永恒之王第四部(英文版)风中之烛THE_CANDLE_IN_THE_WIND

The Once and Future King

by

T.H.White

THE

CANDLE

IN THE WIND

"He thought a little and said:I have found the Zoological Gardens of service to many of my patients.I should prescribe Mr.Pontifex a course of the larger mammals.Don't let him think he is taking them medicinally....'"

The addition of years had not been kind to Agravaine.Even when he was forty he had looked his present age,which was fifty-five.He was seldom sober.

Mordred,the cold wisp of a man,did not seem to have any age.His years, like the depths of his blue eyes and the inflexions of his musical voice, were non-committal.

The two were standing in the cloisters of the Orkney palace at Camelot, looking out at the hawks who sat beneath the sun,on their blocks in the green courtyard.The cloisters had the new-fashioned flamboyant arches, in whose graceful frames the hawks stood out with noble indifference—a jerfalcon,a goshawk,a falcon and her tiercel,and four little merlins who had been kept all winter,yet had survived.The blocks were clean—for the sportsmen of those days considered that,if you went in for blood sports,it was your duty to conceal the beastliness with scrupulous care. All were lovingly ornamented with Spanish leather in scarlet,and with gold tooling.The leashes of the hawks were plaited out of white horse leather.The jer had a snow-white leash and jesses cut from guaranteed unicorn skin,as a tribute to her station in life.She had been brought all the way from Iceland,and that was the least they could do for her.

Mordred said pleasantly:"For God his sake let's get out of this.The place stinks."

When he spoke the hawks moved slightly,so that their bells gave a whisper of sound.The bells had been brought from the Indies,regardless of expense,and the pair worn by the jer were made of silver.An enormous eagle-owl who was sometimes used as a decoy,but who was at present standing on a perch in the shade of the cloister,opened his eyes when the bells rang.Before he had opened them,he might have been a stuffed owl,a dowdy bundle of feathers.The moment they had dawned,he was a creature from Edgar Allan Poe.You hardly liked to look at him.They were red eyes,homicidal,terrific,seeming actually to give out light.They were like rubies filled with flame.He was called the Grand Duke.

"I don't smell anything,"said Agravaine.He sniffed suspiciously, frying to smell.But his palate was gone,both for smell and taste,and he had a headache.

"It stinks of Sport,"said Mordred in inverted commas,"and the Done Thing and the Best People.Let's go to the garden."

Agravaine returned tenaciously to the subject which they had been discussing.

"It is no good making a fuss about it,"he said."We know the rights and wrongs,but nobody else knows.Nobody would listen."

"But they must listen,"Small flecks in the iris of Mordred's eyes burned with a turquoise light,as bright as the owl's.Instead of being a foppish man with a crooked shoulder,dressed in extravagant clothes, he became a Cause.He became,on this matter,everything which Arthur was not—the irreconcilable opposite of the Englishman.He became the invincible Gael,the scion of desperate races more ancient than Arthur's, and more subtle.Now,when he was on fire with his Cause,Arthur's justice seemed bourgeois and obtuse beside him.It seemed merely to be dull complacency,beside the savagery and feral wit of the Pict.His maternal ancestors crowded into his face when he was spurning at Arthur—ancestors whose civilization,like Mordred's,had been matriarchal:who had ridden bare-back,charged in chariots,fought by stratagem,and ornamented their grisly strongholds with the heads of enemies.They had marched,

long-haired and ferocious,an ancient writer tells us,"sword in hand, against rivers in flood or against the storm-tossed ocean."They were the race,now represented by the Irish Republican Army rather than by the Scots Nationalists,who had always murdered landlords and blamed them for being murdered—the race which could make a national hero of a man like Lynchahaun,because he bit off a woman's nose and she a Gall—the race which had been expelled by the volcano of history into the far quarters of the globe,where,with a venomous sense of grievance and inferiority, they even nowadays proclaim their ancient megalomania.They were the Catholics who could fly directly in the face of any pope or saint—Adrian, Alexander or St.Jerome—if the saint's policies did not suit their own

convenience:the hysterically touchy,sorrowful,flayed defenders of a broken heritage.They were the race whose barbarous,cunning,valiant defiance had been enslaved,long centuries before,by the foreign people whom Arthur represented.This was one of the barriers between the father and his son.

Agravaine said:"Mordred,I want to talk.There doesn't seem to be anywhere to sit.Sit on that thing,and I will sit here.Nobody can hear us."

"I don't mind if they do hear.That is what we want.It should be said out loud,not whispered in cloisters."

"The whispers will get there in the end."

"No,they won't.That is what they won't do.He doesn't want to hear, and,so long as we whisper,he can always pretend that he can't.You are not the King of England for all these years,without knowing how to use hypocrisy."

Agravaine was uncomfortable.His hatred for the King was not a reality like Mordred's—indeed,he had little personal feeling against anybody except Lancelot.His attitude was more of malice at random.

"I don't think it is any good complaining about what happened in the past,"he said gloomily."We can't expect other people to side with us when everything is complicated,and happened so long ago."

"It may have happened long ago,but that doesn't alter the fact that Arthur is my father,and that he turned me adrift in a boat as a baby."

"It may not alter it for you,"said Agravaine,"but it alters it for other people.It is such a muddle that nobody cares.You can't expect ordinary people to remember about grandfathers and half-sisters and things of that sort.In any case human beings don't go to war for private quarrels nowadays.You need a national grievance—something to do with politics which is waiting to burst out.You need to use the tools which are ready to hand.This man John Ball,for instance,who believes in communism:he has thousands of followers who would be ready to help in a disturbance,for their own purposes.Or there are the Saxons.We could say we were in favour of a national movement.For that matter,we could join them together and call it national communism.But it has to be something broad and popular,which everybody can feel.It must be against large numbers of people,like the Jews or the Normans or the Saxons,so that everybody can be angry.Either we must be the leaders of the Old Ones, who seek for justice against the Saxon:or of the Saxon against the Norman; or of the serf against society.We want a banner,yes,and a badge too. You could use the f495762e6294dd88d1d26b09munism,Nationalism,something like that. But as for a private grudge against the old man,it's useless.Anyway it would take you half an hour to explain it,even if you did begin to shout it from the roof tops."

