We all know what a marvelous man of his arms is Lancelot of the Lake. He goes to any lengths to hammer it home to the world. There was the time he and I spent the night at the same forester’s lodging. Lancelot got up before dawn, put on my armor and shield, and rode off while I was still asleep, so that he would have the chance to increase his glory by striking down all the knights who would not have attacked Lancelot but were willing enough to attack a man they thought was Kay. If I had had my good charger Feuillemorte at the time, Lancelot would probably have “borrowed” him, too. Oh, I got back to court in perfect safety. I had no shield but Lancelot’s, and his reputation was already such that no one was willing to fight him in love or lightness. For which safety I was expected to be duly grateful to the generosity of the great hero. But any chance I might have had to win a little honor in my own name was gone. One of the few times I have ever been able to leave court for a few fortnights’ adventuring on my own, wasted.
Artus may have been the only man to unite Logris, at least as well as it can ever be united. No one denies he is a fine leader in war. When he sits in judgment, so long as he is not personally involved in the case, he was a way of cutting through forms and trivialities, getting to the heart of the matter, and making a decision that endears him to the people. His knights love him because he still ventures his body on the same terms as the rest of us, in an occasional tournament as well as in battle; I suppose the popularity is worth the risk of having a dead or maimed High King and no heir ready. But as for the regular, day-to-day functioning of his kingdom and court, the kingdom runs by the Queen’s efforts and the court by my own. Nobody realizes how much. Along with my other duties, I serve as scapegoat for anything that might otherwise dent Arthur’s popularity—even Arthur does not quite understand that service. Folk should at least remember what happened in this kingdom when Guenevere’s look-alike seduced Arthur and supplanted the true Queen for two years: The country came near to rotting away, and not even the Pope’s interdict brought Artus back to his senses. Only the false queen’s dying confession woke him up; the kingdom started to recover only when Dame Guenevere agreed to leave her sanctuary in Surluse and come back to her first husband. Maybe the common people remember that interlude more clearly than they are willing to say. I am not sure.
Arthur had been ready to sentence Her Grace to death when he named her look-alike queen. He had been ready to have her hair torn out and the skin peeled from her loving face and gentle hands. If he had done it, I could not have remained loyal to him. I would have given my life to save Dame Guenevere, but Lancelot took it as his natural right to act as her champion. Again. And afterwards escorted her into Surluse to share her banishment while his liege lord played with the look-alike.
I probably owe my own life to the conceited Mirror of All Knightly Prowess. The time Bagdemagus’ worthless son Meliagrant accused Her Grace of infidelity, I was the supposed lover he named. I was newly wounded, and there was blood in her bed. There was also blood on the bars of the window, if anyone else noticed it besides myself, and Lancelot answered Meliagrant’s challenge with bandaged hands, insisting, as usual, that he and no one else should fight as the Queen’s champion. No matter that I had not asked him to clear my name as well as hers—no matter that I was more than willing to have fought Meliagrant myself as soon as I was sufficiently healed to sit my horse—no matter, even, that there was not that much glory in defeating Meliagrant, and Lancelot had to fight with his head and half his body unarmored and his left arm bound in order to win any fresh fame for the encounter.
It was more important to clear Her Grace than to quibble about who the man might have been. But, God! That he should have fought to clear me of his own deed—that he should have loved the Queen in my place!
Even remembering it, I threw the nearest goblet against the wall, denting it beyond use. No matter, I would pay for the goblet later.
If Lancelot the valorous hypocrite had never come to Britain, I might have been the Queen’s favorite knight. It’s not impossible. Or Gawain might have been. Either one of us, and it would have been a pure loyalty. Not like Lancelot the seducer, ravishing the Queen and then driving her half mad with his lesser paramours, his Elaines and Amables, and with his habit of risking his life heedlessly on less than no excuse.
At least in the earlier days he had the decency to keep his dishonesty secret. Even I could not be sure until the Meliagrant affair. But since his return from seeking the Holy Grail, he was more careless of the Queen’s safety—trusting, I suppose, that he would always happen to be on hand at the right times to prove on the field of honor that the truth was a lie. Someday Arthur was going to believe at last what Morgan le Fay had told him years ago, over and over, about Lancelot and the Queen.
And this was the man on whom the Queen’s life and safety had depended time after time—on whom it might depend again now!
Suppose Morgan was still alive. Suppose she had captured Lancelot again, even managed to seduce him at last (although, for that matter, we had only Lancelot’s word that she had never yet gotten him into her bed, or that all those months he had spent with her on various occasions he had indeed been a totally unwilling prisoner in her stronghold.) Suppose that while holding Lancelot again, whether as prisoner or paramour, she had set another kind of trap for Dame Guenevere—to see her condemned and burned while Lancelot was prevented from appearing in time to fight for her.
CHAPTER 5
Of a Search for a Serpent
“So when the king and the queen were together… Where is Sir Lancelot? said King Arthur; an he were here he would not grudge to do battle for you. Sir, said the queen, I wot not where he is, but his brother and his kinsmen deem that he be not within this realm.… What aileth you, said the king, ye cannot keep Sir Lancelot upon your side?”
—Malory XVIII, 4
Someone came in. I looked up to see Pinel and Astamore.
“They’re beginning to ask why you haven’t come to see Sir Patrise laid out,” said Astamore.
“My ears are offended by Mador’s banshee wailing.”
“It will seem suspicious if you don’t come.”
“Let it. Maybe he’ll come to his senses about the Queen and decide to accuse me instead.” If Her Grace were free of Mador’s arraignment, it would be a pleasure to fight for once in my own name.
Pinel sat down heavily. “They’ll suspect any of us who fail to wake with the body.”
“Then you’d better get back before they start to suspect you,” I told him.
Pinel shuddered. “I could have no wish to harm Patrise. Why would I have wanted to harm Sir Patrise? Why Sir Patrise, of all of us?”
“Why would the Queen have wanted to kill Gawain?” I replied. “Maybe age is catching up with Mador. He’s not thinking clearly. I suppose he wants everyone to touch the corpse and see who makes it bleed?”
“It’s bled several times,” said Astamore.
“Only a little, at the mouth. It was the jounce of carrying him.” Pinel looked around, found a goblet that was still upright and had a little wine in it, and took a drink. “Bleeding at the murderer’s touch only holds good when there’s an open, outer wound.”
I snorted. “Or when the ghost himself knows who murdered him.”
“Even so, the death is too fresh for the test to hold true, I think.” Astamore balanced his thin thighs on the edge of the board and began to fondle his ring absently. “We’ll return to the chapel soon. I doubt anything will make Sir Mador change his accusation.”
“Which could be as well for you, Astamore,” I said.
Aside from being slightly too close together, his black eyes were so much like his uncle’s that he might have been Bagdemagus’ bastard son instead of his nephew. “Your meaning, Seneschal?”
“The poisoned fruit was meant for Gawain. Not even Mador denies that. And Gawain killed your uncle Bagdemagus during the Grail adventures.”
I