The Knights of the Round Table

CHAPTER VIII

We had meant, when Helen's mother should come from Paris, to go back to Glastonbury and begin our journey again where we had left off. But when she came we thought better of it. We decided that, since we were going to the Southwest of England again, we might as well go all the way and see the Land's End. Then, we thought, we could go to Glastonbury just as well on the way back.

So it happened that when Helen's mother was with us again, we took the longest railway ride that we had taken yet, and at the end of it we found ourselves in Penzance. Penzance is the place where the pirates were, you know. We had always supposed that that was a made-up story and that there never were really any pirates of Penzance. But we found that the pirates were there still. Only now they do not scuttle ships any more, if they ever did; they keep hotels. But that is an unpleasant subject.

We set off the next morning for a long drive – which was to be partly a walk – to the Land's End. There were many things that were worth seeing before we got to the Land's End, or anywhere near it. First there was the harbor of Penzance, one of the prettiest that I ever looked out upon. And over on the other side of it, stately and beautiful against the summer morning sky, stood St. Michael's Mount. St. Michael's Mount is a cone-shaped hill, rising high out of the water, with a castle on the top of it. It is one of those things that are so picturesque that they surprise you when you see them in a real scene, because they look too perfect to belong outside a painted picture.

"And who do you suppose used to live on the top of that hill?" I said. "Why, the old giant Cormoran, the one whom Jack the Giant-Killer knocked on the head with his pickaxe, the very first giant whom he killed. Of course I should not think of telling you that story, at your time of life; I only tell you that there is the place. But I might tell you about another giant, and let you try to straighten out his story, if you like, better than I can. Over across the channel from here, in France, there is another St. Michael's Mount. I have never seen it, but the picture of it looks as much like this one as if it were its own brother. I think that I have told you before that the people of old days used to think that high hills belonged somehow to St. Michael. Well, over there on the other St. Michael's Mount lived another giant with whom King Arthur himself once had a little tussle. The giant's name was Ryence, and he had a mantle trimmed with kings' beards. You remember something, perhaps, that I told you once about a King named Ryence, who had a mantle trimmed with kings' beards. It is rather curious that there should be two of them.

"It was when King Arthur went over to France on his way to fight the Emperor of Rome that he heard of this giant. He was a terror to the whole country, for he killed hundreds of people and spoiled crops, and his favorite food was little boys. I don't know why he liked little boys so much better than little girls, but I suppose he knew more about which were the better to eat than I do.

"When Arthur heard about the giant he took Sir Kay and Sir Bedivere with him and went to the foot of the hill. There he told them to wait for him, and went up the hill alone. He found the giant sitting before a fire cooking a man for his supper. Arthur got close to him and wounded him with his sword before the giant knew that he was there. Then he sprang up and caught hold of Arthur, and they both fell and rolled over and over each other clear to the bottom of the hill, and Arthur managed to give the giant two or three more wounds on the way. Kay and Bedivere ran to see if the King was killed, and they found that he was scarcely hurt at all and that the giant was dead.

"I don't say that there is anything so very remarkable about that. It is just a plain sort of every-day giant story. But here are the strange points, I think. Here were two hills looking wonderfully alike and with the same name, and a giant lived and was killed on each of them. And here were two giants, both named Ryence, for King Ryence was a giant, too, and they both had mantles trimmed with kings' beards, and Arthur killed one and beat the other. It looks to me as if two stories, at least, had got a little mixed, or else one story twisted in two. How does it look to you?"

There is no reason, that I can see, why I should try to tell you all about the way from Penzance to the Land's End. It will not do you much good to know that it was grand and beautiful, as long as you were not there to see its grandeur and its beauty. We stopped at St. Buryan, and a very old woman showed us the church. It is a curious old place, and it has some fine carvings. But the old woman, who showed us everything and explained it to us, could not understand what there was about it that we found interesting. She had been showing this church to people, she said, for more than fifty years, and she had never been able to make out yet why they wanted to see it.