"I could shout that my mother was his sister,and that he tried to drown me because of that."

"If you wanted to,"said Agravaine.

They had been talking,before the eagle-owl woke up,about the earlier wrongs of their family—about their grandmother,Igraine,who had been wronged by Arthur's father—about all the long-gone feud of Gael and Gall, which had been taught them by their dam in old Dunlothian.It was these wrongs which Agravaine's colder blood could recognize as far too distant and confused to serve as weapons against the King.Now they had reached the more recent grievance—the sin of Arthur with his half-sister which had ended in an attempt to murder the bastard who resulted.These might certainly be stronger weapons,but the trouble was that Mordred was himself the bastard.The elder brother's cowardice told him,in his craftier head,that a son could hardly raise his illegitimacy as a banner under which to overthrow his father.Besides,the business had been hushed up long before,by Arthur.It seemed bad policy that Mordred should be the one to bring it up.

They sat in silence,looking at the floor.Agravaine was out of condition,with pouches under his eyes.Mordred was as slim as ever,a neat figure in the height of fashion.The exaggeration of his dress made a good camouflage for him,under which you hardly noticed his crooked shoulder.

He said:"I am not proud."

He looked bitterly at his half-brother,putting more meaning into the look than the other could be expected to catch.He was saying with his eyes:"Look at my hump,then.I have no reason to be proud of my birth."

Agravaine got up impatiently.

"I must have a drink in any case,"he said,clapping his hands for the page.Then he passed his trembling fingers over his eyelids and stood wearily,looking at the owl with distaste.Mordred,while they were waiting for the drink,watched him with contempt.

"If you rake the old muck,"said Agravaine,revived by the hippocras, "you will get yourself in the muck.We are not in Lothian,you must remember. We are in Arthur's England,and his English love him.Either they will refuse to believe you,or,if they do believe you,they will blame you, and not him,because it was you who brought the matter up.It is certain that not a single man would follow a rebellion of that sort."

Mordred looked at him.He was hating him,like the owl—condemning him as a coward.He could not bear to be thwarted in his day-dream of revenge, so he was wreaking his spite on Agravaine in his thoughts,saying to himself that the latter was a drunken traitor to the family.

Agravaine saw this,and,already consoled by half the bottle,laughed in his face.He patted the good shoulder,forcing the younger man to fill his glass.

"Drink,"he said,chuckling.Mordred drank like a cat being dosed.

"Have you heard,"asked Agravaine waggishly,"of a mighty saint called Lancelot?"

He winked one of the pouchy eyes,looking down his nose with benevolence.

"Go on."

"I gather you have heard about our preux chevalier."

"I know Sir Lancelot,of course."

"I think I am not wrong in saying that this pure gentleman has given both of us a fall or two?"

"The first time Lancelot unhorsed me,"said Mordred,"is so long ago that I can't remember.But it means nothing.Because a man can push you off a horse with a stick,it doesn't mean that he is a better man than you are."

It was a strange feature—now that Lancelot was in the conversation—that Mordred's vivid feeling was exchanged for indifference.But Agravaine,who had been reluctant before this,became fluent.

"Precisely,"he said."And our noble knight has been the Queen of England's lover all the time."

"Everybody knows that Gwen has been Lancelot's mistress since before the deluge,but what good is that?The King knows it himself.He has been told so three times,to my certain knowledge.I don't see that we can do anything."

Agravaine put his finger by the side of his nose like a drunken piper, then shook it at his brother.

"He has been told so,"he announced,"but in roundabout ways.People have sent him hints,such as shields with cognizances on them that had double meanings,or horns which only faithful wives could drink from.But nobody has told him about it in open court,face to face.Meliagrance only made a general accusation,and even that was in the days of trial by battle. Think what would happen if we were to denounce Sir Lancelot personally, under these new-fashioned Laws,so that the King was forced to investigate."

Mordred's eyes dawned,as the owl's had done.

"Well?"

"I can't see that anything could happen,except a split.Arthur depends on Lancelot as his commander,and the chief of his troops.That is where

his power comes from,because everybody knows that nobody can stand against brute force.But if we could make a little merry mischief between Arthur and Lancelot,because of the Queen,their power would be split. Then would be the time for policy.Then would be the tune for discontented people,Lollards and Communists and Nationalists and all the riff-raff. Then would be the time to take your famous revenge."

"We could break them up,because they were broken among thelmselves"

"But it means more than that."

"It means that the Cornwalls would be even for grandfather and I for mother..."

"...not by using force against force,but by using our brains."

"It means that I could revenge myself on the man who tried to drown me as a baby..."

"...by getting behind the bully first,and then by being a little careful."

"Behind our famous Double Blue..."

