I had to pretend that I liked it. I said that there were several things
in London that I wanted to see again, and I wanted to look up two or
three places not far from London that had stories about them. I was
afraid I should not have time to go to them if I went to Paris too.
When I said that Helen began to take an interest, as I had thought that
perhaps she might. "Are there more stories in London?" she asked.
"If you and I," I said, "were to stay in London and find a story every
day, we should not live long enough to find half of them."
"Oh!" said Helen.
"Now do you think?" I said, "when you come to think of it a second time,
that you really need Helen in Paris any more than you do me? When she
is a little older she will want to go there just as much as you do now,
and then she can go. But now, don't you think that you should like to
have her off your mind as well as me, and don't you think that she could
do a good deal toward cheering me up there in London, while you are
gone?"
Helen looked at her mother to see what she was going to say. She said
nothing at all, but she looked at Helen in a way that meant that she
might do just as she pleased about it, and Helen said: "If you don't
mind very much, I think I will stay in London."
Helen's mother did not mind very much, so I said: "Very well, then; this
is what we will do. We will go all the way to Dover with you, and then
we will come back to London and have as good a time as we can, till you
come back from having the best time that ever was in the world, in
Paris. And when you are with us again we will come back here to
Glastonbury and go to some other good places."
Nobody could make the least objection to that. And so the next day but
one Helen and I found that we were left quite to ourselves in London.
We found plenty of things to amuse us. We went to see the Tower of
London, as Americans do. We found the old armor and weapons that were
there most interesting, and Helen made a discovery. "Did King Arthur's
knights wear armors like those?" she asked.
"Yes," I said, "about like those."
"With all those chains and iron things?"
"Yes, to be sure."
"Then I know what became of the green lace girdles that Gawain and the
rest of them had."
"Very well; what did become of them?"
"Why, don't you see? They all wore out. They wouldn't last a week, if
they put them round their waists, with all those iron things on."
There was really no need of any better explanation than this, and so I
gave up ever finding any.
"There is one curious little thing about this Tower," I said, "that is
not in most of the books about it. It was here, you know, long before
King Arthur's time. One of the old kings was called Bran the Blessed.
And once he told his men that when he was dead they must cut off his
head and bury it under the White Tower, in London, with the face toward
France, and that as long as it stayed there England could never be
harmed by any foe from abroad. Now I have never heard of any White Tower
in London, except this big square one in the middle of the Tower of
London, so that I have no doubt that it was here that the head of Bran
the Blessed was buried, with the face toward France, to guard England
from her foreign foes. But when Arthur came to be King he had the head
dug up, for he said that it would be better for England to be guarded by
the strength and the courage of Englishmen than by magic. You can look
around you at the England of to-day and judge for yourself whether
Arthur was right."
I had heard that there were pictures of some of the King Arthur stories
in the Queen's robing-room, at the Palace of Westminster, and of course
we wanted to see them. Now anybody who looks moderately respectable can
walk through the Palace of Westminster any Saturday. The trouble is
that the policemen who are posted in the rooms will not let you stay in
any one of them long enough to do more than take a glance at it and pass
on to the next room. Of course this would not do for us, when there
were pictures of King Arthur to be looked at. But we were very lucky.
We knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody else, and I rather
think that this last somebody was the secretary of the Lord Great
Chamberlain. At any rate, there were some letters written about us, and
we were told to go to the Palace of Westminster and ask for the
inspector of police. So we went there when Saturday came around and saw
the inspector and told him that we were the ones whom the letters had
been written about. He was very glad to see us and he introduced us to
somebody else. Once more I think that it was the secretary of the Lord
Great Chamberlain, but I am not sure. Whoever he was, he was most
polite, and when we told him what friends of King Arthur's we were he
ordered the policemen on duty to let us stay in the Queen's robing-room
as long as we liked.