Then we went on to see the Logan Rock, and got a guide to find it for us. We could never have found it for ourselves, because it is so mixed up with so many other rocks. It is a huge rocking stone. It weighs I don't know how many tons, but a strong man can move it a little, if he knows just how and where to take hold of it and push. The guide rocked it for us, and he said that we did it ourselves when we tried, but I think he flattered us. He helped us to climb on the top of it – not an easy thing to do at all – and then he rocked it with us sitting on it. As he led the way back he took us through a narrow passage between two great rocks and told us that we must each of us make a wish as we passed through and never tell what it was, and then it would come true. "But we don't need to ask what the young ladies wish," he said, "they all wish the same thing." We wondered how many years he had been making that same joke over and over again. No doubt he must have got some pretty tips by it, when there were young women and young men both in the party.

We were going to walk from here to the Land's End, five miles, for it was one of the places where we had been told that we must walk, so as to see the scenery. We had already told the driver to go on to the Land's End and wait there for us. The guide showed us how to go and offered to go with us, but we thought that we did not need him. "You won't be able to see the Scillys to-day," he said. "Sometimes you can see them from the Land's End, but it isn't clear enough to-day. But you can be sure of a fine day to-morrow. When it is clear enough to see the Scillys it almost always rains the next day."

So we felt cheered at missing a sight that we had hoped to see, and went on our way. All the way the walk was up headlands and down ravines, with many grand and beautiful pictures – great crags and domes and pinnacles of rock and deep valleys and gorges and caves, and the sea always crashing and roaring down below us.

And when we came to the Land's End, of course that was the best of all. For there the sea seemed rougher than anywhere else, though it was not a rough day. It was no new thing for us to stand on a point of rock, with all the land behind us and nothing but boundless ocean before us. We did not need to come to the Land's End or to England for that. But there was something awful and solemn about these towers of stone that stood here to keep the sea from washing England away, and about the sea that was working at them while we looked, dashing up against them and slipping back and dashing up again, as it had been doing for thousands of years before we had come to look, and as it would do for thousands of years after we were gone. And after all these ages of work and struggle the waves seemed to be still angry, still fierce and full of wrath that the land should resist them so long. "Old rocks," they seemed to say, "you think that you are firm and steady and strong. But wait – and wait – there is much time before both of us still. Stand against us as you will; we shall still clash and beat upon you, and at last, in spite of all your firmness, we shall wear and wash you away, and we shall cover you sometime as we covered old Lyonnesse."

Lyonnesse! That, after all, I believe, is the wonderful thing to think of at the Land's End. "Yes, now," I said, "we are looking straight out over Lyonnesse – Tristram's country, the country that is lost. This is where it began, and it stretched away out there where there is nothing now but ocean, away out to the Scilly Islands, which we are not to see to-day. For thirty miles old Lyonnesse reached out from here, and even now, they say, for all that way, the bottom of the ocean lies at an even depth, and not like the bottom in other places. And they say, too, that when the water had covered Lyonnesse for so long that people had almost forgotten that there ever was any land there, the fishermen used to think of it again, because they sometimes drew up their hooks with pieces of doors and windows caught upon them. And nothing more than these ever came back of a country that had its towns and its fields and its forests and its people, which were all lost under the water together.

"And I remember an old book which says that more than Lyonnesse was taken away from Cornwall by the sea. For the old book says that St. Michael's Mount, which we saw this morning, used to have another name, that meant 'the rock in the wood.' And from this it was thought that St. Michael's Mount stood in a forest once, and not in the sea, as it does now. And the book, which was written about three hundred years ago, says that even then, when the tides were low around St. Michael's Mount, the stumps and roots of great trees were sometimes seen half buried in the sand."

Perhaps this is all nothing but old fable, but the land of Cornwall and the sea of Cornwall look as if it were true. How could these terrible waves and tempests tear and beat and surge upon this country, even with its walls of rock, without taking something away? You can laugh at the old wives' tales – if it is your way to laugh at such things – it is not ours – while you are at home, but when you stand at the Land's End and look out to sea, if you have a bit of the love of a story in you, you must and you will believe in Lyonnesse.

CHAPTER IX

It does not matter just where we were when we told and heard these next few stories. Neither do I need to use quotation marks all through them. You will understand that we did tell them and hear them somewhere. They belong to no place. When King Arthur's knights set out from Camelot to seek the Holy Grail everything seemed at once to grow mysterious and marvellous and magical. Place and time were unknown and almost unthought of. Knights rode about without knowing or caring where they went. Sometimes they found more wonderful adventures than had ever been thought of before, and sometimes they rode for days and saw no house and no living thing. Friends met friends and did not know them; fathers fought with sons, and brothers with brothers. New knights won glory and knights who were old and tried were put to shame. Common men became prophets, and so prophets became common. The worst of men gave counsel to the best of knights, and the knights could scarcely tell whether the things that they were told to do were the best and the wisest or the most foolish and the worst. There were signs and omens and visions, and there were hard trials of courage and of faithfulness.

