Idylls of the King Part 23

Then she, that felt the cold touch on her throat, Awaking knew the sword, and turned herself To Gawain: 'Liar, for thou hast not slain This Pelleas! here he stood, and might have slain Me and thyself.' And he that tells the tale Says that her ever-veering fancy turned To Pelleas, as the one true knight on earth, And only lover; and through her love her life Wasted and pined, desiring him in vain.

But he by wild and way, for half the night, And over hard and soft, striking the sod From out the soft, the spark from off the hard, Rode till the star above the wakening sun, Beside that tower where Percivale was cowled, Glanced from the rosy forehead of the dawn.

For so the words were flashed into his heart He knew not whence or wherefore: 'O sweet star, Pure on the virgin forehead of the dawn!'

And there he would have wept, but felt his eyes Harder and drier than a fountain bed In summer: thither came the village girls And lingered talking, and they come no more Till the sweet heavens have filled it from the heights Again with living waters in the change Of seasons: hard his eyes; harder his heart Seemed; but so weary were his limbs, that he, Gasping, 'Of Arthur's hall am I, but here, Here let me rest and die,' cast himself down, And gulfed his griefs in inmost sleep; so lay, Till shaken by a dream, that Gawain fired The hall of Merlin, and the morning star Reeled in the smoke, brake into flame, and fell.

He woke, and being ware of some one nigh, Sent hands upon him, as to tear him, crying, 'False! and I held thee pure as Guinevere.'

But Percivale stood near him and replied, 'Am I but false as Guinevere is pure?

Or art thou mazed with dreams? or being one Of our free-spoken Table hast not heard That Lancelot'--there he checked himself and paused.

Then fared it with Sir Pelleas as with one Who gets a wound in battle, and the sword That made it plunges through the wound again, And p.r.i.c.ks it deeper: and he shrank and wailed, 'Is the Queen false?' and Percivale was mute.

'Have any of our Round Table held their vows?'

And Percivale made answer not a word.

'Is the King true?' 'The King!' said Percivale.

'Why then let men couple at once with wolves.

What! art thou mad?'

But Pelleas, leaping up, Ran through the doors and vaulted on his horse And fled: small pity upon his horse had he, Or on himself, or any, and when he met A cripple, one that held a hand for alms-- Hunched as he was, and like an old dwarf-elm That turns its back upon the salt blast, the boy Paused not, but overrode him, shouting, 'False, And false with Gawain!' and so left him bruised And battered, and fled on, and hill and wood Went ever streaming by him till the gloom, That follows on the turning of the world, Darkened the common path: he twitched the reins, And made his beast that better knew it, swerve Now off it and now on; but when he saw High up in heaven the hall that Merlin built, Blackening against the dead-green stripes of even, 'Black nest of rats,' he groaned, 'ye build too high.'

Not long thereafter from the city gates Issued Sir Lancelot riding airily, Warm with a gracious parting from the Queen, Peace at his heart, and gazing at a star And marvelling what it was: on whom the boy, Across the silent seeded meadow-gra.s.s Borne, clashed: and Lancelot, saying, 'What name hast thou That ridest here so blindly and so hard?'

'No name, no name,' he shouted, 'a scourge am I To lash the treasons of the Table Round.'

'Yea, but thy name?' 'I have many names,' he cried: 'I am wrath and shame and hate and evil fame, And like a poisonous wind I pa.s.s to blast And blaze the crime of Lancelot and the Queen.'

'First over me,' said Lancelot, 'shalt thou pa.s.s.'

'Fight therefore,' yelled the youth, and either knight Drew back a s.p.a.ce, and when they closed, at once The weary steed of Pelleas floundering flung His rider, who called out from the dark field, 'Thou art as false as h.e.l.l: slay me: I have no sword.'

Then Lancelot, 'Yea, between thy lips--and sharp; But here I will disedge it by thy death.'

'Slay then,' he shrieked, 'my will is to be slain,'

And Lancelot, with his heel upon the fallen, Rolling his eyes, a moment stood, then spake: 'Rise, weakling; I am Lancelot; say thy say.'

And Lancelot slowly rode his warhorse back To Camelot, and Sir Pelleas in brief while Caught his unbroken limbs from the dark field, And followed to the city. It chanced that both Brake into hall together, worn and pale.

There with her knights and dames was Guinevere.

Full wonderingly she gazed on Lancelot So soon returned, and then on Pelleas, him Who had not greeted her, but cast himself Down on a bench, hard-breathing. 'Have ye fought?'

She asked of Lancelot. 'Ay, my Queen,' he said.

'And hast thou overthrown him?' 'Ay, my Queen.'

Then she, turning to Pelleas, 'O young knight, Hath the great heart of knighthood in thee failed So far thou canst not bide, unfrowardly, A fall from him?' Then, for he answered not, 'Or hast thou other griefs? If I, the Queen, May help them, loose thy tongue, and let me know.'