Having all the time we wanted, we did not hurry, but stood for a few
minutes at the windows, looking out across the Thames. "It was
somewhere over there," I said, "not very far on the other side of the
river, that there used to live one of the wickedest knights that were
ever in King Arthur's court. His name was Meliagraunce. I don't know
what made him so wicked, but I suppose he was so to start with. It
occurred to him once that there could be no better way for him to make
trouble than by stealing the Queen and carrying her off to his castle,
over there across the Thames. King Arthur was holding his court just
here at Westminster then, for it seems that there was a palace here as
long ago as that.
"Meliagraunce had to watch a long time for his chance, for there were
usually a good many people about the Queen, and Lancelot was likely to
be among them, and somehow, wicked as he was, he did not care about
doing anything to harm the Queen while Lancelot was with her. But one
day he heard that the Queen was going maying, with some knights and
ladies, and that Lancelot was not going. That, he thought, would be
just his chance. Now, as the Queen did not mean to go far from
Westminster, there was no thought of any danger. So the knights who
rode with her wore swords at their sides, as they did almost everywhere,
but they carried no spears or shields, and they wore no armor. There
were only ten of them, with ten ladies and a few squires and pages. But
Meliagraunce got ready twenty knights, fully armed, and a hundred
archers on foot.
"Westminster and the country about it looked very different then from
what they do now. Now there is nothing but city for miles around, but
then there were fields, and a little farther off there were woods. So
the Queen and her knights and ladies rode to the woods and gathered
flowers and green branches, and decked themselves and their horses with
them and started back toward Westminster. Then Meliagraunce and his
armed men fell upon them. The Queen's knights fought for her as well as
they could, but they were so few and so poorly armed that they were no
match for their enemies. In a little while they were all of them
wounded, and the Queen saw that they would all be killed if the fight
went on. So she called to Meliagraunce and begged him to stop the fight
and promised that she would go with him to his castle, if he would let
all her knights go too, for they were wounded and she must have them
with her, so that she could take care of them.
"Meliagraunce agreed to this and they all set off toward his castle.
But on the way the Queen whispered to a page who was on a swift horse,
and told him to ride back to Westminster and tell Lancelot that she was
a prisoner in the castle of Meliagraunce. So the page watched till
nobody was looking, and then turned his horse suddenly and rode back.
Of course Meliagraunce and his men saw in a moment what he was doing and
what it was for, and they shot at him with arrows, but they missed him
and he was soon beyond their reach.
"Now Meliagraunce and all those who were with him had to go slowly,
because of the wounded knights, but the page who went to tell Lancelot
rode fast. And when Lancelot heard what the page had to tell he rode
fast too, so that he came to the castle of Meliagraunce not long after
the others arrived there. And as soon as Meliagraunce heard that
Lancelot had come he began to see what a silly thing he had done and to
wish that he were well out of it. So he went to the Queen and begged
her not to let Lancelot kill him. If she would promise that, he said,
they would all go back to Westminster the next morning. So the Queen
sent for Lancelot and told him that it would be better to do as
Meliagraunce had said, for Meliagraunce was a knight of King Arthur's
and it would be better that it should not be known what he had done as
it would have to be if Lancelot fought with him and killed him. And of
course Lancelot said that it should be as the Queen wished.
"But Meliagraunce had still other mischief in his mind. Now that he had
found that he must send the Queen back to Westminster, he decided that
he would charge her with treason to the King. That was as easy a charge
to make against her as any, and it was as easy a way to harm her as any,
since that was what he wanted to do. You know anybody could charge
anybody else with anything, as long as he was ready to fight and risk
his life to prove it. of course it did not take a minute for Lancelot
to say that the charge that Meliagraunce made was a lie and that he
would fight with him to prove that the Queen was not a traitor to the
King, whenever and wherever Meliagraunce liked. And Meliagraunce said
that it should be eight days from that day, at Westminster, before King
Arthur.
"Now you may be sure that Meliagraunce would never have said a word
against the Queen if he had thought that he should really have to fight
with Lancelot about it. But he had still another trick to play, which
he thought was a good one. He pretended to be very friendly with
Lancelot and asked him if he should like to see his castle. Then he led
him about from room to room and at last he led him over a trap door. It
gave way and Lancelot fell down into a dungeon and struck on a heap of
straw. And there Meliagraunce meant to keep him till after the time for
the fight. And so, as he expected, it would all be decided his way,
because Lancelot would not be there to defend the Queen, or, at the
worst, he would have to fight with some knight who was not so good as
Lancelot.
