The Knights of the Round Table

CHAPTER III

We walked up the steep road, and just before we came to the top of the hill the rain began again. There was one little house near the top and we decided to let Camelot wait for a few minutes longer and go into the house and stay till the rain stopped.

The woman of the house seemed to be glad to see us, and she asked us to write our names in her visitors' book. The names and the dates in the book showed that Camelot had some six or eight visitors a year. Of course we tried to get the woman to tell us something about the place, and of course we failed. She knew that it was called Cadbury Castle and sometimes Camelot and sometimes the Camp. She knew that the well close by her house was called King Arthur's Well, but she did not know why. The water in it was not good to drink, and in dry times they could not get water from it at all. She got drinking-water and in dry times all the water that she used from St. Anne's Wishing Well, a quarter of a mile around the hill. She did not know what that name meant either. She used to have a book that told all about the place, but she couldn't show it to us, because it had been lent to somebody and had never been returned. The vicar had studied a good deal about the place too, and he knew all about it. Could we find the vicar and get him to tell us about it? Oh, no, it wasn't the present vicar, it was the old vicar, and he was dead.

So we gave up learning anything and waited for the rain to stop, and then went out to see as much as we could for ourselves. The hilltop was broad and level. I can't tell just how broad, because I am no judge of acres, but I believe it was several. It had a low wall of earth around it, covered with grass, of course, like all the rest of the place. When we stood on the top of this wall and looked down, we saw that the ground sloped away from us till it made a sort of ditch, and then rose again and made another earth wall, a little way down the hillside. Then it did the same thing again, and yet once more. So in its time this hilltop must have had four strong walls around it. It really looked much more like a fort or camp than like a city. It seemed too small for a city, though it might have been a pretty big camp. If we had been looking for hard facts, I think we should have believed what the hotel-keeper had said, that this was not where King Arthur lived, but where he placed his army.

I remembered reading somewhere that the Britons and the Romans and the Saxons had all held this place at different times. I had read, too, I was sure, that parts of old walls, of a dusky blue stone, and old coins had been found here. It was a fine place for a camp or a castle. It was so high and breezy and we could see for so many miles across the country, that we could understand how useful and pleasant it must have been for either or for both. It was pleasant enough now, this broad, grassy hilltop, with its four grassy walls and the woodland sloping away from it all around. But nobody lived here now to enjoy it – nobody, that is to say, but the rabbits. For the place is theirs now, and they dig holes in the ground and make their houses where King Arthur's castle stood, where he and his knights sat in the hall about the Round Table, and where all the greatest of the world came to see all that was richest and noblest and best for kings and knights to be and to enjoy.

The rabbits scuttled across our way, as we walked about, and leaped into their holes, when we came near, and then looked timidly out again, when we had gone past, and wondered what we were doing and what right we had here in their Camelot. There were only these holes now, where once there were palaces and churches, and no traces of old glories, but the walls of earth and turf. Yet it seemed better to me that Camelot should be left alone and forgotten, like this, the city and the fortress of the rabbits, but still high and open and fresh and free, than that it should be a poor little town, full of poor little people, like Camelford. Helen said that she thought so too, when I asked her, and she was willing that this should be Camelot, if I thought that it really was.

"Really and truly and honestly," I said, "I think that this is as likely to have been Camelot as any place that we have seen or shall see. It is lucky for us that we know more about it than the people who live about here do. If we did not I am afraid it would not interest us much. I think that I have read somewhere that the King and his knights were still here on the hilltop, kept here and made invisible by some enchantment, that at certain times they could be seen, and that some people had really seen them. I don't believe this story, but while we are here let us believe at least, with all our might, that we are really and truly in Camelot.

"Now here is a story, with Camelot in it, that you ought to hear. You must not mind if it makes you think of a story that we saw once in the fire. There are different ways of telling the same story, you know, and this is a different way of telling that same story.

"Once, when Arthur was first King of England, he had a good knight called Sir Percivale. He was killed in a tournament by a knight whom no one knew. Some who saw the fight said that it was not a fair one and that Sir Percivale was as good as murdered. The knight who killed him wore red armor, and once, when his visor was up, Arthur saw his face. No one knew where the knight went afterward and Arthur could never find him to make him answer for the death of Sir Percivale.

"Now this Sir Percivale had seven sons and a daughter, and six of his sons were killed also, in tournaments or battles. But the youngest of the sons was not old enough yet to be a knight, and when his mother had lost her husband and all her sons but him, she resolved that he should never be a knight. His name was Percivale, like his father's. It was right, she thought, for her to keep this last son that she had safe and not to let him fight and be killed, as his father and his brother's had been. And she feared so much that when he grew up he would want to be a knight, like the others, that she resolved that he should never know anything about knights or tournaments or wars or arms.

