Arthur Rex (39 page)

Now Launcelot could not forbear from saying to Guinevere as they rode together, “So hath the king returned untimely. Therefore we were wise to go without the castle.”

“To be found by this boy?” asked Guinevere. “Whereas when Arthur stays in residence, thou dost come to my chambers. I have told thee that the nearer, the safer.”

“Perhaps I can not explain it,” said Sir Launcelot, “but with the king away it seemeth peculiarly indecent to use his castle for this.”

“Canst thou not,” asked the queen, “think of anything in our love but the squalor of it?” And she began this question in anger, but she ended it in tears.

And Sir Launcelot turned to look whether the page was close enough to see, but he had now been left far behind.

Then he said to her, “Lady, God forgive us! For what we do hath never become less wrong.”

And Guinevere then cried in awful blasphemy, “God damn thee to Hell, Launcelot. I would see thee nevermore!” And she rode swiftly away from him on her palfrey.

And while he could easily have overtaken her on his Arab charger, he did not, and he prayed to God to pardon her terrible oath, and he furthermore asked that all sins committed by them together be his burden and not hers, for he was a man and she but a weak woman like unto the first who had fallen to the temptation of the apple. And in the depths of his heart Launcelot knew great relief that their friendship was over, and that he could now return to the monastery of the Little Brothers of Poverty and Pain and for the rest of his life atone for the breaking of his vow of chastity.

For though he had loved her greatly, at no time was the joy comparable to the sorrow and the shame of it.

Now when Guinevere came to King Arthur he greeted her and he said, “I would have your thoughts upon the Cornish matter.”

“My lord,” said Guinevere, “you are soon returned from Gore.”

“Yea,” said the king, “I am sorely troubled by these news from Tintagel, where Mark would try La Belle Isold by torture for adultery. Now though this be not your proper concern, Guinevere, there are political consequences, and Ireland (an unruly king) will mount a host against Cornwall, I fear, and Mark is my vassal though unacknowledged by himself. And though I detest war I shall not suffer an invasion of my realm once again by the savage Irish. Therefore methinks I must go to Cornwall first and reduce Mark to his proper place, and to deliver Isold from the fire. Yet if she hath been guilty of this criminal trespass against the office of her husband (who if not royal except by self-anointing doth rule Cornwall), she must be tried, must she not? And if justly impugned, with proof, then banished. Or, think you, better sent to a nunnery?”

“My lord,” said Guinevere, “I believe that I do lack authority to form such an opinion.”

“Well, my dear Guinevere,” said King Arthur, “I am of course not obliged to act upon your judgment, but I would hear your thoughts, for you are yourself a queen and a woman (and in those, though in no other way, God forfend! like unto Isold). And while the disposition of this matter be a kingly and male thing, the crime, if committed, is feminine.”

“So be it,” said Guinevere.

“Look you,” said King Arthur, “’twould be otherwise if Isold were but a noblewoman and Sir Tristram were rather a royal person (as he is by birth, to be sure, but he doth not rule in Cornwall), yet as it is these stations are reversed. A queen hath taken, as illegal lover, a knight!”

“But if as queen she took another king?” asked Guinevere.

“Yea,” said Arthur, “and right you are, Guinevere, ’tis the felonious adultery that should concern us, and not the relative ranks of those who practice it. Dear friend, this is just what I wanted from you.”

“Well,” said Guinevere, “Sir Tristram is anyway a prince.”

“Indeed, indeed,” said King Arthur, “as are they all, my foremost knights, Gawaine and his brothers, and Sir Launcelot.” And then he pondered for a moment, and he said, “Yet, withal, we do not know certainly whether this sinful liaison hath been instituted or is but the construction of malicious tongues. Methinks that Mark is a mean ruler, and that such a man hath meaner spirits around him. Sir Tristram hath ever been a knight of much worship, and only in such a company as the Round Table doth a man of prowess not inspire the envy of those nearby. Then Isold is a notable beauty, and a foreigner as well. Can plainer Cornishwomen forgive her for that?”

“My lord,” said Guinevere, “no one can ever know certainly of privy things unless one be privy to them, and each man must decide alone how much evidence is necessary to establish a conviction.”