"I suppose I ought to tell you just here that King Arthur himself could
not fight for the Queen in such a case as this, because he had to sit
and be the judge in all such fights. And Arthur always did justice to
rich and poor and to great and small alike, and he would do the same
justice, or he would try to, to the one whom he loved best of all the
world as to the meanest man or woman who could be brought before him.
"When the rest were ready to go back to Westminster they were surprised,
of course, that Lancelot was not with them. But they did not think that
it was so very strange, for Lancelot often went away suddenly in search
of adventures and told nobody that he was going. So they went back and
told the King that Meliagraunce had charged the Queen with treason and
that Lancelot was to defend her. And the King was not alarmed at all,
for he knew that the Queen could not be guilty of such a thing, and he
felt sure that Lancelot would be at hand when the time came to prove it.
"But the King felt more sure of Lancelot than Lancelot felt of himself,
for all that week he was in prison. And on the eighth day Meliagraunce
came to Westminster ready for the fight and called upon the King to give
judgment against the Queen, because Lancelot was not there to defend
her. Then Arthur said that he was sure that Lancelot must be dead or
sick or else in prison, for he never failed to keep his promise before,
and he asked if there was any other knight who would fight in his place
to defend the Queen. Then a knight of the Round Table said that he was
sure, too, that it was as the King had said and he would fight for the
Queen instead of Lancelot.
"But Meliagraunce, as clever people sometimes do, had made a mistake.
He did not know, perhaps, that there was a woman in his castle who was
in love with Lancelot. But there were a good many such women scattered
over England and he ought to have been careful about it. On the very
morning when the battle was to be she came to Lancelot and told him that
she would let him out of his prison if he would give her one kiss.
Lancelot thought that this was not a large price to pay and he paid it.
Then the woman let him out and found his armor for him and helped him to
get a horse from the stable and he set off, as fast as he could go, for
Westminster. And he arrived just as the knight who had promised to
fight for him had taken his place ready to begin the battle.
"Lancelot rode straight up before the King and told him how Meliagraunce
had trapped him and kept him in prison, and then he took the place of
the other knight and was ready for the fight. Nobody had any doubt how
the fight would go. Everybody felt that the right would win and that
the right meant Lancelot. The King felt so sure of it that he had the
Queen come and sit in her place beside him, though she was accused of
treason. The heralds gave the signal, the knights charged together, and
Meliagraunce was thrown from his horse. Lancelot dismounted then and
they fought with swords, but it was only a few moments before
Meliagraunce was disarmed and helpless and begging for mercy.
"Then Lancelot had a hard question to decide. In any ordinary fight it
would be unknightly to refuse mercy to any knight who asked it, but
Lancelot felt that such a cowardly, lying wretch as this had no right to
live and that he had no right to let him live. He thought for a moment
and then he said: 'Meliagraunce, take up your sword and let us go on
with this fight to the end.'
"'I will not fight any more,' said Meliagraunce; 'you have beaten me and
I ask your mercy, and you must give it, as you are a knight of the Round
Table.'
"'Meliagraunce,' said Lancelot, 'I will take off my helmet and all the
armor that I can from the left side of my body, and my left hand shall
be tied behind me, and then I will fight with you.'
"Then Meliagraunce ran toward the King. 'My lord,' he cried, 'have you
heard what he has said? I call upon you to make him keep his promise
and fight me with his head and his left side uncovered.'
"'Meliagraunce,' said Lancelot, 'come back! I am not a liar, like you,
and I need no one to make me keep my promises, even to traitors and
cowards.'
"Then Lancelot's armor was taken off his left side, as much of it as
could be, and his helmet was taken off. And his left hand was tied
behind him, so that he could not use his shield. And in this way he
stood ready for the fight again. Meliagraunce aimed a blow at his head,
but Lancelot caught it with his sword and put it aside. Then he struck
one great stroke and split Meliagraunce's helmet and laid him dead on
the field. And everybody felt that the Round Table was better by the
loss of Meliagraunce than it would be by the gain of three good knights.
