice smote I him down, and then he promised to quit me on my best friend; and so he wounded my son, that cannot be whole till I have of that knight’s blood, and he rideth alway invisible; but I know not his name. Ah! said Balin, I know that knight, his name is Garlon, he hath slain two knights of mine in the same manner, therefo
re I had liefer meet with that knight than all the gold in this realm, for the despite he hath done me.”

  —Malory II, 12-14

  Pinel started at her voice and glanced up at her smiling, mischievous face. “Why else, madame?” he said. “Here were apples and pears that any man would have expected Sir Gawain to taste the first. Yet it was not Gawain, but Patrise of Ireland who ate of them and died. What else is this but Heaven’s making use of the poison at hand to repay Sir Patrise for the sins of his heart, while reserving Gawain for some other fate?”

  “If Sir Patrise deserved to die like that,” said Gareth, “what must the rest of us deserve?”

  “I’ve seen worse deaths,” said Mordred. “I can conceive worse yet. Why not assume that Heaven in Its mercy chose to translate Sir Patrise, in the bloom of his youth and innocence, from our sinful world directly to bliss and the presence of the Grail? Perhaps Patrise is to be envied. Indeed, why speak of poison at all? No doubt the apple had nothing to do with the miraculous translation, and the bitch I fed with it died of coincidence, or perhaps of an ecstasy of joy at partaking of the relic from a saint’s mouth.”

  I shook my head. “No, no, Mordred. You misunderstand Pinel’s parable. The apple represents the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Paradise, and Patrise represents our first father Adam, who ate the fruit and died. It all happened for our instruction, you see.”

  “Yes, I have thought that, too,” said Pinel, and I swear that, although he had begun to glower as if he realized that Mordred was baiting him, he seemed to take me seriously. “That is the symbolic meaning, of course,” the knight of Carbonek went on. “And the Queen represents our first, sinful mother Eve, who gave Adam the deadly fruit.”

  “How fortunate,” murmured Nimue, before I could speak, “that we have one among us bred at Carbonek, where even the simple squires have more understanding of holy mysteries than have archbishops elsewhere, to expound these lessons to us.”

  Smirking, Pinel inclined his head to her. “Perhaps you are not so very far from the truth, after all, madame.”

  “I suppose that asking for your speculations about who may have poisoned the fruit would be putting too worldly an interpretation on the facts?” I said.

  Pinel shrugged. “In the meaning of the parable, the poisoner naturally represents the Serpent, the Evil One who tempted the woman.”

  Even though Her Grace knew nothing about it, I thought; but Pinel was prattling on:

  “In the punishment of Patrise for his own guilt—for Heaven combines many purposes in a single action: parable, retribution, opportunity for redemption—”

  “How thrifty of Heaven!” remarked Mordred.

  Pinel glared at him and went on, “In the punishment of Patrise for his own guilt, the poisoner acted merely as the unwitting agent of Heaven, as that unfortunate knight Sir Garlon and the bloody Balin acted in bringing about the Dolorous Stroke.”

  “Most folk would have called Sir Garlon bloody and Sir Balin unfortunate,” Nimue remarked.

  “Most folk in the world know only what that Satan’s son Merlin told of the matter,” said Pinel.

  “And what Balin is said to have told of it on his way from the Waste Lands of Carbonek to his death in the Lost Isles,” said Mordred. “And what information Bors the Pious brought back from his journeyings with the sainted Galahad, Percival, and Damsel Amide. And what half a score of kinsfolk and lovers of Garlon’s victims had to tell of it. But let us hear your account of the matter, Sir Knight of Carbonek, since you, of course, know the exact truth, though I doubt your father had yet thought of putting you in your mother’s womb at the time.”

  “You are mistaken in that, Sir Mordred,” Pinel said stiffly. “I was already conceived, though not yet born, when the wretched Balin dealt the Dolorous Stroke. But, of course, in your pride you mistake many things.”

  Mordred began to scratch patterns in the moss with a twig. “Whatever my secret sins, Sir Knight, I am not proud. But let us hear how you saw the adventure of the Dolorous Stroke, from the vantage-point of your mother’s womb.”

  Pinel glanced at his traveling companion of the last eight days. “Sir Gareth has already heard the tale.”

  “I’ll hear it again,” said Beaumains. I mused that he had probably heard it, and one or two score of Pinel’s other tales, several times over on this journey. Pinel’s slight hesitation to go into fuller details of this particular episode seemed unlike his flapping mouth; I realized I myself had never heard Pinel’s version through from beginning to end—but then, I had avoided Pinel’s rigmaroles as much as possible. Of course, Pinel’s uncle King Pellam of Carbonek and Listeneise, who had received the Stroke, was Pellinore’s brother. I had not credited Pinel with much delicacy before now, but he might be a little reluctant to expound overmuch on his family’s history in the hearing of Mordred or any other of the sons of Lot, except Gareth Beaumains.