But Pelleas lifted up an eye so fierce She quailed; and he, hissing 'I have no sword,'

Sprang from the door into the dark. The Queen Looked hard upon her lover, he on her; And each foresaw the dolorous day to be: And all talk died, as in a grove all song Beneath the shadow of some bird of prey; Then a long silence came upon the hall, And Modred thought, 'The time is hard at hand.'

The Last Tournament

Dagonet, the fool, whom Gawain in his mood Had made mock-knight of Arthur's Table Round, At Camelot, high above the yellowing woods, Danced like a withered leaf before the hall.

And toward him from the hall, with harp in hand, And from the crown thereof a carcanet Of ruby swaying to and fro, the prize Of Tristram in the jousts of yesterday, Came Tristram, saying, 'Why skip ye so, Sir Fool?'

For Arthur and Sir Lancelot riding once Far down beneath a winding wall of rock Heard a child wail. A stump of oak half-dead, From roots like some black coil of carven snakes, Clutched at the crag, and started through mid air Bearing an eagle's nest: and through the tree Rushed ever a rainy wind, and through the wind Pierced ever a child's cry: and crag and tree Scaling, Sir Lancelot from the perilous nest, This ruby necklace thrice around her neck, And all unscarred from beak or talon, brought A maiden babe; which Arthur pitying took, Then gave it to his Queen to rear: the Queen But coldly acquiescing, in her white arms Received, and after loved it tenderly, And named it Nestling; so forgot herself A moment, and her cares; till that young life Being smitten in mid heaven with mortal cold Past from her; and in time the carcanet Vext her with plaintive memories of the child: So she, delivering it to Arthur, said, 'Take thou the jewels of this dead innocence, And make them, an thou wilt, a tourney-prize.'

To whom the King, 'Peace to thine eagle-borne Dead nestling, and this honour after death, Following thy will! but, O my Queen, I muse Why ye not wear on arm, or neck, or zone Those diamonds that I rescued from the tarn, And Lancelot won, methought, for thee to wear.'

'Would rather you had let them fall,' she cried, 'Plunge and be lost--ill-fated as they were, A bitterness to me!--ye look amazed, Not knowing they were lost as soon as given-- Slid from my hands, when I was leaning out Above the river--that unhappy child Past in her barge: but rosier luck will go With these rich jewels, seeing that they came Not from the skeleton of a brother-slayer, But the sweet body of a maiden babe.

Perchance--who knows?--the purest of thy knights May win them for the purest of my maids.'

She ended, and the cry of a great jousts With trumpet-blowings ran on all the ways From Camelot in among the faded fields To furthest towers; and everywhere the knights Armed for a day of glory before the King.

But on the hither side of that loud morn Into the hall staggered, his visage ribbed From ear to ear with dogwhip-weals, his nose Bridge-broken, one eye out, and one hand off, And one with shattered fingers dangling lame, A churl, to whom indignantly the King,

'My churl, for whom Christ died, what evil beast Hath drawn his claws athwart thy face? or fiend?

Man was it who marred heaven's image in thee thus?'

Then, sputtering through the hedge of splintered teeth, Yet strangers to the tongue, and with blunt stump Pitch-blackened sawing the air, said the maimed churl,

'He took them and he drave them to his tower-- Some hold he was a table-knight of thine-- A hundred goodly ones--the Red Knight, he-- Lord, I was tending swine, and the Red Knight Brake in upon me and drave them to his tower; And when I called upon thy name as one That doest right by gentle and by churl, Maimed me and mauled, and would outright have slain, Save that he sware me to a message, saying, "Tell thou the King and all his liars, that I Have founded my Round Table in the North, And whatsoever his own knights have sworn My knights have sworn the counter to it--and say My tower is full of harlots, like his court, But mine are worthier, seeing they profess To be none other than themselves--and say My knights are all adulterers like his own, But mine are truer, seeing they profess To be none other; and say his hour is come, The heathen are upon him, his long lance Broken, and his Excalibur a straw."'

Then Arthur turned to Kay the seneschal, 'Take thou my churl, and tend him curiously Like a king's heir, till all his hurts be whole.

The heathen--but that ever-climbing wave, Hurled back again so often in empty foam, Hath lain for years at rest--and renegades, Thieves, bandits, leavings of confusion, whom The wholesome realm is purged of otherwhere, Friends, through your manhood and your fealty,--now Make their last head like Satan in the North.

My younger knights, new-made, in whom your flower Waits to be solid fruit of golden deeds, Move with me toward their quelling, which achieved, The loneliest ways are safe from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e.

But thou, Sir Lancelot, sitting in my place Enchaired tomorrow, arbitrate the field; For wherefore shouldst thou care to mingle with it, Only to yield my Queen her own again?