There are a hundred stories of what was seen and said and done. They are all different, and among them all much seems confused and dim and uncertain. But everywhere and through everything is seen, like a clear flash of fleeting flame, one perfect knight, the strongest, noblest, greatest knight who ever came to Arthur's court, the one best knight of all the world. Others wander and stray and are tempted and overcome and disheartened, and then there is a gleam of a fire-colored armor, and there is a swift stroke of a spear that never missed its aim, the wicked are overthrown, the helpless are rescued, and the knight has passed on toward his goal of the Holy Grail.

It all began on the night before the feast of Pentecost, when so many strange things happened. The King and the Queen and the knights were in the great hall at Camelot, and a woman, whom no one knew, rode into the hall on horseback. She dismounted and came before the King and said: "My lord, tell me which is Sir Lancelot."

"That is Sir Lancelot," said the King, pointing to where he sat.

"Sir Lancelot," she said, "I am sent to you by King Pelles. He asks you to come with me to an abbey in a forest not far from here."

"And what am I to do there?" Lancelot asked.

"I am not to tell you that," she said; "I am only to bring you to the abbey."

"I will go with you, then," said Lancelot, "if it is to please King Pelles."

"Lancelot," said the Queen, "to-morrow is the feast of Pentecost; shall you not be with us then?"

"Madame," said the woman, "he shall be back here by dinner-time to-morrow."

So Lancelot put on his armor and rode with the woman till they came to the abbey in the forest. There, when he was unarmed, some nuns came to him, leading a young man. "Sir Lancelot," one of them said, "this young squire is the grandson of King Pelles. He is strong and brave and noble. He has learned much and it is time now for him to be made a knight. He asks you, and so does King Pelles and so do we, that you will make him a knight."

Then Lancelot looked at the young man. He was scarcely more than a boy in his years but he was tall and strong. Lancelot thought that he had never seen so beautiful a face besides its beauty there was courage in it, and freedom and hope and all the rich flush and glow of a bright, new manhood. And a strange feeling came to Lancelot as he looked, and a voice seemed to be saying in his ears: "He has come! He has come!" Lancelot could not have told what it meant. He only felt that there was something in this young man that made him different from any other he had ever seen, something without a name, by which he knew that he was greater and finer and truer than the rest. "To-night, then," said Lancelot, "let him watch his arms in your chapel, and to-morrow I will make him a knight."

And so it was done. The young man watched his arms in the chapel while the others slept, and in the morning Lancelot made him a knight. Then Lancelot begged the new knight to come to the court with him, but he answered: "No, it is not time for me to go to the court, but I shall be there with you soon."

"So Lancelot rode back to Camelot alone. And then began the most wonderful day of all King Arthur's reign. When Lancelot had come and all the knights were sitting in the hall a squire ran in and went to the King and said: 'My lord, I have just come up from the river, and down there a great stone is floating on the water and there is a sword sticking in it.'

"That is a wonderful thing, truly," said the King; "we will go and see it."

So the King and the Queen and all the knights left the hall and went down to the river. And there, truly enough, was the stone, floating on the river, and there was the sword sticking in it, as the squire had said. And the King saw letters on the stone and he came near and read them: "No one shall ever draw this sword out of this stone except the one to whom it belongs, the best knight of the world."

"Surely," said the King, "I think that the best knights of the world are in my court; who will try to draw this sword?" and he looked toward Lancelot.

"I do not think," said Lancelot, "that the sword is mine, and I will not try to draw it."

But many of the other knights tried to draw the sword and could not, and the King looked at Lancelot again and said: "Will you not try to take this sword? Surely there is no better knight in the world than you."

"No," said Lancelot, "it is not for me. Remember, my lord, all the wonderful things that Merlin told long ago. The best knight of the world is not among us yet, but I believe that he is coming soon. Let us all go back to the hall, my lord, and keep our feast and wait for him."

