WHY SHOULD YOU THINK YOU’RE ANY BETTER than the others?” Nascien asks.
“I don’t.”
“Why should you succeed when they have failed?”
“I’ve fought in Christ’s name against howling heathens,” Sir Lancelot says. “I’ve escaped from a city under siege and blazing; I’ve fought demons in a graveyard. I am resolved to achieve the Holy Grail.”
“Do you repent of all your sins?” the hermit asks.
Sir Lancelot bows his head. “All of them,” he says.
“All of them?”
“Except one,” says Sir Lancelot.
“Which one?” asks Nascien.
“How can such sweetness be a sin?”
“All sins taste sweet,” the hermit replies, “but their rewards taste as bitter as gall.”
“My sin is love,” Sir Lancelot says. “I love a woman, and she is a queen. She’s married to a king.”
“Foul lust!” says the hermit.
“No!” Lancelot quietly replies. “Our love is pure. I love her more than my own life, and whatever I do, I do in her name.”
“You deceive yourself, Lancelot,” the hermit replies. “You are Judas! You betray Jesus—you crucify Him.”
“I’ve never told anyone,” says Sir Lancelot. “I’ve never boasted of it, never betrayed it. I’ve never been disloyal to my king.”
“Repent here and now!” Nascien orders him. “Lust is a deadly sin.”
“How can I?” Sir Lancelot protests. “Whatever good I’ve done is because of our love.”
“You’re deaf,” the hermit says. “Your ears are thick with wax. You’re so blind, you wouldn’t be able to see the Holy Grail if it appeared in this cave. But Lancelot! It’s not too late. Once you were the greatest of all knights. You had no rival. You knew what was right, and you did what was right.”
Sir Lancelot listens to the ring dove singing at the entrance to the cave. His whole life filters past him.
“Satan himself was racked with pain because he saw the Holy Ghost burning in you,” the hermit says. “He longed to ruin you, and he knew his best chance was with a woman.”
Sir Lancelot shakes his head.
“He entered into Queen Guinevere,” continues the hermit, “and looked out at you through her eyes. The queen has blinded you to your deadly sin. You’re lost to Our Lord.”
Sir Lancelot sits in the cave, his arms wrapped round his knees, turning the hermit’s words over and over.
“I’ve never been untrue to Guinevere,” he says at last, “and she’s never been untrue to me. Our love is honorable. I can never repent of it.”
The hermit purses his lips. “But you will forgo it.”
Sir Lancelot closes his eyes. When he opens them again, they’re full of tears. “I will forgo it,” he says heavily.
“Unless your thoughts and feelings and actions match your words,” the hermit warns him, “you will never succeed.”
Now Sir Lancelot leaves the cave, and canters up to the gates of the great marble castle, Corbenic. He is welcomed, as Sir Gawain was, and the same two knights lead him into the castle cloister.
I can see the Guardian of the Grail again. Sir Lancelot walks across the dead grass to the foot of his bed.
“Lancelot,” the king whispers, “you have come to Corbenic, and I cannot even raise myself to greet you.”
“Sire,” says Sir Lancelot, “that’s why I have come. I will not fail you.”
A young woman enters the cloister. She’s wearing a wimple. She comes over to King Pellam and begins to dress his wounds, shaking and sobbing.
And now she starts to sing…her long eyelashes are trembling.
“Lulli, lullay, lulli, lullay.
The falcon has carried my love away.He carries him up, he carries him down,
He carries him into an orchard brown.In that orchard, there is a bed,
Hung with gold shining red,And in that bed there lies a knight,
His wounds bleeding day and night.Beside that bed a young woman stays,
And she sobs by night and day.And beside that bed there stands a stone,
CORPUS CHRISTI carved thereon.”
It’s true! There are words now on the block of stone at the foot of the king’s bed, and there weren’t when I saw it before. Corpus Christi. The body of Christ. Does that mean we fail Christ Himself in failing King Pellam?
The words of the lullaby are simple, but they’re not easy to understand. Why does the falcon carry off the man the young woman loves? I think the young woman beside the bed is the one who rode into Camelot on a mule, and asked King Arthur whether there was no knight at the Round Table who could achieve the Holy Grail. And maybe the knight in the song is the Guardian of the Grail.
Now the two knights return to the cloister and lead Sir Lancelot to the gloomy hall where twelve white-haired knights are waiting. He sits, he eats with them, he talks to them.
A door opens. Two young women glide in, and the room fills with light. One woman is carrying the Holy Grail, covered with thick white silk, and a dazzling sunbeam rises from it.
But Sir Lancelot cannot even see it. He has come to Corbenic but he cannot ask the question. I can tell by his face, by my own heart, he’s thinking about Queen Guinevere.
He’s longing to see her again, longing to hold her to him. Cool and clean. How can he possibly forgo this?
After supper, the old knights proceed from the hall and Sir Lancelot is so utterly worn out, he cannot stay awake.…He lies on a couch and sleeps.
Now a horn blast echoes through Corbenic. A voice without a body booms through the hall: “The man who does not belong here: Let him be gone.”
In my stone sound fades and shapes fade. Colors fade. Sir Lancelot fails.