Speak, Lancelot, thou art silent: is it well?'

Thereto Sir Lancelot answered, 'It is well: Yet better if the King abide, and leave The leading of his younger knights to me.

Else, for the King has willed it, it is well.'

Then Arthur rose and Lancelot followed him, And while they stood without the doors, the King Turned to him saying, 'Is it then so well?

Or mine the blame that oft I seem as he Of whom was written, "A sound is in his ears"?

The foot that loiters, bidden go,--the glance That only seems half-loyal to command,-- A manner somewhat fallen from reverence-- Or have I dreamed the bearing of our knights Tells of a manhood ever less and lower?

Or whence the fear lest this my realm, upreared, By n.o.ble deeds at one with n.o.ble vows, From flat confusion and brute violences, Reel back into the beast, and be no more?'

He spoke, and taking all his younger knights, Down the slope city rode, and sharply turned North by the gate. In her high bower the Queen, Working a tapestry, lifted up her head, Watched her lord pa.s.s, and knew not that she sighed.

Then ran across her memory the strange rhyme Of bygone Merlin, 'Where is he who knows?

From the great deep to the great deep he goes.'

But when the morning of a tournament, By these in earnest those in mockery called The Tournament of the Dead Innocence, Brake with a wet wind blowing, Lancelot, Round whose sick head all night, like birds of prey, The words of Arthur flying shrieked, arose, And down a streetway hung with folds of pure White samite, and by fountains running wine, Where children sat in white with cups of gold, Moved to the lists, and there, with slow sad steps Ascending, filled his double-dragoned chair.

He glanced and saw the stately galleries, Dame, damsel, each through wors.h.i.+p of their Queen White-robed in honour of the stainless child, And some with scattered jewels, like a bank Of maiden snow mingled with sparks of fire.

He looked but once, and vailed his eyes again.

The sudden trumpet sounded as in a dream To ears but half-awaked, then one low roll Of Autumn thunder, and the jousts began: And ever the wind blew, and yellowing leaf And gloom and gleam, and shower and shorn plume Went down it. Sighing weariedly, as one Who sits and gazes on a faded fire, When all the goodlier guests are past away, Sat their great umpire, looking o'er the lists.

He saw the laws that ruled the tournament Broken, but spake not; once, a knight cast down Before his throne of arbitration cursed The dead babe and the follies of the King; And once the laces of a helmet cracked, And showed him, like a vermin in its hole, Modred, a narrow face: anon he heard The voice that billowed round the barriers roar An ocean-sounding welcome to one knight, But newly-entered, taller than the rest, And armoured all in forest green, whereon There tript a hundred tiny silver deer, And wearing but a holly-spray for crest, With ever-scattering berries, and on s.h.i.+eld A spear, a harp, a bugle--Tristram--late From overseas in Brittany returned, And marriage with a princess of that realm, Isolt the White--Sir Tristram of the Woods-- Whom Lancelot knew, had held sometime with pain His own against him, and now yearned to shake The burthen off his heart in one full shock With Tristram even to death: his strong hands gript And dinted the gilt dragons right and left, Until he groaned for wrath--so many of those, That ware their ladies' colours on the casque, Drew from before Sir Tristram to the bounds, And there with gibes and flickering mockeries Stood, while he muttered, 'Craven crests! O shame!

What faith have these in whom they sware to love?

The glory of our Round Table is no more.'

So Tristram won, and Lancelot gave, the gems, Not speaking other word than 'Hast thou won?

Art thou the purest, brother? See, the hand Wherewith thou takest this, is red!' to whom Tristram, half plagued by Lancelot's languorous mood, Made answer, 'Ay, but wherefore toss me this Like a dry bone cast to some hungry hound?

Lest be thy fair Queen's fantasy. Strength of heart And might of limb, but mainly use and skill, Are winners in this pastime of our King.

My hand--belike the lance hath dript upon it-- No blood of mine, I trow; but O chief knight, Right arm of Arthur in the battlefield, Great brother, thou nor I have made the world; Be happy in thy fair Queen as I in mine.'

And Tristram round the gallery made his horse Caracole; then bowed his homage, bluntly saying, 'Fair damsels, each to him who wors.h.i.+ps each Sole Queen of Beauty and of love, behold This day my Queen of Beauty is not here.'

And most of these were mute, some angered, one Murmuring, 'All courtesy is dead,' and one, 'The glory of our Round Table is no more.'

Then fell thick rain, plume droopt and mantle clung, And pettish cries awoke, and the wan day Went glooming down in wet and weariness: But under her black brows a swarthy one Laughed shrilly, crying, 'Praise the patient saints, Our one white day of Innocence hath past, Though somewhat draggled at the skirt. So be it.