King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table Read online

  ROGER LANCELYN GREEN

  King Arthur

  and his Knights of the Round Table

  INTRODUCED BY

  DAVID ALMOND

  Illustrations by LOTTE REINIGER

  PUFFIN

  Contents

  BOOK ONE: THE COMING OF ARTHUR

  1 The Two Swords

  2 Balyn and Balan

  3 The First Quest of the Round Table

  4 The Magic of Nimue and Morgana le Fay

  BOOK TWO: THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE

  1 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

  2 The First Quest of Sir Launcelot

  3 Sir Gareth, or The Knight of the Kitchen

  4 Sir Tristram and the Fair Iseult

  5 Geraint and Enid

  6 Sir Gawain and the Lady Ragnell

  7 Sir Percivale of Wales

  8 The Story of Launcelot and Elaine

  BOOK THREE: THE QUEST OF THE HOLY GRAIL

  1 How the Holy Grail Came to Camelot

  2 The First Adventures of Sir Galahad

  3 The Adventures of Sir Percivale

  4 The Adventures of Sir Bors de Gannis

  5 The Adventures of Sir Launcelot

  6 How Launcelot and Gawain Came to Carbonek

  7 The End of the Quest

  BOOK FOUR: THE DEPARTING OF ARTHUR

  1 Launcelot and Guinevere

  2 The Plots of Sir Mordred

  3 The Last Battle

  Author’s Note

  EPILOGUE

  Avalon

  Leaving his horse with Merlin, Arthur went down the steep path to the side of the magic lake. Standing on the shore, he looked out across the quiet blue water – and there in the very centre of the Lake he saw an arm clothed in white samite with a hand holding above the surface a wondrous sword with a golden hilt set with jewels, and a jewelled scabbard and belt.

  And then Arthur saw a beautiful damsel dressed in pale blue silk with a golden girdle, who walked across the water until she stood before him on the shore.

  Dedicated

  to

  Byng Husband

  INTRODUCTION BY

  DAVID ALMOND

  Of all the books I read when I was young, this was my favourite. I tugged it from a Christmas stocking one Christmas morning. As I flicked through the pages, I was seduced straight away by Lotte Reiniger’s wonderful illustrations, and then by Arthur himself, this ordinary-seeming kid who performs the miraculous in such an offhand way. His brother needs a sword? ‘I know!’ he says. ‘I saw one sticking in an anvil in the churchyard, I’ll fetch that: it’s doing no good there!’ And with a simple tug of his young arm, he confronts his destiny and a whole new world order begins to be established.

  He pulls the sword from the stone on page seven, he’s king by page nine, and by the time Merlin speaks of Logres, God’s Kingdom upon earth, I was swept away from my Tyneside home, and was quite ready to agree that ‘all who heard him felt that they were at the beginning of a time of wonders’. This tremendous opening is matched by the beautifully pitched ending, when a spine-tingling discovery made by a simple shepherd confirms the myth that Arthur and his knights will one day wake and rise again.

  In between lie page after page of strong and sinewy storytelling. Bloody accounts of limbs being hacked off sit side by side with haunting descriptions of magic and miracle. Damsels are saved, knights are enchanted; there are dragons, witches, wise men and fools; there is love, desire, treachery and sin. The knights’ quests take them to places of darkness and doom and to the anterooms of Heaven itself.

  With Green, the language is properly heightened, beguiling, but is never self-regarding or portentous. He never allows the beauty of the prose to impede the progress of the story. See the first pages of ‘sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, for instance, where the lovely description of the knight himself (‘… green was his face and green his hands; and the horse was also green from head to foot, with gold thread wound and knotted in the mane’) is followed by the swift and accurate account of his decapitation (‘Gawain whirled up the axe and struck so hard that the keen blade cut through flesh and bone and … the Green Knight’s head leapt from his shoulders’).

  I loved this book as a boy. I kept it all through my teenage years. Then I left home and lost it. Years later, I came upon a copy on a Norfolk market stall, opened it, and its magic worked on me again. And then I read it for this new edition, and it works again, just as it did on that Christmas morning years ago. Each time this wonderful book is opened, the sword is drawn again, the realm of Logres is re-established, and Arthur and his knights set off on their quests through the imagination of each new reader.

  Book One

  THE COMING OF ARTHUR

  1

  The Two Swords

  After wicked King Vortigern had first invited the Saxons to settle in Britain and help him to fight the Picts and Scots, the land was never long at peace. Although so much of it was covered with thick forests, much also was beautiful open country, with little villages and towns, country houses and cottages, as the Romans had left it not many years before. Having once seen it, the Saxons could never again be contented with their savage, unfruitful homes in Germany and Denmark; and year by year more and more of them came stealing across the North Sea in their long ships, to kill or drive out the Britons and settle in their homes.

  Vortigern was dead, and Aurelius Ambrosius, last of the Romans, was dead too, when Uther Pendragon, whom some call the brother of Ambrosius, led the Britons. He defeated the Saxons in many battles, and brought peace to the southern lands where he was king – to London, and to Winchester, which was then called Camelot, and to Cornwall where Gorlois his loyal follower was duke. But Uther fell in love with Gorlois’s wife, the lovely Igrayne, and there was battle between them, until Gorlois fell, and Uther married his widow.

