All one long summer’s day they fought; and sometimes the battle swung this way and sometimes that; but as the day drew on, the tide of the fighting set more and more against the rebels, until, when the shadows of men and horses and spears grew long at evening, Rience and all his leaders lay dead, save for King Lot, who still fought on, stubborn as a boar at bay, with his bodyguard close about him.
Now King Pellinore of Wales was fated at times to ride questing after a strange beast which had the head of a serpent and the body of a leopard and the feet of a hart, and which made in its belly a noise as of thirty couple of hounds giving tongue. And it so happened that on that day the quest had led him into the hills among which the battle was being fought. And hearing the outcry and the ring of weapons, and seeing the red and golden standard of Britain above the dust of the struggle, he turned aside from the quest for a while to join his High King. He came just as Arthur was leading in another charge against the men of Orkney, and riding with him and his household knights, while all around them sounded the cry of thirty couple of hounds giving tongue on a hot scent, he drove deep into the enemy mass until he reached King Lot himself and in the close-locked struggle all around dealt him such a crashing blow that the sword blade bit through helm and bone, and King Lot pitched from the saddle and was dead before he hit the ground.
And the heart went out of the men of Orkney, and they fled away into the gathering dusk, that still seemed full of fading hound music.
So peace came to Britain for a while; and the men of the North and West were quiet again in their mountains and the Sea Wolves fled away overseas. There were stray war bands still loose in the land, and evil knights and wild men lurking in the forests, ripe for any ill-doing that came their way. And the men in the mountains told stories of ancient wrongs around the fires at night to keep their hate alive. Yet even so there was more of peace in Britain than there had been since long before the Romans left.
Now there was time for men to draw breath and think how they would choose to live their lives. And the best knights in the kingdom, many of whom had shared in the past fighting, gathered to Arthur in Camelot. Old knights such as Sir Ulpius and Sir Bleoberis the standard-bearer, who had served with King Utha Pendragon; young knights seeking glory and a shining cause to fight for, such as Sir Bedivere and Sir Lucan and Sir Gryflet le Fise de Dieu and Lamorack, who was the son of King Pellinore by his first love, before ever he wedded his queen; and unfledged squires eager for knighthood at the hands of the greatest king in Christendom. Even Gawain, the eldest son of King Lot and Queen Margawse, and with him Gaheris his younger brother (for all the sons of Margawse left home as soon as might be, until it came to the turn of Mordred, the last son of all. But that was another matter.)
Never, the harpers said, had such a court flowered about such a king.
Then, in a while, Arthur sent one evening for Merlin to come to him in the great chamber above the Hall, and said to him, ‘My lords and nobles are hounding me that I should take a wife. Give me your counsel, for always your council has been good for me to hear!’
‘It is right that you should take a wife,’ said Merlin. ‘For now you are past twenty and the greatest king in all Christendom. Is there any maiden who comes close to your heart?’
And Arthur thought. And his thoughts touched in passing upon the fair faces of many maidens, and upon the dark ripe beauty of Queen Margawse, and flinched away from that memory to that which lay beyond. And so his thoughts came to rest upon a girl with smooth dark hair and shadowy grey-green eyes, making a garland of honeysuckle and columbine and Four-Seasons roses in a high-walled castle garden. And he said, ‘Guenever, the daughter of Leodegraunce of Camelaird.’ Merlin was silent a moment, and then he said, ‘You are sure of this?’
And Arthur was silent also. A big soft-winged moth hovered in through the window and began to flutter about and about the candles on the carved cloak-chest. Then he said, ‘I am very sure. I love the Princess Guenever, though I did not know it until now; and my heart feels good and quiet and at rest when I think of her.’