"...Sir Lancelotl"

The position was,and perhaps it may as well be laboured for the last time,that Arthur's father had killed the Earl of Cornwall.He had killed the man because he wanted to enjoy the wife.On the night of the Earl's killing,Arthur had been conceived upon the unfortunate Countess.Being born too soon for the various conventions of mourning,marriage,and so forth,he had been secretly put to nurse with Sir Ector of the Forest Sauvage.He had grown up in ignorance of his parentage until,when he was a young boy of nineteen summers,he had fallen in with Morgause,without knowing that she was one of his half-sisters by the Countess and the slaughtered Earl.This half-sister,already the mother of Gawaine, Agravaine,Gaheris,and Gareth,had been twice the age of the young King—and she had successfully seduced him.The offspring of their union had been Mordred,who had been brought up alone with his mother,in the barbarous remoteness of the outer Isles.He had been brought up alone with Morgause,because he was so much younger than the rest of the family.The others had already flown to the King's court—forced there by ambition because it was the greatest court in the world,or else to escape their mother.Mordred had been left to be dominated by her,with her ancestral grudge against the King and her personal spite.For,although she had contrived to seduce young Arthur in his nonage,he had escaped her—to settle down with Guenever as his wife.Morgause,brooding in the North with the one child who remained to her,had concentrated her maternal powers on the crooked boy.She had loved and forgotten him by turns,an insatiable carnivore who lived on the affections of her dogs,her children and her lovers.Eventually one of the other sons had cut her head off in a storm of jealousy,on discovering her in bed at the age of seventy with

a young man called Sir Lamorak.Mordred—confused between the loves and hatreds of his frightful home—had at the time been a party to her assassination.Now,in the court of a father who had been considerate enough to hide the story of his birth,the wretched son found himself the acknowledged brother of Gawaine,Agravaine,Gaheris and Gareth—found himself lovingly treated by the King-father whom his mother had taught him to hate with all his heart—found himself misshapen,intelligent, critical,in a civilization which was too straightforward for purely intellectual criticism—found himself,finally,the heir to a northern culture which has always been antagonistic to the blunt morals of the south.

2

The page who had brought Sir Agravaine's hippocras came in from the cloister door.He bowed double,with the exaggerated courtesy which was expected of pages before they became esquires on their way to knighthood, and announced:"Sir Gawaine,Sir Gaheris,Sir Gareth."

The three brothers followed him,boisterous from the open air and their recent doings,so that now the clan was complete.All of them,except Mordred,had wives of their own tucked away somewhere—but nobody ever saw them.Few saw the men thelmselves separate for long.There was something childish about them when they were together,which was attractive rather than the reverse.Perhaps there was something childish about all the paladins of Arthur's story—if being simple is the same as childishness.

Gawaine,who was the head of the family,walked first,with a falcon in juvenile plumage on his fist.The burly fellow had pale hairs in his red head now.Over the ears it was yellowish,the colour of a ferret's, and would soon be white.Gaheris looked like him,or at least he was more like him than the others.But his was a milder copy;not so red,nor so strong,nor so big,nor so obstinate.Indeed,he was a bit of a fool.Gareth, the youngest of the full brothers,had retained the traces of his youth. He walked with a spring in his step,as though he enjoyed being alive.

"Tuts!"exclaimed Gawaine's hoarse voice in the doorway,"drinking already?"He still kept bis outland accent in defiance of the mere English, but he had ceased to think in Gaelic.His English had improved against his will.He was getting old.

"Well,Gawaine,well."

Agravaine,who knew that his nips before noon were disapproved of,asked politely:"Did you have a good day?"

"It wasna bad."

"It was a splendid day,"exclaimed Gareth."We entered her on the haul vollay with Lancelot's passager,and she was genuinely grey-minded.I never thought she would take to it without a bagman!Gawaine had managed her perfectly.She dropped into it without a second's hesitation,as if she had never been flying to anything but the heron,took a fine circle right round the new ricks by Castle Blanc,and got above him just to the Ganis side of the pilgrim's way.She..."

Gawaine,who had noticed that Mordred was yawning on purpose,said, "Ye may spare yer breath."

"It was a fine flight,"he concluded lamely."As she had handled her quarry,we thought we could give her a name."

"What did you call her?"they asked him condescendingly.

"Since she comes from Lundy,and begins with an L,we thought it might be a good idea to call her after Lancelot.We could call her Lancelotta, or something like that.She will be a first-class falcon."

Agravaine looked at Gareth under the lids of his eyes.He said with a slow tone:"Then you had better call her Gwen."

Gawaine came back from the courtyard,where he had been putting the peregrine on her block.

"Leave that,"he said.

"I'm sorry if I am not suggesting the truth."

"I care nought about the truth or not.All I say is,Haud yer tongue."

"Gawaine,"said Mordred to the air,"is such a preux chevalier that nobody must say anything wicked,or there will be trouble.You see,he is strong—and he apes the great Sir Lancelot."

The red fellow turned on him with dignity.

"I am'na muckle strong,brother,and I dinna trade upon it.I only seek to keep my people decent."

"And,of course,"said Agravaine,"it is decent to sleep with the King's wife,even if the King's family has smashed our family,and got a son by our mother,and tried to drown him."

Gaheris protested:"Arthur has always been good to us.Do stop this whining for once."

"Because he is afraid of us."

"I don't see,"said Gareth,"why Arthur should be afraid,when he has Lancelot.We all know that he is the best knight in the world,and can master anybody.Don't we,Gawaine?"

"For masel',I dinna wish to speak of it."

Suddenly Mordred was flaming at them,fired by Gawaine's lordly tone.

"Very well,and I do.I may be a weak knight at jousting,but I have the courage to stand for my family and rights.I am not a hypocrite.

Everybody in this court knows that the Queen and the Commander-in-chief are lovers,and yet we are supposed to be pure knights,and protectors of ladies,and nobody talks about anything except this so-called Holy Grail.Agravaine and I have decided to go to Arthur now,in full court, and ask about the Queen and Lancelot to his face."

"Mordred,"exclaimed the head of the clan,"ye will do naething of the like!It would be sinful."

"He will,"said Agravaine,"and I shall go there with him."

Gareth remained between pain and amazement.

"But they mean it,"he protested.

Out of the moment of astonishment,Gawaine took the lead and forged into action.

"Agravaine,I am the head of the clan,and I forbid ye."

"You forbid me."

"Yes,I do forbid ye;for ye will be a sair fule if ye do."