  He visited her first in the haunted castle of Tintagel, the dark castle by the Cornish sea, and Merlin the enchanter watched over their love. One child was born to Uther and Igrayne – but what became of that baby boy only the wise Merlin could have told, for he carried it away by a secret path down the cliff side in the dead of night, and no word was spoken of its fate.

  Uther had no other children, though Igrayne and Gorlois had three daughters: two of these were grownup when Igrayne became queen, and were married – Morgawse to Lot, King of Orkney, and Elaine to Nantres, King of Garlot: they had sons who in after days were among the bravest Knights of the Round Table. But the third daughter, Morgana le Fay, was still only a child, and she was sent to school in a nunnery; yet, by some means, she learnt much magic, which she used wickedly.

  King Uther Pendragon had only a little while of happiness with the fair Igrayne, for soon the Saxons made war against him once more, and sent a traitor to serve him, who poisoned the King and many of his followers.

  Then the land fell upon days more evil and wretched than any which had gone before. King Uther’s knights fought amongst themselves, quarrelling as to who should rule; and the Saxons, seeing that there was no strong man to lead the Britons against them, conquered more and more of Britain.

  Years of strife and misery went by, until the appointed time was at hand. Then Merlin, the good enchanter, came out from the deep, mysterious valleys of North Wales, which in those days was called Gwynedd, through Powys or South Wales, and passed on his way to London. And so great was his fame that neither Saxon nor Briton dared molest him.

  Merlin came to London and spoke with the Archbishop; and a great gathering of knights was called for Christmas Day – so great that all of them could not find a place in the abbey church, so that some wer
e forced to gather in the churchyard.

  In the middle of the service, there arose suddenly a murmur of wonder outside the abbey: for there was seen, though no man saw it come, a great square slab of marble-stone in the churchyard, and on the stone an anvil of iron, and set point downwards a great, shining sword of steel thrust deeply into the anvil.

  ‘Stir not till the service be done,’ commanded the Archbishop when this marvel was made known to him. ‘But pray the more unto God that we may find a remedy for the sore wounds of our land.’

  When the service was ended the Archbishop and the lords and knights who had been within the abbey came out to see the wonder of the sword. Round about the anvil they found letters of gold set in the great stone, and the letters read thus:

  WHOSO PULLETH OUT THIS SWORD FROM THIS STONE AND ANVIL IS THE TRUE-BORN KING OF ALL BRITAIN.

  When they saw this, many and many a man tried to pull out the sword – but not one of them could stir it a hair’s breadth.

  ‘He is not here,’ said the Archbishop. ‘But doubt not that God will send us our King. Let messengers be sent through all the land to tell what is written on the stone: and upon New Year’s Day we will hold a great tournament, and see whether our King is amongst those who come to joust. Until then, I counsel that we appoint ten knights to guard the stone, and set a rich pavilion over it.’

  All this was done, and upon New Year’s Day a great host of knights met together. But none as yet could draw forth the sword out of the stone. Then they went all a little way off, and pitched tents, and held a tournament or sham-fight, trying their strength and skill at jousting with long lances of wood, or fighting with broad-swords.

  It happened that among those who came was the good knight Sir Ector, and his son Kay, who had been made a knight not many months before; and with them came Arthur, Sir Kay’s young brother, a youth of scarcely sixteen years of age.

  Riding to the jousts, Sir Kay found suddenly that he had left his sword in his lodgings, and he asked Arthur to ride back and fetch it for him.

  ‘Certainly I will,’ said Arthur, who was always ready to do anything for other people, and back he rode to the town. But Sir Kay’s mother had locked the door, and gone out to see the tournament, so that Arthur could not get into the lodgings at all.

  This troubled Arthur very much. ‘My brother Kay must have a sword,’ he thought, as he rode slowly back. ‘It will be a shame and a matter for unkind jests if so young a knight comes to the jousts without a sword. But where can I find him one? … I know! I saw one sticking in an anvil in the churchyard, I’ll fetch that: it’s doing no good there!’

  So Arthur set spurs to his horse and came to the churchyard. Tying his horse to the stile, he ran to the tent which had been set over the stone – and found that all ten of the guardian knights had also gone to the tournament. Without stopping to read what was written on the stone, Arthur pulled out the sword at a touch, ran back to his horse, and in a few minutes had caught up with Sir Kay and handed it over to him.

  Arthur knew nothing of what sword it was, but Kay had already tried to pull it from the anvil, and saw at a glance that it was the same one. Instantly he rode to his father Sir Ector, and said:

  ‘Sir! Look, here is the sword out of the stone! So you see I must be the true-born King of all Britain!’

  But Sir Ector knew better than to believe Sir Kay too readily. Instead, he rode back with him to the church, and there made him swear a solemn oath with his hands on the Bible to say truly how he came by the sword.

  ‘My brother Arthur brought it to me,’ said Kay, with a sigh.

  ‘And how did you get the sword?’ asked Sir Ector.