"She took him far away from the place where they had lived, and made a home in the woods. It was far from the towns and the tournaments and the courts, and it was even away from the roads that led through the country. It was a lonely place that the mother chose, and she hoped that no one would ever come to it from the world that she had left. She brought her daughter with her, I suppose, though the story says nothing about her just here, and she brought nobody else but servants – women and boys and old men. Nobody in her house was ever allowed to speak of knights or arms or battles or anything that had to do with them. She would not even have any big, strong horses kept about the place, because they reminded her of the war horses that knights rode. She tried to bring up her boy so that he should know only of peaceful things. He should know the trees and the flowers of the woods, she thought; he should know the goats and the sheep and the cows that they kept, how the fruits grew in the orchard, how the birds lived in the trees and the bees in their hive; but he should never know the cruel ways of men out in the world. He should see the axe of the woodman, not the battle-axe; the scythe, not the sword; the crook of the shepherd, not the spear.

"So the boy grew up in the forest and ran about wherever he would and climbed the trees and followed the squirrels and studied the nests of the birds and knew all the plants that grew and all the animals that lived about him. If it had not been for many things that his mother taught him he would have been almost like one of the animals of the wood himself. He could run almost as fast as the deer and he could climb almost as well as the squirrel, and he could sing as well as some of the birds.

"When he grew a little older his mother let him have a bow and arrows to play with and shoot at marks, but nobody told him that men used bows and arrows to shoot at one another or that men ever wanted to harm one another. But he began to shoot at the birds with his arrows, and at last he hit one of them and killed it. Then he looked at the dead bird lying at his feet and he heard the other birds singing all around him. And he thought: 'I have done a dreadful thing; a little while ago this bird was singing too, and was as happy as the rest of them, and now it can never sing any more or be happy any more, because I have killed it.' And he broke his bow and threw it away and he threw himself down on the ground beside the little dead bird and cried at what he had done. And when his mother saw how grieved he was she said that all the birds should be driven away, so that they should not trouble him. But Percivale begged her to let them stay. He liked to hear them sing, and to drive them off would be a crueler thing than he had done already. And his mother thought: 'The boy is right; I brought him here to find peace and safety for both of us, and why should I not let the poor birds stay in peace and safety too?'

"But it was foolish for the poor woman to think that she could keep her boy so that he would never know anything of the world. The world was all around him, no matter how far off, and it was sure some time to come where he was. And so, one day, as he was wandering in the wood, he saw three horses coming, larger and stronger and finer than any horses he had ever seen before. And on their backs, he thought, were three men, but he could not feel sure, for they did not look like any men whom he had ever seen. They seemed to be all covered with iron, which was polished so that it glistened where the light touched it, and they wore many gay and beautiful colors besides. He stood and looked at them till they came close to him, and then one of them said: 'My boy, have you seen a knight pass this way?'

"'I do not know what a knight is,' Percivale answered.

"'We are knights,' the man on the horse said; 'have you seen anyone like us?'

"But Percivale was wondering so much at what he saw that he could not answer. 'What is this?' he asked, touching the knight's shield.

"'That?' the knight answered, 'that is my shield.'

"'And what is it for?'

"'To keep other knights from hitting me with their spears or their swords.'

"'Spears? What are they?'

"'This is a spear,' the knight answered, showing him one.

"'And what is this?'

"'That is a saddle.'

"'And what is this?'

"'A sword.'

"And so Percivale asked the knights about everything that they wore and everything that they carried and all that was on their horses. 'And where did you get these things?' he asked. 'Did you always wear them?'

"'No,' the knight answered; 'King Arthur gave me these arms when he made me a knight.'

"'Then you were not always a knight?' Percivale asked again.

"'Why, no, I was a squire, a young man, like you, and King Arthur made me a Knight and gave me these arms.'

"'Who is King Arthur, and where is he?'

"'He is the King of the country, and he lives at Camelot.'

"Then Percivale ran home as fast as he could and said to his mother: 'Mother, I saw some knights in the forest, and one of them told me that he was not a knight always, but King Arthur made him one, and before that he was a young man like me. And now I want to go to King Arthur, too, and ask him to make me a knight, so that I can wear bright iron things like them and ride on a big horse.'

"The instant that she heard the word 'knights' the mother knew that all her care was lost. The boy was a man now. He had seen what other men were like and she knew that he would never be happy again till he was like the rest of them. Before her mind, all at once, everything came back – the court, the field of the tournament, the men all dressed in steel, with their sharp, cruel spears, the gleaming lines charging against each other, the knights falling from their horses and rolling on the ground. Her brain whirled around as she thought of all this, and her one last son in the midst of it, to be killed, perhaps, as the rest had been. But she knew that he must go – that he would go – nothing could keep him with her now.

"'My son,' she said, 'if you will leave me and be a knight, like those that you have seen, go to King Arthur. His are the best of knights and among them you will learn all that you ought to know. Before you are a knight the King will make you swear that you will be always loyal and upright, that you will be faithful, gentle, and merciful, and that you will fight for the right of the poor and the weak. Percivale, some knights forget these things, after they have sworn them, but you will not forget. Remember them the more because I tell them to you now. Be ready always to help those who need help most, the poor and the weak and the old and children and women. Keep yourself in the company of wise men and talk with them and learn of them. Percivale, the King will make you swear, too, that you will fear shame more than death. And I tell you that. I have lost your father and your brothers, but I would rather lose you, too, than not to know that you feared shame more than death.'