"The honest Gawaine,"remarked Mordred,"thinks you are a sair fule."

This time the towering fellow swung on him like a shying horse.

"Nane o'that!"he shouted."Ye think I winna hit ye because ye are crookit,and ye take advantage.But I wull hit ye,mannie,if ye sneer."

Mordred heard his own voice speaking coldly,seeming to come from behind his ears.

"Gawaine,you surprise me.You have produced a sequence of thought."

Then,as the giant came towards him,the same voice said:"Go on.Strike me.It will show your courage."

"Ah,do stop,Mordred,"pleaded Gareth."Can't you stop this nagging for a minute?"

"Mordred wouldn't nag,as you call it,"interjected Agravaine,"if you didn't bully."

Gawaine exploded like one of the new-fashioned cannons.He swung away from Mordred,a baited bull,and shouted at them both.

"My soul to the devil,will ye be quiet or will ye clear out?Can we have no peace in the family ever?Shut yer trap,in the name of God,and leave this daft clatter about Sir Lancelot,"

"It is not daft,"said Mordred,"nor shall we leave it."

He stood up.

"Well,Agravaine,"he asked."Do we go to the King?Is any other coming?"

Gawaine planted himself in their path.

"Mordred,ye shallna go."

"Who is to stop me?"

"I am."

"Brave fellow,"remarked the icy voice,still from somewhere in the air,and the humpback moved to pass.

Gawaine put out his red hand,with golden hairs on the back of the fingers,and pushed him back.At the same time Agravaine put out his own white hand,with fat fingers,to the hilt of his sword.

"Don't move,Gawaine.I have a sword."

"You would have a sword,"cried Gareth,"you devil!"

The younger brother's life had suddenly fitted into a pattern and recognized itself.Their murdered mother,and the unicorn,and the man now drawing,and a child in a store-room flashing a dirk:these things had made him cry out.

"All right,Gareth,"snarled Agravaine,as white as a sheet,"I know what you mean,and now I draw."

The situation passed out of control:they began acting like puppets, as if it had happened before—which it had.Gawaine,at the sight of steel, went into one of his blind rages.He swung away from Mordred,burst into a torrent of words,drew the hunting knife which was all he carried,and advanced on Agravaine—these things simultaneously.The fat man,as if thrown back on the defensive by the impact of his brother's fury,retreated before him,holding the sword in front with shaking hand.

"Aye,"roared Gawaine,"ye ken fine what he means,my bonny butcher. We maun draw on yer ain brother,for ye ever speired to murder folk unarmed. The curse of the grave-cloth on ye!Put up yon sword,man!Put it up!What d'ye mean?Is it nae enough that ye should slay our mother?Damn ye,lay down yon sword,or hae the spunk to fight with it.Agravaine—"

Mordred was slipping behind his back,with a hand on his own dagger. In a second the glint of steel flashed in the shadows,lit by the owl's eyes,and at the same moment Gareth jumped to the defence.He caught Mordred by the wrist,crying:"Now enough!Gaheris,look to the others."

"Agravaine,put the sword up!Gawaine,leave him alone,"

"Away,man!I can teach the hound masel'."

"Agravaine,put the sword down quickly,or he will kill you.Be quick, man.Don't be a fool Gawaine,leave him alone.He didn't mean it Gawaine! Agravaine!"

But Agravaine had made a feeble thrust at the head of the family,which Gawaine turned contemptuously with his knife.Now the towering old fellow, with the ferret-coloured temples,had rushed in and pinned him round the waist.The sword clattered to the floor as Agravaine went backward over the hippocras table,with Gawaine on top of him.The dagger rose in venom to complete the work—but Gaheris caught it from behind.There was a tableau of perfect silence,all motionless.Gareth held Mordred.

Agravaine,hiding his eyes with the free hand,flinched from the knife. And Gaheris held the avenging arm suspended.

At this complicated moment the cloister door was opened for the second time,and the courteous page announced as impassively as ever:"His Majesty the King!"

Everybody relaxed.They let go of whatever they were holding,and began to move.Agravaine sat up panting.Gawaine turned away from him,drawing a hand across his face.

"Ach God!"he muttered."If but I hadna siclike waeful

The King was on the threshold.

He came in,the quiet old man who had done his best so long.He looked older than his age,which was considerable.His royal eye took in the situation without a nicker.He moved across the cloister to kiss Mordred gently,smiling upon them all.

3

Lancelot and Guenever were sitting at the solar window.An observer of the present day,who knew the Arthurian legend only from Tennyson and people of that sort,would have been startled to see that the famous lovers were past their prime.We,who have learned to base our interpretation of love on the conventional boy-and-girl romance of Romeo and Juliet, would be amazed if we could step back into the Middle Ages—when'the poet of chivalry could write about Man that he had"en del un dieu,par terre une deesse."Lovers were not recruited then among the juveniles and adolescents:they were seasoned people,who knew what they were about. In those days people loved each other for their lives,without the conveniences of the porce court and the psychiatrist.They had a God in heaven and a goddess on earth—and,since people who devote thelmselves to goddesses must exercise some caution about the ones to whom they are devoted,they neither chose them by the passing standards of the flesh alone,nor abandoned it lightly when the bruckle thing began to fail.

Lancelot and Guenever were sitting by the window in the high keep,and Arthur's England stretched below them,under the level rays of sunset.