Merlin, knowing what he knew of the future, could have said, ‘Grief upon me! Look elsewhere! For if you marry the Princess Guenever, sorrow and darkness and war and death will come of it by and by, to you and her and your dearest friend and to all the kingdom.’ But he knew that no man may escape what is written on his forehead, and he knew what was written upon Arthur’s as surely as he knew what was written on his own. So he said, ‘Sir, if you were not so sure, I could find you a score of maidens as beautiful and good as she, who could gladden your heart just as sweetly. But I know you, and I know that when your heart has gone out of your breast it will not lightly return to you again.’
‘That is so,’ said the King.
And the moth blundered into the sea-blue heart of a candle flame, and fell with singed wings.
Then Merlin set out next day for Camelaird, and stood before King Leodegraunce, and told him that the High King of Britain would have the Princess Guenever for his Queen.
When he heard this, Leodegraunce was overjoyed, and said, ‘This is the best tidings that ever I heard. Assuredly the High King shall have my daughter to wife.’ And then he thought, What shall I give him for her dowry, for of lands he has already all that he can wish for? And the answer came to him, and he said aloud, ‘And her dowry shall be a thing that will mean more to him than lands or gold, for I will give him the great Round Table that belonged to Utha his father, and that Utha gave to me, and with it a hundred knights of my best and bravest!’ He sighed. ‘There’s room at that table for a hundred and fifty; but after the wars of my lifetime I can spare no more.’
‘The hundred will be enough, for Arthur has good knights of his own. He will be glad of your gift, and glad of the lady who you send to him to be his Queen,’ said Merlin, with a small inward-turning smile, for he himself had fashioned the Round Table for Utha Pendragon, long years ago when he was young, and he knew its powers.
So the Round Table was taken apart for its journey, and loaded into great ox-carts. And the Princess also was made ready. No one had asked her wishes in the matter; but she remembered the young man with the tired face, and the long look that had passed between them in the castle garden, and how, after he had passed on, she had found that she had broken the garland in her lap; and though her heart made no singing within her, she was well content.
So, riding among her maidens, with Merlin beside her and the hundred knights following after, and last of all the great ox-carts lumbering along the summer-dusty tracks, Guenever set forth on her marriage journey; and three days before Pentecost, she came to Camelot, where Arthur waited for her. Across the three-arched bridge that spanned the river she went, and up through the steep streets of the town where the people crowded to see her pass, and the swallows swooped among the eaves and gables overhead. And in the outer courtyard of the palace Arthur stood to help her dismount and lead her into his Great Hall.
All things were made ready for their wedding in three days’ time; and on the morning of that day – which was also the Feast of Pentecost – Gawain the son of King Lot and Lamorack the son of King Pellinore came to Arthur to beg the honour of knighthood; and both of them he knighted most gladly; and so when the High King went to his wedding in the tall church of Saint Stephen, they were among the knights who followed him.
Then came Guenever in robes of white and gold for her wedding and her coronation. And when two bishops had joined her hand and Arthur’s, they took off the garland of white briar roses from her hair and set in its place the gold circlet of a queen. And hand in hand, under the golden canopy which four kings upheld on spear-points above their heads, they paced back through the crowded streets; and all the people shouted for joy that the High King had got him so fair a queen.
Guenever walked with her head held very high, for the crown was much heavier than the white rose garland had been. But she was proud that Arthur had chosen her to be his lady; and there was a great fondness for
him growing within her, that she thought at that time was love.
In the Great Hall the Round Table had been set up; a table like the rim of a mighty wheel with all the space in the middle clear for the pages and serving squires to come and go. And about it were ranged tall-backed seats for a hundred and fifty knights, and on the back of each seat, written in fair gold, the name of the knight who should sit therein.
‘Surely no king under Heaven ever had so fair a wedding gift as this!’ said Arthur. And he and all his knights went to take their places, while the Queen and her ladies went apart to feast in another chamber, for such was still the custom of the British people at that time, that the men and women did not sit down to meat together upon state occasions.
And when they were all seated in their appointed places, the King turned to Merlin who stood beside his chair, and said, ‘What of the four places I see about this wondrous table that are yet empty?’
