WHY ARE YOU ALL ARMED?” ASKS SIR LANCELOT.
“Each of us woke from his own dream,” Sir Bors replies, “and in each of our dreams you were in danger of your life.”
Sir Lancelot gazes at his nephew, and at all the others. Twenty-two faces white in the candlelight.
“Now I know who are my friends and who is against me,” he says.
“Lancelot, we will do as you do.” One by one, they all swear it.
“But what am I to do?” Sir Lancelot asks. “What if the king sentences Guinevere to death?”
“If that’s her sentence, it’s because of you.”
“And so you must rescue her.”
“If the king can lay his hands on you, he’ll have you burned as well.”
“Or hanged and drawn and quartered.”
Sir Lancelot listens to his friends’ advice. The candles tremble.
“But if I rescue her,” he says, “there will be more bloodshed. In all the confusion, I may kill more of my own friends. And where would I take her?”
“That’s the least of your problems,” Sir Bors replies. “Ride her to Joyous Gard, your own castle.”
“You must rescue her.”
“We’ll ride beside you.”
Now Sir Mordred is kneeling to King Arthur. His father.
“Blood!” the king exclaims. “You’re caked in it.”
“We trapped him in the queen’s chamber,” Mordred tells him. “He was unarmed. But he slew Sir Colgrevaunce and put on his armor. He killed thirteen of us.”
“Thirteen!” King Arthur cries.
“Knights of the Round Table,” Mordred says, very deliberately. “Only I escaped.”
Arthur-in-the-stone holds his head in his hands. He groans.
Mordred backs away into the shadows, into the deep darkness, and Sir Gawain steps into my stone.
“Lancelot was found in the queen’s chamber,” the king says. “The queen is guilty of treason. Guinevere must burn.”
“Sire,” Sir Gawain says, “be wise and wait.” He looks so grave. So troubled.
“Lancelot has killed thirteen knights.”
“My king,” Sir Gawain says, “you don’t know why Lancelot went to the queen’s chamber. I don’t know. We only know what other people say. Lancelot has fought for her; he has saved her life. For all we know, she summoned him so she could reward him in secret.”
King Arthur stares at Sir Gawain. “Is that possible?” he asks.
“So as to avoid gossip,” Sir Gawain continues. “And maybe that was unwise. But we often do things we believe for the best, and then they turn out to be for the worst. I trust Queen Guinevere. She is honorable. And I know Lancelot will take on anyone who openly accuses him.”
“He may be stronger than any other knight,” King Arthur replies, “but that doesn’t mean he’s innocent.”
“Or guilty,” says Sir Gawain. “We must be knights of the heart as well as the body. That’s what Lancelot says.”
“Damn Lancelot!” shouts the king. “Guinevere will burn and he’ll never fight for her again.”
Sir Gawain shakes his head.
“How can you?” cries the king. “He has killed Agravain, your own brother. He has killed your two sons, Florence and Lovel.”
Sir Gawain lowers his eyes and three times he crosses himself. “I warned them,” he says quietly. “My brother. My own dear sons. I mourn them and I always will, but they’ve caused their own deaths.”
“Gawain,” says the king, “put on your best armor. Tell your young brothers, Gaheris and Gareth, to do the same. In one hour go to the queen’s chamber and bring her to the fire.”
“Never!” says Sir Gawain. “Guinevere is good and true. I cannot bear to see her die. My heart would burst.”
“Instruct your brothers, then,” the king says hoarsely.
“They’ll feel the same as I do,” Gawain replies, “but they’re so young, they will not dare refuse you. They’ve no quarrel with Lancelot. I will tell them to come unarmed.”
Sir Gawain’s eyes are brimming with tears. My seeing stone is brimming with his tears. Like black ice thawing, the whole world of it is weeping.
She is tied to a stake, wearing a simple white smock. Heaped all around her are branches, dead branches that were once alive, reaching arms of beech and oak that lived and breathed in the greenwood.
And around the pyre stand lords and knights and ladies, hundreds of them, weeping, clenching their fists. But not one of them raises a hand to save the queen.
Now King Arthur nods, and his hooded executioner thrusts a flaming brand under the branches.…
Smoke. Smoke in my stone.
Now there’s a thrumming, a thunder of hooves. Horsemen crowd into the courtyard and whirl their swords. Heaven help all those unable to avoid them.
In the drifting smoke, Sir Lancelot jabs and lunges and beats and lashes and thrashes his way through the crowd to the pyre.
Without knowing whom he is striking, he kills his own knight, Sir Gareth.
He kills Sir Gaheris.
They are buried beneath Sir Griflet and Sir Tor, Sir Gauter, Sir Gilmere, Sir Driant, Sir Priamus…a pile of his own friends.
Sir Lancelot spurs his horse right into the licking flames. With his dagger, he cuts the queen loose. He throws his cloak round her, and she grasps his hands and clambers up behind him. She puts her bare arms around his waist.
Now Sir Lancelot wheels round. He shouts to high heaven.
Across the courtyard, across the width of this middle-earth, King Arthur and his knight of knights gaze for all time at one another.
So proud. So desolate.
Away they gallop! Away they stream, out and away, Sir Lancelot and Guinevere and all their followers, leaving in their wake the quick and the dead.