It was the Gramarye of the Middle Ages,which some people are accustomed to think of as the Dark Ages,and Arthur had made it what it was.When the old King came to his throne it had been an England of armoured barons, and of famine,and of war.It had been the country of trial by ordeal with red-hot irons,of the Law of Englishry,and of the sad,wordless song of Morfa-Rhuddlan.Then,on the sea-coast,within a foreign vessel's reach, not an animal,not a fruit tree,had been left.Then,in the fens and the vast forests,the last of the Saxons had defended thelmselves against the

bitter rule of Uther the Conqueror;then the words"Norman"and"Baron" had been equivalent to the modern word of"Sahib";then Llewellyn ap Griffith's head,in its crown of ivy,had mouldered on the clustered spikes of the Tower;then you would have met the mendicants by the roadside, mutilated men who carried their right hands in their left,and the forest dogs would have trotted beside them,also mutilated by the removal of one toe—so that they could not hunt in the woodlands of the lord.When Arthur first came,the country people had been accustomed to bar thelmselves in their cottages every night as if for siege,and had prayed to God for peace during darkness,the goodman of the house repeating the prayers used at sea on the approach of storm and ending with the plea"the Lord bless us and help us,"to which all present had replied"Amen."In the baron's castle,in the early days,you would have found the poor men being disembowelled—and their living bowels burned before them—men being slit open to see if they had swallowed their gold,men gagged with notched iron bits,men hanging upside down with their heads in smoke,others in snake pits or with leather tourniquets round their heads,or crammed into stone-filled boxes which would break their bones.You have only to turn to the literature of the period,with its stones of the mythological families such as Plantagenets,Capets and so forth,to see how the land lay.Legendary kings like John had been,accustomed to hang twenty-eight hostages before dinner;or,like Philip,had been defended by "sergeants-at-mace,"a kind of storm troopers who guarded their lord with maces;or,like Louis,had decapitated their enemies on scaffolds under the blood of which the children of the enemy had been forced to stand. This,at all events,is what Ingulf of Croyland used to tell us,until he was discovered to be a forgery.Then there had been Archbishops nicknamed"Skin-villain,"and churches used as forts—with trenches in the graveyards among the bones—and price-lists for fining murderers,and bodies of the excommunicated lying unburied,and famishing peasants eating grass or tree-bark or one another,(One of them ate forty-eight.) There had been roasting heretics on the one hand—forty-five Templars had been burned in one day—and the heads of captives being thrown into besieged castles from catapults on the other.Here a leader of the Jacquerie had been writhing in his chains,as he was crowned with a red-hot tripod.There a Pope had been complaining,as he was held to ransom,or another one had been wriggling,as he was poisoned.Treasure had been cemented into castle walls,in the form of gold bars,and the builders had been executed afterwards.Children playing in the streets of Paris had frolicked with the dead body of a Constable,and others,with the women and old men,had starved outside the walls of beleaguered towns,yet inside the ring of the besiegers.Hus and Jerome,with the mitres of apostasy upon their heads,had flamed and fizzled at the stake.The hamstrung imbeciles of Jumièges had floated down the Seine.Giles de Retz had been

found to have no less than a ton of children's bones,calcined,in his castle,after having murdered them at the rate of twelve score a year for nine years.The Duke of Berry had lost a kingdom through the unpopularity which he earned by feeling sorry for eight hundred foot soldiers who had been killed in a battle.The youthful count of St.Pol had been taught the arts of war by being given twenty-four living prisoners to slaughter in various ways,for practice.Louis the Eleventh,another of the fictional kings,had kept obnoxious bishops in rather expensive cages. The Duke Robert had been surnamed"the Magnificent"by his nobles—but "the Devil"by his parishioners.And all the while,before Arthur came, the common people—of whom fourteen were eaten by wolves out of one town in a single week,of whom one third were to die in the Black Death,of whom the corpses had been packed in pits"like bacon,"for whom the refuges at evening had often been forests and marshes and caves,for whom,in seventy years,there had been known to be forty-eight of famine—these people had looked up at the feudal nobility who were termed the"lords of sky and earth,"and—themselves battered by bishops who,because they were not allowed to shed blood,went for them with iron clubs—had cried aloud that Christ and his saints were sleeping.

"Pourquoi,"the poor wretches had sung in their misery:

"Pourquoi nous laisser faire dommage?

Nous sommes hommes comme Us sont."

Such had been the surprisingly modern civilization which Arthur had inherited.But it was not the civilization over which the lovers looked out.Now,safe in the apple-green sunset before them,there stretched the fabled Merry England of the Middle Ages,when they were not so dark. Lancelot and Guenever were gazing on the Age of Inpiduals.

What an amazing time the age of chivalry was!Everybody was essentially himself—was riotously busy fulfilling the vagaries of human nature. There was such a gusto about the landscape which stretched before their window,such a riot of unexpected people and things,that you hardly knew how to begin describing it.

The Dark and Middle Ages!The Nineteenth Century had an impudent way with its labels.For there,under the window in Arthur's Gramarye,the sun's rays flamed from a hundred jewels of stained glass in monasteries and convents,or danced from the pinnacles of cathedrals and castles, which their builders had actually loved.Architecture,in those dark ages of theirs,was such a light-giving passion of the heart that men gave love-names to their f495762e6294dd88d1d26b09ncelot's Joyous Gard was not a singularity in an age which has left us Beaute,Plaisance,or Malvoisin—the bad neighbour to its enemies—an age in which even an oaf like the imaginary Richard Coeur de Lion,who suffered from boils,could call his castle"Gaillard,"and speak of it as"my beautiful one-year-old