And now I think that it is about time for us to look at these pictures
that we came to see."
The pictures were painted on the walls of two sides of the room. On the
third side was a throne, with a canopy over it, and on the fourth side
were the windows. The artist had painted scenes from the stories of
King Arthur and he had made them represent the virtues that he thought
ought to belong to a good knight. One of his pictures he called
"Mercy," and it showed Sir Gawain kneeling before Queen Guinevere and
swearing always to be merciful and never to be against ladies. The one
next to this was "Hospitality," and in it King Arthur was receiving Sir
Tristram as a knight of the Round Table. Another picture was
"Courtesy," and there Tristram was playing his harp to Isolt. For
"Religion" there was "The Vision of Sir Galahad and his Company." Then
there was one of "Generosity," with King Arthur thrown from his horse in
battle and his life spared by Lancelot. "That seems a strange picture
to you, no doubt," I said, "but some time I will tell you the story that
it belongs to, and then it will not seem so strange."
All around under these pictures and on the side of the room where the
throne was, there were carvings: "Arthur Delivered unto Merlin," "Arthur
Crowned King," "How Arthur Gate His Sword Excalibur," "King Arthur
Wedded to Guinevere," and many more.
"But of all these pictures," I said, "the one that reminds me of a story
that I want to tell you just now is this one of 'The Admission of Sir
Tristram to the Fellowship of the Round Table.' Tristram had been known
as the best knight of the world, next to Lancelot, for a long time
before he was a knight of the Round Table. King Arthur had long wished
that Tristram might be one of his knights, and Lancelot had heard so
much about him that he wanted to know him and to be his friend. So at
last Lancelot and some of the other knights set out to hunt for Tristram
and to try to bring him to the court.
"You remember that Tristram was in love with Isolt, the Princess of
Ireland. There was another knight, Sir Palamides, who was in love with
her too. I must tell you about this Palamides, for there never was a
knight who belonged more to that dear, silly old time or fitted into it
better than he did. He was a good and strong and brave knight, but
Isolt did not care two straws for him and never would, and he knew it.
But do you suppose that made any difference to him? Not a bit. He made
it half of his business to love her year after year, though he knew that
it would never do him or anybody else any good. It never came into his
head that there were just as good fish in the sea as ever came out of
it. No, all he cared for was to sit on the shore of the sea, never
trying to catch or even thinking of any other good fish, but only
wishing and wishing that he might catch the one that he knew he never
could. It was just like a good knight of those days.
"I said that he made it half of his business to love Isolt. The other
half of his business was to hunt the questing beast. It was called the
questing beast because of the questing or barking noise that came out of
it. It was a wonderful animal altogether. It had a body like a leopard
in front and like a lion behind, but its head was like a serpent's and
its feet were like those of a deer. And it did not make this barking
noise with its mouth, but the noise was inside the beast, and it was not
like the barking of one dog, but of sixty dogs. I don't know why
Palamides hunted it or what he was going to do with it if he ever caught
it, but this again was just like a knight of those days.
"Now Palamides used often to feel very unfriendly toward Tristram,
because Tristram loved Isolt. By nature I believe that he was a good
fellow, but he was hot-tempered, and, like other hot-tempered people, he
sometimes did things that he was afterward sorry for. And so, when he
met Tristram, he often felt angry and wanted to fight with him. And
Tristram beat him usually, but not always, for Palamides was such a good
knight that he could give Tristram, or even Lancelot, a pretty hard
battle. Then Palamides would be Tristram's friend for awhile, and then
he would think more about Isolt and would grow to be his enemy again,
and so would be ready for another fight.
"And once Tristram and Palamides had set a time and a place to fight
together and settle everything between them. But when the day came
Palamides was held in prison by some enemy and could not come. But
Tristram was at the place, and as he waited he saw a knight riding
toward him, with a closed helmet and a covered shield. Of course he
thought that this was Palamides, ready for the fight, so he put his
spear in rest and faced him, and the other knight, seeing him do that,
got ready to defend himself. Now this other knight was Lancelot, and
when the two had been fighting for a few minutes each began to wonder
who the other could be. Tristram knew very well that he was fighting
with a better knight than Palamides, and Lancelot knew that he had never
fought with so good a knight before.