“Well put, dear friend,” said King Arthur. “You have aided me greatly, for what I needed here was to hear mine own thoughts as they were reflected from another, but only from another whom I could trust absolutely to have no corrupting bias. Launcelot and Gawaine, for example, are Tristram’s friends and fellow-members of the Table, for one; and for another they neither of them would, or could, entertain the possibility that an otherwise honest queen were adulterous.”

Now his audience with his wife having been concluded, King Arthur went to his throne room, and there he found Sir Accolon waiting for him.

And when Sir Accolon had knelt and been recognized he rose and he gave to King Arthur the rich mantle he had brought from Gore.

“With this gift your sister the fair Morgan la Fey sends her love to you, most royal Arthur,” said Accolon, “and she doth further command me to deliver these wishes with this coat: that you reign so long as you wear it, for it is sewn with the gems of immortality.”

Now King Arthur was pleased that his sister would atone for her wicked and unnatural attempt on his life, and eager to think the best of her he even began to suppose that he had misunderstood the unhappy event at Gore. And yet the jeweled mantle was far too resplendent for his virile tastes, and therefore he did not put it on him, but seeing a lovely lady enter the court he called her to him and he asked her to put the coat of gems about her shoulders, and she came and did this.

Now this lady was marvelously beautiful in the mantle, but she soon did frown while wearing it. And to her she called Sir Accolon, and to him she said, “The weight of these rare jewels is too heavy for me to bear. It wants the broad shoulders of a brave and loyal knight, who is much loved by a queen.”

And Sir Accolon in his vanity happily permitted her to put the mantle on him, and he smiled at King Arthur and he believed that one day soon he might be his brother-in-law.

But then the coat burst into hot flames and he was soon burned to ashes within it. For what had seemed lovely gems were really incendiary stones the which the wicked Morgan la Fey had sewn onto the mantle for the purpose of burning King Arthur alive.

Now King Arthur knew great anguish. And the beautiful lady came to him and she said, “This foolish knight hath received his just deserts, for he might else have been induced through his ambition and his lust to become a regicide.”

“Who art thou,” asked King Arthur, “to have saved my life?”

“Thy friend of old, Arthur,” said the Lady of the Lake (for it was she), “who furnished thee with Excalibur and who hath so many times provided instruction for thy knights, and who can protect thee from the grosser harms such as this, but who can give you no immunity to the subtler poisons undreamt of by Morgan la Fey.”

And King Arthur lowered his head, on which there were already many gray hairs, but when he raised it again to thank her, she was gone.

And when Morgan la Fey heard of her latest failure to kill King Arthur she went into a fury, and she stole into the chambers of her husband King Uriens and sought to put him to death while he lay sleeping, but a loyal maidservant saw her and warned Sir Uwaine, the son of King Uriens by his first wife who had died, and Uwaine did obstruct his wicked stepmother from committing this crime. And subsequently Morgan la Fey was banished (for King Uriens was too kind to burn her, and anyway he wished only to go a-hunting), and she went into the wilds where she lived with her evil nephew Mordred and all the birds and all the animals did void that place, and even the trees withered and died thereabout.

N
OW KING ARTHUR WOULD
mount his expedition against Cornwall, but before he could do so the news came to him that the trial of Queen Isold had already taken place.

For La Belle Isold and Sir Tristram had continued to meet in the congress of adulterous love for so long a time that it was not secret to anyone at Tintagel except King Mark, and he was oft told of it by the vile dwarf Frocin, who however could never provide evidence for his accusations. And every trap laid by this dwarf was evaded by Sir Tristram, often unknowingly. And lying in wait to catch him in criminal association with Isold, Mark was ever frustrated. And once Frocin mounted a ladder placed against the wall of the castle and climbed it to peer through a window into the royal bedchamber and after seeing the miscreants close-coupled within, he came down to the waiting king. And then Mark himself climbing the ladder, the which was stout enough to bear the weight of a dwarf, it collapsed under him and he fell to the ground breaking an arm and a leg.

And after this happened Mark in impulsive fury had Frocin beheaded, the which he later regretted because he would rather have tortured him to death slowly.