daughter."Even that legendary scoundrel William the Conqueror had a second nickname:"the Great Builder."Think of the glass itself,with its five grand colours stained right through.It was rougher than ours, thicker,fitted in smaller pieces.They loved it with the same fury as they gave to their castles,and Villars de Honnecourt,struck by a particularly beautiful specimen,stopped to draw it on his journeys,with the explanation that"I was on my way to obey a call to the land of Hungary when I drew this window because it pleased me best of all windows."Picture the insides of those ancient churches—not the grey and gutted interiors to which we are accustomed—but insides blazing with colour,plastered with frescoes in which all the figures stood on tip-toe,fluttering with tapestry or with brocades from Bagdad.Picture also the interiors of such castles as were visible from Guenever's window.These were no longer the grim keeps of Arthur's accession.Now they were filling with furniture made by the joiner,instead of the carpenter;now their walls rippled doorless with the flexible gaieties of Arras,tapestries like that of the Jousts of St.Denis which,although covering more than four hundred square yards,had been woven in less than three years,such was the ardour of its creation.If you look closely in a ruined castle even nowadays,you can sometimes find the hooks from which these flashing tapestries were hung.Remember,too,the goldsmiths of Lorraine,who made shrines in the shape of little churches,with aisles,statues,transepts and all,like dolls'houses:remember the enamellers of Limoges,and the champlevéwork, and the German ivory carvers,and the garnets set in Irish metal.Finally, if you are willing to picture the ferment of creative art which existed in our famous ages of darkness,you must get rid of the idea that written culture came to Europe with the fall of Constantinople.Every clerk in every country was a man of culture in those days—it was his profession to be so."Every letter written,"said a medieval abbot,"is a wound inflicted on the devil."The library of St.Piquier,as early as the ninth century,had256volumes,including Virgil,Cicero,Terence and Macrobius. Charles the Fifth had no less than nine hundred and ten volumes,so that his personal collection was about as big as the Everyman Library is today.

Lastly there were under the window the people thelmselves—the coruscating mixture of oddities who reckoned that they possessed the things called souls as well as bodies,and who fulfilled them in the most surprising ways.In Silvester the Second a famous magician ascended the papal throne,although he was notorious for having invented the pendulum clock.A fabled King of France called Robert,who had suffered the misfortune to be excommunicated,ran into dreadful troubles about his domestic arrangements,because the only two servants who could be persuaded to cook for him insisted on burning the saucepans after meals. An archbishop of Canterbury,having excommunicated all the prebendaries of St.Paul's in a pet,rushed into the Priory of St.Bartholomew and

knocked out the sub-prior in the middle of the chapel—which created such an uproar that his own vestments were torn off,revealing a suit of armour underneath,and he had to flee to Lambeth in a boat.The Countess of Anjou always used to vanish out of the window at the secreta of the mass.Madame Trote de Salerno used her ears as a handkerchief and let her eyebrows hang down behind her shoulders,like silver chains.A bishop of Bath,under the imaginary Edward the First,was considered after due reflection to be an unsuitable man for the Archbishopric,because he had too many illegitimate children—not some,but too many.And the bishop himself could hardly hold a candle to the Countess of Henneberge,who suddenly gave birth to365children at one confinement.

It was the age of fullness,the age of wading into everything up to the neck.Perhaps Arthur imposed this idea on Christendom,because of the richness of his own schooling under Merlyn.

For the King,or at least this is how Malory interprets him,was the patron saint of chivalry.He was not a distressed Briton hopping about in a suit or woad in the fifth century—nor yet one of those nouveaux riches de la Poles,who must have afflicted the last years of Malory himself. Arthur was the heart's king of a chivalry which had reached its flower perhaps two hundred years before our antiquarian author began to work. He was the badge of everything that was good in the Middle Ages,and he had made these things himself.

As Malory pictures him,Arthur of England was the champion of a civilization which is misrepresented in the history books,The serf of chivalry was not a slave for whom there was no hope.On the contrary,he had at least three legitimate ways of rising,the greatest of which was the Catholic Church.With the assistance of Arthur's policies this church—still the greatest of all corporations free to learned men on earth—had become a highway open to the lowest slave.A Saxon peasant was Pope in Adrian IV,the son of a carpenter in Gregory VII.In those despised Middle Ages of theirs you could become the greatest man in the world,by simply having learning.And it is a mistake to believe that Arthur's civilization was weak in this famous science of ours.The scientists, although they happened to call them magicians at the time,invented almost as terrible things as we have invented—except that we have become accustomed to theirs by use.The greatest magicians,like Albertus Magnus, Friar Bacon,and Raymond Lully,knew several secrets which we have lost today,and discovered as a side issue what still appears to be the chief commodity of civilization,namely gunpowder.They were honoured for their learning,and Albert the Great was made a bishop.One of them who was called Baptista Porta seems to have invented the cinema—though he sensibly decided not to develop it.

As for aircraft,in the tenth century a monk called Aethelmaer was experimenting with them,and might have succeeded but for an accident in adjusting of his tail unit.He crashed"quod"—says William of Malmesbury—"caudam in posteriori parte oblitus fuerat adaptare."

Even in modernity,the ages of darkness were not so far behind us.At least they had some sparkling names for their fiercer cocktails:which they called Huffe Cap,Mad Dog,Father Whoresonne,Angel's Food,Dragon's Milke,Go to the Wall,Stride Wide,and Lift Leg.

The view from the window was delightful,though in some cases it was odd.Where we have hedged fields and parklands,they had village communities,moorlands,fens and forests of enormous size.Sherwood stretched for hundreds of miles,from Nottingham to the middle of York. The busyness that went on in the island,the bee-keeping and the