"And after a long time it came into their heads to stop fighting for a
moment and ask each other who they were. And when each had told the
other his name they saw what a mistake they had made in fighting at all.
It was then that Lancelot made Tristram come to the court with him, and
it was then that King Arthur welcomed him and gave him his seat at the
Round Table, as the picture shows.
"And now, after all this bother, we have come to the story. Tristram
had not been long a knight of the Round Table when King Arthur made a
great tournament in his honor. It was at the Castle of Lonazep. I
don't know just where that was, but it was somewhere up in the other end
of England. As Tristram was on his way to the tournament he met
Palamides, and they fought, as usual. And Tristram won, as usual, and
then Palamides begged him to let him ride to the tournament with him and
fight for him and do him service.
"So they rode together till they came to the River Humber, and there
they saw a boat, all covered with canopies of purple silk, coming up the
stream. It came to the shore close to them and lay there still. Then
Tristram and Palamides went down into the boat and saw a strange sight.
In the middle of it was a couch, all covered with silk and cloth of
gold, and on the couch lay a dead knight, armed all but his head. As
Tristram stood gazing and wondering at this he saw that there was a
letter in the dead knight's hand. He took the letter and opened and
read it, and this is what it said: 'To the knights of King Arthur: I who
bring this letter was Hermance, King of the Red City. I was killed by
two traitors, for my lands and my crown. Now I pray that some one of
King Arthur's knights will avenge my death and will take my city and my
castles and my crown for his reward.'
"Then Palamides said: 'Sir Tristram, you must be at this tournament, for
King Arthur has made it in your honor, and he and many others will wish
to see you here. So let me go to avenge the death of this King, and
whatever I do shall be done for you and in your name.'
"'You are right,' said Tristram, 'and you may go, but come back, if you
can, for the tournament.'
"'If I live,' said Palamides, 'and the work that I find to do will let
me, I will be with you again at the tournament.'
"Then Tristram went ashore from the boat and Palamides stayed in it, and
the men turned the boat and it went away down the river. The men in the
boat knew why Palamides stayed in it. He did not speak to them and they
did not speak to him. He knew that they would take him where he ought
to go, so he stood at the prow and watched the fields that they passed
and the woods and the river, and waited to see and to know who these
traitors were whom he must punish and what sort of task it was to be to
avenge this dead King. And after a time the boat came to where the
river widened out toward the sea, and the men steered it toward a castle
that stood on the shore. Then they gave Palamides a horn and told him
to blow it. And the people of the castle knew the sound of the horn,
and when they heard it they came down to where the boat had landed and
welcomed Palamides and led him up into the hall. There the lord of the
castle met him and made him sit at the table and they brought him food
and wine. And Palamides saw that the lord of the castle and all the
others in it were dressed in black, and after he had eaten and drunk he
asked why this was.
"'It is for the death of our King,' the lord of the castle answered.
'He was Hermance, the King of the Red City, and no truer king ever
lived. He had two foster sons, whom he had brought up since they were
children. He loved them as if they had been his own sons, but they were
false and wicked. He meant when he died to give them everything he had,
but they could not wait. So they watched their chance, and one day,
when he had been hunting and had stopped to drink at a spring, they came
behind him and stabbed him in the back. There, beside the spring, I
found him, not yet dead. He made me put him in a boat and he made me
write a letter and put it in his hand before he died. The boatmen were
told to go up the Humber toward Lonazep, where all King Arthur's knights
were soon to be, and the letter asked that some one of them would come
to avenge the death of our good King. And you, Sir Knight--since you
have come in this boat--I suppose that you have read this letter and
have come to help us.'
"'One of the best knights of the world, Sir Tristram, read that letter,'
Palamides said, 'and I have come for him and in his name to avenge the
death of your King. So tell me where I shall find these men.'