  “You will know, then,” said Pinel, “because Sir Bors tells it with reasonable accuracy, how, many years ago in his youth, my uncle, Sir Pellam, the last of the Fisher Kings and the sixth in direct descent from Josue, the brother of Alain the Great, first guardian of the Holy Grail from the hands of Joseph’s son of Arimathea, while out hunting one day, came to the seaside and found the marvelous ship set adrift by the wise King Solomon to ride the waters of the world until the days of his descendant Sir Galahad.”

  I yawned openly. “Well, we might as well make a full evening’s entertainment of it, Pinel. Why not name all the intervening generations between Josue and Pellam, and between Solomon and Galahad, too, while you’re at it?”

  He squinted in annoyance. “My uncle, King Pellam, read the mystical writing on the ship’s side to warn men of weak faith against entering the vessel. Naturally, being firm in the true faith as mortal man can be, my uncle entered into the vessel and found the great sword that had once been wielded by King David, Jesse’s son. Uncle Pellam read and pondered the warnings on sword-hilt and scabbard; and, knowing himself to be clean of life, a noble king and descended from noble kings, and the keeper of the Holy Grail, he decided in all humility and holy trembling to make the attempt to draw the sword. Did not Sir Pellam stand a better chance than most knights of being he for whom the blade was meant? How could Sir Galahad himself have claimed the sword if he had not dared try to draw it?”

  “So King Pellam drew the sword about a quarter of the way out,” said Mordred, “where it stuck fast in the scabbard and would neither come the rest of the way nor go back in. Since, as you say, we know all this from Bors de Ganis, why tell it again? Come straight to the Dolorous Stroke.”

  “That’s asking a horse to leap like a cat, from a crouch, without taking a turn back to get a running start,” I said.

  Mordred rejoined, “Aye, but after his running start the horse usually leaps clear, while Sir Pinel takes a running start in order to wade ankle-deep through a mire.”

  Dame Nimue laughed, attracting Pelleas and a few of her other attendants to our group; but Gareth said angrily, “You chastise your kitchen knaves, Sir Seneschal, for showing manners not half so churlish as your own.”

  “That’s right,” I agreed. “And you never had the boldness to risk my chastisement for a saucy tongue until you were out of the kitchen and into your knighthood, did you, Beaumains?”

  “Oh, hush,” said Nimue, still chuckling. “Do you blame poor Sir Pinel for sloughing through a mire and then yourselves raise up a forest of brambles in his way?”

  By now, had I been in Pinel’s place, I would have left the company, or at least understood that no one was particularly interested in the tale. He, however, straightened his shoulders, rubbed his thin beard, glanced around at us, cleared his throat with dignity, and sloughed on. “Having learned the sword was not to be his, but heartened, by the blamelessness of his life and the fact that he had drawn it partway out, to hope he might escape the threatened retribution for the attempt, my uncle King Pellam left King Solomon’s Ship, which began drifting away el
sewhere as soon as he was safely ashore. Indeed, for some years his land prospered, in worldly richness, as rarely before, and the king’s daughter, my fair cousin Elaine, grew to young maidenhood.

  “Now my uncle’s brother, the good knight Sir Garlon, was given the grace to ride through the world invisible, wreaking Heaven’s just punishment on sinful knights, whom he knew by the heat of their fleshly lusts or by some other Heaven-sent sign. Balin, that proud knight who gained his sword through sinful enchantment, joined the fleshly paramour of a knight Sir Garlon had righteously slain, and rode in pursuit of Sir Garlon. Balin and his wanton woman came to the castle of Carbonek during one of my uncle King Pellam’s feasts of friendship and peace; and, although it was a place and time of friendship, Balin refused to ungird his sword, claiming some custom of his own savage country. The attendants, suspecting no ill-will, decided to allow him his custom rather than mar the peace with quarreling. But when Balin the proud and violent came into the banquet chamber, there in the presence of the king and the other guests, he drew his sword and cut down Sir Garlon in cold blood and treachery, and when good Sir Garlon was dead, the wanton woman thrust her fleshly lover’s broken spear through his corpse in mockery.

  “My uncle the king called for his own weapon, and when it was brought to him, while Balin and the woman still made sport of their victim’s body, Sir Pellam rose up to avenge his brother. At the first blow they struck, Balin’s blade, wrought by false enchantments, broke beneath my uncle’s righteous weapon. Then the proud Sir Balin fled, deeper and deeper into the castle, paying no heed to private places or sacred, until he came to the Holy of Holies, where the Relics were guarded. Here he saw the hallowed Spear with which the Roman pierced Our Lord Ihesu on the Rood. Without stopping to learn what it was, seeing only a weapon and not a holy relic, Balin caught it up and thrust it at King Pellam—and Heaven permitted the proud knight to drive it through both King Pellam’s thighs, thus dealing the Dolorous Stroke that punished the good king’s one transgression, leaving him a cripple until his grandson Sir Galahad grew to manhood and returned to heal him and restore the land, which had wasted along with its ruler, to its prosperity.”