rook-scaring and the ploughing with oxen:for these you must look in the Lutterell Psalter,where they are beautifully drawn.In those days,if you had been interested by peculiar things,perhaps you would have had the luck to notice a knight-in-armour riding past the window.You would have noticed his head,which was shaved round the ears and at the back: but on the top his hair rose up like a Japanese doll's,so that the skull looked like a cottage loaf.This top-knot made an excellent shock-absorber, under his helm.The next man to pass might have been a clerk,perhaps on an ambler,and the hair of this one would have been exactly the opposite of the knight's—for he would have been completely bald on top,because of his tonsure.When he had gone to the bishop to be made a clerk in the first place,he had taken a pair of scissors with him.Next,if you wanted some peculiar person to ride by,there might have come a crusader who had promised to deliver the grave of God.You would have expected the cross on his surcoat,no doubt,but you might not have realized that he was so delighted with the whole affair that he put the same symbol almost everywhere that it could be made to go.Like a new Boy Scout,transported with enthusiasm,he would have stuck the cross on his escutcheon,on his coat,on his helm,on his saddle,and on the horse's curb.The next man to pass the window might have been one sort of Cistercian lay-brother, whom you would have expected to be a learned man because of his cloth. But no,he was ex officio an illiterate.It was his business to stick the leaden seals on papal bulls,and,so as to preserve the Secrecy of the Pope,they used to make sure that he could not read a word.Now might come a Saxon wearing the beard and a sort of Phrygian cap,as a sign of defiance—now a knight from the Marches of the Northern border.The latter, because he lived by raiding during the night-time,would have borne a moon and stars on azure in his coat.Here might be some smoke in the landscape, rising from the bellows of an alchemist who was,most sensibly,trying to turn lead to gold—an art which has remained beyond us to the present day,though we are getting nearer to it with atomic fusion.There,far

away in the environs of a monastery,you might have seen a procession of angry monks making a barefoot march round their foundation—but they might have been walking against the sun,in malediction,because they had fallen out with the abbot Perhaps,if you looked in this direction,you would see a vineyard fenced with bones—it had been discovered,during the early years of Arthur,that bones made an excellent fence for vineyards, graveyards,or even for forts—and perhaps,if you looked in the other, you could see a castle door that looked like a keeper's gallows.It would have been completely covered with the nailed heads of wolves,bears,stags, and so forth.Far away,over there to the left,perhaps there would be a tournament going on according to the laws laid down by Geoffrey de Preully,and the Kings-at-arms would be carefully examining the combatants,like referees before a boxing match,to see that they were not stuck to their saddles.The referees at a judicial duel between a certain Earl of Salisbury and a Bishop of Salisbury,under the supposed King Edward III,found that the bishop's champion had prayers and incantations sewn all over him,under bis armour—which was almost as bad as a boxer biding a horse-shoe in his glove.Below the window-ledge a pair of constipated papal nuncios might have been riding gloomily back to Rome. Such a pair were once sent with bulls to excommunicate Barnabas Visconti, but Barnabas only made them eat their bulls—parchment,ribbons,leaden seals and all.Following closely behind them perhaps there would have strode a professional pilgrim,supporting himself on a stout knobbed staff shod like an alpenstock and weighed down with blessed medals,relics, shells,vernicles and so forth.He would have called himself a palmer and, if he were a well-travelled one,his relics might have included a feather from the Angel Gabriel,some of the coals on which f495762e6294dd88d1d26b09wrence was grilled, a finger of the Holy Ghost"whole and sound as ever it was,""a vial of the sweat of St.Michael whereas he fought with the devil,"a little of "the bush in which the Lord spake to Moses,"a vest of St.Peter's,or some of the Blessed Virgin's milk preserved at Walsingham.After the palmer perhaps there would have prowled a rather more sinister figure: one of those who"sleep by day and watch by night,eat well and drink well, but possess nothing."He would be an outlaw,of whom they wrote: "For an outlawe this is the lawe,that men hym take and binde

Wythout pytee,hanged to bee,and waver with the wynde."

But before he came to his last wavering in the wind,he would have lived a free life.His mate would be marching sturdily beside him,also with a price on her head—her hair shaven off before she took to the woods, and known as a weyve.She would glance back occasionally,alert for the hue and cry with which they might be hunted.

Here might come a baron with a hot pie carried carefully before him, because he had to bring such a pie to the King once a year,so as to let

King Arthur sniff it in payment of his feudal dues.There might go another baron at full tilt after some dragon or other,and bump!down he might come,while the horse cantered away.But if he did so,one of his attendants would immediately mount him again on bis own horse—just as we would do to a master-of-hounds today—because that was the feudal law.In the distance of the north,under the fading sunset,there might spring up the cottage light of some busy witch who was not only making a wax image of somebody she disapproved of,but also getting the image baptised—this was the operative factor—before she stuck some pins into it.One of her priestly friends,by the way,who had gone to the Little Master,might be willing to say a Requiem Mass against anybody you wanted to dispose of—and,when he came to the"Requim aetemum dona ei,Domine,"he would mean it,although the man was alive.Equally distant in the west,under the same sunset,you might have seen Enguerrand de Marigny,who built the enormous gallows at Mountfalcon,himself rotting and clanking on the same gallows,because he had been found guilty of Black Magic.The Dukes of Berry and Brittany,two decent men,might have been trotting along the road,in satin cuirasses which imitated steel.These two did not like to accept the advantage of armour,and,finding the satin cooler to wear, they were determined to be ordinary and f495762e6294dd88d1d26b09ncelot might have done the same sort of thing.Above them on the hillside,but unobserved by them, might have sat Joly Joly Wat,with his tar-box beside him.He was the most typical figure of Gramarye,his tar being the antiseptic of his sheep. If you had said to him,"Don't spoil the ship for a ha'porth of tar,"he would have agreed with you at once—for it was he who invented the adage, which we have translated from sheep into ships.

