Lyf lythes to nee,
Twa wordes or three,
Of one who was fair and free,
And fele in his fight.
--_Sir Percival_.
I suppose my birth was somewhat after the birth of Sir Percival of
Galles, for I never saw my father, and my mother brought me up quaintly;
not like a poor man's son, though, indeed, we had little money, and lived
in a lone place: it was on a bit of waste land near a river; moist, and
without trees; on the drier parts of it folks had built cottages--see, I
can count them on my fingers--six cottages, of which ours was one.
Likewise, there was a little chapel, with a yew tree and graves in the
church-yard--graves--yes, a great many graves, more than in the yards of
many Minsters I have seen, because people fought a battle once near us,
and buried many bodies in deep pits, to the east of the chapel; but this
was before I was born.
I have talked to old knights since who fought in that battle, and who
told me that it was all about a lady that they fought; indeed, this lady,
who was a queen, was afterwards, by her own wish, buried in the aforesaid
chapel in a most fair tomb; her image was of latoun gilt, and with a
colour on it; her hands and face were of silver, and her hair, gilded and
most curiously wrought, flowed down from her head over the marble.
It was a strange sight to see that gold and brass and marble inside that
rough chapel which stood on the marshy common, near the river.
Now, every St. Peter's day, when the sun was at its hottest, in the mid-
summer noontide, my mother (though at other times she only wore such
clothes as the folk about us) would dress herself most richly, and shut
the shutters against all the windows, and light great candles, and sit as
though she were a queen, till the evening: sitting and working at a
frame, and singing as she worked.
And what she worked at was two wings, wrought in gold, on a blue ground.
And as for what she sung, I could never understand it, though I know now
it was not in Latin.
And she used to charge me straightly never to let any man into the house
on St. Peter's day; therefore, I and our dog, which was a great old
bloodhound, always kept the door together.
But one St. Peter's day, when I was nearly twenty, I sat in the house
watching the door with the bloodhound, and I was sleepy, because of the
shut-up heat and my mother's singing, so I began to nod, and at last,
though the dog often shook me by the hair to keep me awake, went fast
asleep, and began to dream a foolish dream without hearing, as men
sometimes do: for I thought that my mother and I were walking to mass
through the snow on a Christmas day, but my mother carried a live goose
in her hand, holding it by the neck, instead of her rosary, and that I
went along by her side, not walking, but turning somersaults like a
mountebank, my head never touching the ground; when we got to the chapel
door, the old priest met us, and said to my mother, 'Why dame alive, your
head is turned green! Ah! never mind, I will go and say mass, but don't
let little Mary there go,' and he pointed to the goose, and went.
Then mass begun, but in the midst of it, the priest said out aloud, 'Oh I
forgot,' and turning round to us began to wag his grey head and white
beard, throwing his head right back, and sinking his chin on his breast
alternately; and when we saw him do this, we presently began also to
knock our heads against the wall, keeping time with him and with each
other, till the priest said, 'Peter! it's dragon-time now,' whereat the
roof flew off, and a great yellow dragon came down on the chapel-floor
with a flop, and danced about clumsily, wriggling his fat tail, and
saying to a sort of tune, 'O the Devil, the Devil, the Devil, O the
Devil,' so I went up to him, and put my hand on his breast, meaning to
slay him, and so awoke, and found myself standing up with my hand on the
breast of an armed knight; the door lay flat on the ground, and under it
lay Hector, our dog, whining and dying.
For eight hours I had been asleep; on awaking, the blood rushed up into
my face, I heard my mother's low mysterious song behind me, and knew not
what harm might happen to her and me, if that knight's coming made her
cease in it; so I struck him with my left hand, where his face was bare
under his mail-coif, and getting my sword in my light hand, drove its
point under his hawberk, so that it came out behind, and he fell, turned
over on his face, and died.
Then, because my mother still went on working and singing, I said no
word, but let him lie there, and put the door up again, and found Hector
dead.