‘They shall be filled at the appointed time,’ said Merlin. ‘The first by King Pellinore, who rests a while from his questing to be with you this very day; see, his name is already upon his seat, there where the sunlight falls. The second waits for Sir Lancelot, son of King Ban of Benwick your old ally; and he shall be with you before next Pentecost morning. He shall be the best and nearest to you of all your knights, and of all your knights he shall bring you the most joy and the bitterest of sorrow. And the third seat is for Percival the son of King Pellinore, and he is not yet born; but when he comes it shall be as though he were a herald, for by his coming you shall know that in less than a year the Mystery of the Holy Grail shall come to its flowering, here in Camelot, and the knights shall leave the Round Table and ride out upon the greatest quest of all time; and it shall be as though all things draw to the golden glory of sunset, beyond which is the dark. But now it is yet morning.’
And for a moment it seemed that a stillness fell upon the Hall.
Then Arthur said, ‘Yet one empty seat remains. Who shall sit there?’
‘That is the Seat Perilous,’ said Merlin. ‘It is death for any man to sit there, until he who it was made for comes to claim it. He shall come at the appointed time – and he shall be the last comer of all.’
And even as he spoke, King Pellinore stood in the doorway.
When King Pellinore had been welcomed and brought to his waiting seat, and the feasting that began immediately after was drawing to a close, there broke out a great baying of hounds in the forecourt, so that for a moment all men thought that it was Pellinore’s questing beast, but even as the latest comer half rose from the table to follow it as he must whenever it called him, a white hart came running into the Hall, fleet-footed and touched to silver by the light of the high windows; and hard behind it a milky white brachet, a small hunting-dog almost as fair and fleet; and after them thirty couple of great black hounds in full cry.
The hart fled round the huge table, and after it the brachet, and the black hounds, belling as they went. And as they came towards the door again the hart gave a great bound and swerved towards it, oversetting a knight called Sir Abelleus who was not of the Round Table but among those eating at a side-board. And Sir Abelleus seized the brachet, and springing up strode from the hall. They heard his horse’s hooves outside as he rode away. And the hart also fled out through the palace gates, with the black hounds baying and belling after it. And almost in the same instant, while the blood-music of the pack still hung upon the air, a maiden rode into the hall upon a white palfrey, and cried to the King, ‘Sir, let me not be so wronged, for the brachet is mine that yonder knight carried away!’
But before Arthur could answer her plea, another rider crashed into the hall, a knight, darkly armed and mounted upon a mighty war horse, who seized the palfrey by its bridle and wrenched it round and so dragged horse and maiden away, she crying and making shrill protest all the while.
For three heartbeats after she was gone, Arthur sat unmoving and stared down at the table before him; for she had made a great clamour, and no man wishes to be embroiled in quests and marvels upon his wedding day. But Merlin brought his strange golden gaze back from following the damosel, and said, ‘That was not well done, that a maiden should be dragged from this hall crying for succour, and no men moving to her aid. Such an adventure must be followed to its end, for to leave it lying is to bring dishonour upon you and your knights.’
And Arthur knew that Merlin was in the right of it, and he said, ‘I will do as you advise me.’
‘Then,’ said Merlin, ‘send Sir Gawain to bring back the white hart, and Sir Lamorack to bring back Sir Abelleus and the brachet, for it is right that both of them should follow the first quest of their knighthood this day. And let King Pellinore ride after the damosel and bring her back, and bring back also, dead or living, the knight who carried her away.’
So King Pellinore and the two young knights were armed, and their horses brought from the stables, and they rode away.
Sir Gawain took his younger brother Gaheris with him to be his squire; and together they rode through the town and across the bridge and away through the forest, following the distant dwindling music of the hounds, until they came at last to a great castle. The hart fled across the causeway and in through the castle gate, followed by the few hounds that were still on the hunt; and after the hounds rode Sir Gawain, with Gaheris following hard behind. And in the castle courtyard the hounds overtook the hart and brought it to bay and killed it.