Towards the remoter distance perhaps a bankrupt might have been getting a vigorous whacking in some muscovite market-place—not out of

ill-feeling toward himself,but in the fervent hope that if only he squealed loud enough some of his friends or relations in the crowd would pay his debts out of commiseration.Further south,towards the Mediterranean basin,you might have seen a seaman being punished for gambling,under a law of Richard Coeur de Lion.The punishment consisted in being thrown into the water three times from the mainmast tree,and his comrades used to acclaim each belly-flopper with a cheer.A third ingenious punishment might possibly have been inflicted in the

market-place below you.A wine merchant whose wares were of bad quality would have been stuck in the pillory and there he would have been made to drink an excessive quantity of his own liquor—after which the rest would be poured over his head.What a headache next morning!In this direction,if you happened to be broad-minded,you might have been amused to see the saucy Alisoun who cried"Tee-Heel"after she had been given the unusual kiss which Chaucer tells about.In that one,you might notice an exasperated Miller and his family,trying to straighten out the

hurrah's nest which happened last night through the displacement of a cradle,as the Reeve tells in his tale.A schoolboy who had had the good luck and the initiative to shoot an Earl of Salisbury dead,with one of the new-fangled cannons,might be being idolized by his fellow scholars in the playground of yonder monastery school.Plum trees,only lately introduced like Merlyn's mulberry,might be shedding blossom under the light of eve beside the playground.Another little boy,this time a king of four years old in Scotland,might be sadly issuing a royal mandate to his Nannie,which empowered her to spank him without being guilty of High Treason.A disreputable army,who used to live by the sword as a trained band,might be begging its bread from door to door—a good fate for all armies—and a man who had taken sanctuary in that church away to the east there,might have had his leg cut off because he had taken half a step outside the door.In the same sanctuary there would be quite a congeries of forgers,thieves,murderers and debtors,all busy forging away or sharpening their knives for the evening's outing,in the restful seclusion of the church where they could not be arrested.The worst that could happen to them,once they had got their sanctuary,was banishment. Then they would have had to walk to Dover,always keeping to the middle of the road and clutching a crucifix—if they let go of it for a moment, you were allowed to attack them—and,once there,if they could not get a boat immediately,they would have had to walk into the sea daily up to their necks,to prove that they were really trying.

Did you know that in these dark ages which were visible from Guenever's window,there was so much decency in the world that the Catholic Church could impose a peace to all their fighting—which it called The Truce of God—and which lasted from Wednesday to Monday,as well as during the whole of Advent and Lent?Do you think that they,with their Battles, Famine,Black Death and Serfdom,were less enlightened than we are,with our Wars,Blockade,Influenza and Conscription?Even if they were foolish enough to believe that the earth was the centre of the universe,do we not ourselves believe that man is the fine flower of creation?If it takes a million years for a fish to become a reptile,has Man,in our few hundred, altered out of recognition?

4

Lancelot and Guenever looked over the sundown of chivalry,from the tower window.Their black profiles stood out in silhouette against the setting f495762e6294dd88d1d26b09ncelot's,the old ugly man's,was the outline of a gargoyle.It might have looked in hideous meditation from Notre Dame,his contemporary church.But,in its maturity,it was nobler than before.The lines of ugliness had sunk to rest as lines of strength.Like the bull-dog,

which is one of the most betrayed of dogs,Lancelot had grown a face which people could trust.

The touching thing was that the two were singing.Their voices,no longer full in tone like those of people in the strength of youth,were still tenacious of the note.If they were thin,they were pure.They supported one another.

"When that the moneth of May(sang Lancelot)

Comes and the day

In beames gives light,

I fear no more the fight."

"When,"sang Gueneyer,

"When that the sonne,

His daily course y-ronne,

Is no more bright,

I fear namore the night."

"But oh,"they sang together,

"But oh,both day and night,

My heart's delight,

Must one day leave foredone

All might,all gone."

They stopped,with an unexpected grace-note on the portative,and Lancelot said:"Your voice is good.I'm afraid mine is getting rusty."

"You shouldn't drink spirits."

"What an unfair thing to sayl I have been nearly a teetotaller since the Grail."

"Well,I had rather you didn't drink at all."

"Then I won't drink,not even water.I will die of thirst at your feet, and Arthur will give me a splendid funeral,and never forgive you for making me."

"Yes,and I shall go into a Nunnery for my sins,and live happily ever after.What shall we sing now?"

Lancelot said:"Nothing.I don't want to f495762e6294dd88d1d26b09e and sit close to me,Jenny."

"Are you unhappy about something?"

"No.I was never so happy in my life.And I dare say I shall never be so happy again."

"Why so happy?"

"I don't know.It is because the spring has come after all,and there is the bright summer in front of us.Your arms will go brown again,just a flush along the top here,and a rosy round elbow.I am not sure I don't like the places where you bend best,like the insides of your elbows."

Guenever retreated from these charming compliments.

"I wonder what Arthur is doing?"

"Arthur is visiting the Gawaines,and I am talking about your elbows."

"I see."

"Jenny,I was happy because you were ordering me about.That's the explanation.You were nagging about not drinking too much.I like you to look after me,and to tell me what I ought to do."

"You seem to need it."

"I do need it,"he said.And then,with a suddenness which surprised them both:"May I come tonight?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Lance,please don't ask.You know that Arthur is at home,and it is much too dangerous."

"Arthur won't mind."

"If Arthur were to catch us,"she said wisely,"he would have to kill us."

He denied it.

"Arthur knows all about us.Merlyn warned him in so many words,and Morgan le Fay sent him two broad hints,and then there was the trouble with Sir Meliagrance.But he doesn't want to have things upset.He would never catch us unless he was made to."

"Lancelot,"she said angrily,"I am not going to have you talking about Arthur as if he were a go-between."

"I am not talking about him like that.He was my first friend,and I love him."

"Then you are talking about me as if I were worse."

"And now you are behaving as if you were."

"Very well,if that is all you have to say,you had better go."

"So that you can make love to him,I suppose."

"Lancelot!"

"Oh,Jenny!"He jumped up,nimble as ever,and caught her."Don't be angry.I am sorry if I was unkind."

"Go away!Leave me alone."

But he continued to hold her tightly,like someone restraining a wild animal from running away.

"Don't be angry.I am sorry.You know I didn't mean it."

"You are a beast."

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