And back they went to the hall, and they were scarcely in their places when there came another wonder. An old man came into the hall, leading a young man by the hand. They saw that he was an old man only by his figure and by his step and by the end of a white beard which they could see. For he wore a long, white robe, and a hood hung low down over his face, so that they could not see it. The young man was dressed all in flame-colored armor, and he had no shield or sword, but an empty scabbard hung by his side. They came and stood close to the throne and closer to the Siege Perilous. Bors sat near them, and it seemed to him that he knew, just as it had seemed to him once before, long ago, at the Castle of Carbonek, that this old man was Joseph of Arimathæa, who would have died hundreds of years ago, but that the power of the Holy Grail kept him alive. And he knew, too, that the young man was the beautiful child with the deep eyes and the bright, sweet face and the hair like gold, whom he had seen at the Castle of Carbonek. Percivale sat next to Bors, and it seemed to him too that he knew the old man, though how he could not tell. Next to Bors on the other side was Lancelot, and what he knew was that the young man was the one whom he had made a knight that morning at the abbey.

"King Arthur," said the old man, "I have brought you a new knight, Sir Galahad. You have waited for him long, for you were told of him before he was born, and his place at your Round Table was waiting for him before you yourself were born."

"He is welcome here," said the King, "and you are welcome too." But almost before he had spoken the old man was gone from the hall and the young knight in the flame-colored armor stood before him alone. Yes, there at last he stood, Galahad, whose name had been spoken with wonder or with hope or with doubt so many times. Only the best knight of the world, Merlin had said, should sit in the Siege Perilous, and the best knight of the world should be Galahad. How many times Arthur had looked at that seat and wondered why his best knight, Lancelot, could not sit there, and what the knight could be like who should be better than Lancelot. And now here he stood – Galahad.

But there was something else for the best knight of the world to do. The knights who filled the hall were not thinking then of the Siege Perilous. They were thinking of the stone floating on the river, and the sword sticking in it. The King saw them whispering together and pointing that way and he said to the young man: "If you are indeed that Galahad whom we have waited for so long, you are more welcome than any other who has come here since Lancelot, my best knight till now, the son of my old friend King Ban. It you are that true Galahad who was promised, then you will be the best of all my knights – better than Lancelot. Will you come and prove to us whether you are so?"

Then the King took the young man's hand and led him down to the river and all the rest followed them to see. And the King said: "Try if you can draw that sword, for none of my other knights can draw it."

"See, my lord," said the young man, "I have brought no sword, only this empty scabbard, for I knew that I should find my sword here." And he took hold of the sword that stuck in the stone and drew it out and put it in his scabbard.

There was no doubt of it now; the knight whom they had waited for had come. Yet the King's face was sad as he led the way back to the hall, for it seemed to him that now there could be little to wait for and the days of the Round Table would not be many more. But other thoughts came to him a moment later, when the new knight knelt before him to take the oath that would make him a knight of the Round Table. For then, just for an instant, it seemed to him that the time had gone back to the beginning of his reign. There was a look in the young man's eyes that brought back the day when Lancelot had knelt before him like this and had sworn this oath and when he had believed that Lancelot would surely be the one perfect knight. Yes, it was the same clear light that he had seen for an instant that day in Lancelot's eyes, the glow of something great and wonderful, he knew not what. But there was more in the face of this new knight. There was something which told Arthur that, though he swore that in all things he would be true and loyal to God and to the King, yet, without the oath, he could never have a thought that would not be true and loyal.

And the King scarcely knew whether it was great joy or great sorrow that made him almost tremble before this boy. And when he took his hand again they all saw that his face was white as he turned toward the seat that was next the throne. And there at last in that Siege Perilous were the letters, more of fire than of gold, as they seemed: "This is the seat of Galahad."

Those who could see whispered to those who could not and the word ran down the hall and then in an instant everyone was still. After all these years of waiting, after the wonders and the prophecies, would any one, even Galahad, dare to sit in that seat? They had feared that seat and had seen it empty so long that they could not believe it, and they all stood up in their places and strained their eyes and held their breaths in wonder and dread. And of all who were there Galahad alone had no fear and no dread. Only for an instant he stood there, with the eyes of all the rest upon him and his own upon the King's, and then he sat in the Siege Perilous.