Then out from the armoury doorway came the lord of the castle, fully armed all save his helmet, for he had been at practice, his sword naked in his hand; and he began slashing at the hounds, slaying them one after another, and shouting in grief and fury, ‘Die, you brutes that have slain my white hart! Alas, my white hart that my lady gave to me and that I have kept so ill!’
‘Stop! Leave off from this butchery!’ shouted Gawain, suddenly beside himself with fury at sight of the dead hounds. ‘Spend your rage upon me, not upon good hounds who do but follow their nature and their training!’
‘That will I!’ roared the knight of the castle. ‘I have killed the rest of the pack, now for the last of the whelps!’
Gawain swung down from his horse, and in the midst of the courtyard the two met, as though they had indeed been two hounds springing at each other’s throats. Their blades hacked through the chain-mail again and again, and the red smell of battle came into the back of Gawain’s nose and a red mist before his eyes, until at last, he did not know how it happened, the knight of the castle crashed down at his feet and lay crying his mercy.
Gawain knew that it was against all custom to slay a knight who cried his mercy, but the red mist was still before his eyes, and he swung up his sword for a mighty stroke that should sever the fallen knight’s head from his shoulders; but in that instant, the lady of the castle, who had been watching from the window of her bower and come running, flung herself upon her lord’s body to shield him; and Gawain could not check the down-sweep of the sword in time, and struck through her slender neck instead of his adversary’s.
The red haze cleared from Gawain’s eyes, and grief and horror came upon him for what he had done. ‘Get up,’ he said to the knight. ‘I give you mercy.’
‘I no longer ask for it,’ said the lord of the castle, ‘for you have slain my lady, my love, who was more to me than all the world, and it is not in me to care whether I live or die.’
‘Grief is on me for that,’ said Gawain, ‘for I meant the blow for you, and had no thought to harm your lady. I cannot kill you now; therefore rise and go to King Arthur at Camelot, and tell him truly all that has happened. Say that the knight who followed the Quest of the White Hart sent you.’
The silent servants brought their master his horse; and silently he mounted and rode away. And looking after him Sir Gawain said hoarsely, ‘I am but an ill knight after all, for I have slain a lady, and had I shown proper mercy to her lord, it would not have come to pass.’
‘This is no place to stand grieving,’ said
Gaheris, ‘for I am thinking that we have few friends here!’
And in the same instant four of the household knights came upon them with drawn swords. ‘Stand and fight now, you who shame your knighthood!’ cried one. And another, ‘A knight without mercy is a knight without honour!’ And the third, ‘You have slain a fair lady! Carry the shame to the world’s end!’ And the fourth, ‘You shall know what it is like to need mercy, before you go from us!’
And all the while they were thrusting in upon Gawain and young Gaheris who stood back to back and fought them off as best they might. But the odds were two to one, and in the end both were wounded sore and taken captive; and the household knights would have slain them on the spot, beside the dead hounds and the dead lady, had not the ladies of the household come and begged mercy for them, so that they were flung living into a narrow chamber in the bowels of the castle, and there left for the night.
And in the morning the oldest of the ladies, whose hair was silver beneath her veil, came and hearing them groan from the pain of their wounds, asked Sir Gawain how it was with him.
‘Not good!’ said Sir Gawain.
‘It is your own doing,’ said the ancient lady, ‘had you not slain the lady of this place, you had been less sorely hurt this morning. But tell me now, who you are.’
‘I am Gawain, son to King Lot of Orkney, a knight of Arthur’s court, and this is Gaheris my brother.’
Then the silver lady went and spoke with the household knights, telling them that their captives were near kinsmen of the High King’s, and for Arthur’s sake they were set free and given leave to return to Camelot. Only the penance was laid upon them that Gawain should carry the body of the slain lady across his saddlebow, and her head hung by its yellow hair about his neck.
And so those two rode sadly back the long way through the forest that they had come the day before.