I then sat down again and polished my sword with a piece of leather after
I had wiped the blood from it; and in an hour my mother arose from her
work, and raising me from where I was sitting, kissed my brow, saying,
'Well done, Lionel, you have slain our greatest foe, and now the people
will know you for what you are before you die--Ah God! though not before
_I_ die.'
So I said, 'Who is he, mother? he seems to be some Lord; am I a Lord
then?'
'A King, if the people will but know it,' she said.
Then she knelt down by the dead body, turned it round again, so that it
lay face uppermost, as before, then said:
'And so it has all come to this, has it? To think that you should run on
my son's sword-point at last, after all the wrong you have done me and
mine; now must I work carefully, least when you are dead you should still
do me harm, for that you are a King--Lionel!'
'Yea, Mother.'
'Come here and see; this is what I have wrought these many Peter's days
by day, and often other times by night.'
'It is a surcoat, Mother; for me?'
'Yea, but take a spade, and come into the wood.'
So we went, and my mother gazed about her for a while as if she were
looking for something, but then suddenly went forward with her eyes on
the ground, and she said to me:
'Is it not strange, that I who know the very place I am going to take you
to, as well as our own garden, should have a sudden fear come over me
that I should not find it after all; though for these nineteen years I
have watched the trees change and change all about it--ah! here, stop
now.'
We stopped before a great oak; a beech tree was behind us--she said,
'Dig, Lionel, hereabouts.'
So I dug and for an hour found nothing but beech roots, while my mother
seemed as if she were going mad, sometimes running about muttering to
herself, sometimes stooping into the hole and howling, sometimes throwing
herself on the grass and twisting her hands together above her head; she
went once down the hill to a pool that had filled an old gravel pit, and
came back dripping and with wild eyes; 'I am too hot,' she said, 'far too
hot this St. Peter's day.'
Clink just then from my spade against iron; my mother screamed, and I dug
with all my might for another hour, and then beheld a chest of heavy wood
bound with iron ready to be heaved out of the hole; 'Now Lionel weigh it
out--hard for your life!'
And with some trouble I got the chest out; she gave me a key, I unlocked
the chest, and took out another wrapped in lead, which also I unlocked
with a silver key that my mother gave me, and behold therein lay
armour--mail for the whole body, made of very small rings wrought most
wonderfully, for every ring was fashioned like a serpent, and though they
were so small yet could you see their scales and their eyes, and of some
even the forked tongue was on it, and lay on the rivet, and the rings
were gilded here and there into patterns and flowers so that the gleam of
it was most glorious.--And the mail coif was all gilded and had red and
blue stones at the rivets; and the tilting helms (inside which the mail
lay when I saw it first) was gilded also, and had flowers pricked out on
it; and the chain of it was silver, and the crest was two gold wings. And
there was a shield of blue set with red stones, which had two gold wings
for a cognizance; and the hilt of the sword was gold, with angels wrought
in green and blue all up it, and the eyes in their wings were of pearls
and red stones, and the sheath was of silver with green flowers on it.
Now when I saw this armour and understood that my mother would have me
put it on, and ride out without fear, leaving her alone, I cast myself
down on the grass so that I might not see its beauty (for it made me
mad), and strove to think; but what thoughts soever came to me were only
of the things that would be, glory in the midst of ladies, battle-joy
among knights, honour from all kings and princes and people--these
things.
But my mother wept softly above me, till I arose with a great shudder of
delight and drew the edges of the hawberk over my cheek, I liked so to
feel the rings slipping, slipping, till they fell off altogether; then I
said:
'O Lord God that made the world, if I might only die in this armour!'
Then my mother helped me to put it on, and I felt strange and new in it,
and yet I had neither lance nor horse.
So when we reached the cottage again she said: 'See now, Lionel, you must
take this knight's horse and his lance, and ride away, or else the people
will come here to kill another king; and when you are gone, you will
never see me any more in life.'