But then King Mark began to get anonymous notes from other informants, and he was told therein just what the late Frocin had insisted upon: that he was a marvelous cuckold, on whom the horns had been put by his own nephew. Therefore he began to suspect that there was more in this than the malignancy of a monstrous dwarf.

But Mark could not understand how Isold could take Tristram into her bed when he himself slept beside her all the night, and during the day he kept her under observation at all times. But then finally one time when Isold brought to him the supposed aphrodisiac he had drunk every night during the years since their wedding (for he had got older and he believed he needed it even more than at the outset: yet as we know all his swyving had been done only in fantasy), it occurred to him that this potion might be otherwise than it had been represented, which was to say, that it did not stiffen his yard but rather put him into a sleep so like that of the dead that he knew not what he did when under its influence.

Therefore to test the truth of this possibility he spurned the glass now, and fortunate it was that Isold observed his failure to drink thereof, and she spoke to him of this.

“’Tis no forgetfulness, chuck,” said King Mark, rolling up his nightshirt to reveal his yellowed privities and the white hairs on his protuberant belly. “Thine ardent labors shall stir me more than potions.” And he commanded her to come and minister to him.

But begging his pardon for a short delay for to anoint herself with scented emollients, La Belle Isold went rather to an antechamber where she found the loyal Brangwain. And to her handmaiden she spake as follows.

“My dear Brangwain,” said she, “it seems that the king will not drink of thy potion this night.”

“Alas, my lady,” said Brangwain, “then whatever shall be done?” And she was greatly dismayed, for this good woman was altogether devoted to the lady she had served since their girlhoods.

“Well,” said Isold, “I have conceived of a plan that will suffice but only if we carry it out with great care, and it is this: that whilst I go in to Mark and distract him by taking off my robe before his eyes, thou shalt enter and secrete thyself behind a screen. Then when I have extinguished the tapers, we shall, thou and I, exchange places: which is to say, I shall go behind the screen and thou shalt come out from it and enter into the bed.”

“With the king?” asked Brangwain in wonder.

“With himself,” said La Belle Isold.

“And then submit myself to his embraces?” asked the loyal Brangwain.

“I fear thou must,” said Queen Isold. “I see no alternative, good my Brangwain. Else I shall be the prey of that foul old man, and thou must agree that that were unthinkable.”

“Indeed, my lady,” said Brangwain, “such a beastly thing must never happen.” Nevertheless she could not forbear from weeping gently.

“Well, Brangwain,” said La Belle Isold, “was it not thee who fed me not the poison for which I begged, but rather the decoction of love?”

And Brangwain agreed that this had been the case, and she said, “Would that I had time now to brew me some potion the which would numb my conscience.”

“Think thou,” said Isold, “of the worthiness of the cause.”

“I shall, my lady,” said Brangwain. But then she said, “Is there not some difference between us in figure?” (For she was sufficiently robust that standing behind her Isold could not have been seen.) “Can the king be long insensible to the distinction, even in the dark?”

“Brangwain, my dear,” said the fair Isold, “be assured that my performance in preparing for bed before his eyes will so heat this old man as to confuse his senses utterly and to render him incapable of entertaining any thought but to satisfy his inordinate lust.”

And poor Brangwain did shudder at this indelicate speech of Isold’s, for she was yet a maiden, and she had intended to remain so forever (feeling no desire for any man but Sir Tristram, whom she could never have).

Now telling her to wait and to watch through a crack of the door until King Mark’s attention was occupied, La Belle Isold went back into the bedchamber and standing where the tapers would light her to the best advantage she slowly and with provocative motions of her body began to lower her nightdress, the which was of white sendal (though not as smooth and white as her alabaster skin). But when her bosom had been bared to the rosy paps she stopped, and she had with her a flask of scented oil and from it she poured fine drops of this fragrant oil onto her breasts, the which she then caressed and manipulated slowly.

And this display did cause King Mark to moan in lascivious delight and to slap his old belly and his withered thighs. And whilst he was so occupied, the loyal Brangwain discreetly entered the chamber and she hid herself behind the screen.