  ‘Sir, I will tell you,’ said Arthur, fearing that he had done wrong. ‘Kay sent me to fetch his sword, but I could not come to it. Then I remembered having seen this sword sticking uselessly into an anvil in the churchyard. I thought it could be put to a better use in my brother’s hand – so I fetched it.’

  ‘Did you find no knights guarding the sword?’ asked Sir Ector.

  ‘Never a one,’ said Arthur.

  ‘Well, put the sword back into the anvil, and let us see you draw it out,’ commanded Sir Ector.

  ‘That’s easily done,’ said Arthur, puzzled by all this trouble over a sword, and he set it back easily into the anvil.

  Then Sir Kay seized it by the hilt and pulled his hardest: but struggle and strain as he might, he could not move it by a hair’s breadth. Sir Ector tried also, but with no better success.

  ‘Pull it out,’ he said to Arthur.

  And Arthur, more and more bewildered, put his hand to the hilt and drew forth the sword as if out of a well-greased scabbard.

  ‘Now,’ said Sir Ector, kneeling before Arthur and bowing his head in reverence, ‘I understand that you and none other are the true-born King of this land.’

  ‘Why? Oh, why is it I? Why do you kneel to me, my father?’ cried Arthur.

  ‘It is God’s will that whoso might draw forth the sword out of the stone and out of the anvil is the true-born King of Britain,’ said Sir Ector. ‘Moreover, though I love you well, you are no son of mine. For Merlin brought you to me when you were a small child, and bade me bring you up as my own son!’

  ‘Then if I am indeed King,’ said Arthur, bowing his head over the cross-hilt of the sword, ‘I hereby pledge myself to the service of God and of my people, to the righting of wrongs, to the driving-out of evil, to the bringing of peace and plenty to my land … Good sir, you have been as a father to me since ever I can remember, be still near me with a father’s love and a father’s counsel and advice … Kay, my foster-brother, be you seneschal over all my lands and a true knight of my court.’

  After this they went to the Archbishop and told him all. But the knights and barons were filled with rage and jealousy, and refused to believe that Arthur was the true-born King. So the choice was put off until Easter; and at Easter once more until Whitsun, or Pentecost as it then was called: but still, though many kings and knights came to try their strength, Arthur alone could pull out the sword.

  Then all the people cried: ‘Arthur! We will have Arthur! By God’s will he is our King! God save King Arthur!’ And they knelt down before him, the noble and the humble together, the rich and the poor, and cried him mercy for delaying him so long. And Arthur forgave them readily, and kneeling down himself he gave the wondrous sword to the Archbishop and received of him the high and holy order of Knighthood. And then came all the earls and the barons, the knights and squires, and did homage to Arthur, swearing to serve and obey him as was their duty.

  King Arthur now gathered together all the hosts of Britain, and with the pick of the older knights who had served his father and the younger knights whose chief desire was to show their courage and loyalty, he set out to do battle with the Saxons and to punish all those thieves and robbers who had ravaged the land for many years, doing cruel and shameful deeds.

  Before long he had brought peace and safety to the southern parts of Britain, making his capital at Camelot. But the other kings who ruled then in and about Britain – the Kings of Orkney and Lothian, of Gwynedd and Powys, of Gorre and Garloth – grew jealous of this unknown boy who was calling himself King of all Britain, and sent word that they were coming to visit him with gifts – but that their gifts would be given with sharp swords between the head and shoulders.

  Then Merlin came suddenly to Arthur and led him to the city of Caerleon in South Wales, into a strong tower well provisioned for a siege. The hostile kings came also to Caerleon and surrounded the tower: but they could not break in, to kill Arthur and his faithful followers.

  Merlin came out of the tower after fifteen days, stood upon the steps in the gateway and asked all the angry kings and knights why they came in arms against King Arthur.

  ‘Why have you made that boy, that Arthur, our King?’ they shouted.

  ‘Be silent and listen, all of you!’ commanded Merlin, and a great quiet fell upon all who were gathered together, an a
we and a wonder as the good enchanter spoke to them.

  ‘I will tell you of wondrous things,’ he said. ‘Arthur is indeed your King, the rightful King of all this land – yes, and of Wales too, of Ireland and Scotland and Orkney also, and of Armorica beyond the sea; and he shall rule other lands also. He is the true and only son of the good King Uther Pendragon! Of his birth and of the things which should befall when he was King, I knew by my holy arts. Uther came to Tintagel in the form of Gorlois three hours after Gorlois was dead: then and thus he comforted the Lady Igrayne and won her to be his wife. But, so my knowledge told me, their son, this Arthur, was born to great and wondrous things. A little while after his birth at dark Tintagel, Uther, who hearkened to my words, gave the child into my care, and I bore him to Avalon, the Land of Mystery. And the Dwellers in Avalon – you know them not, but you would call them Fairies and Elves – cast a pure and great enchantment upon the child, a magic most strong. Three gifts they gave to Arthur: that he should be the best of all knights; that he should be the greatest king this land shall ever know; and that he should live long – longer than any man shall ever know. These, the virtues of a good and generous prince, the Dwellers in Avalon gave to Arthur. And in Avalon the elves are forging Excalibur to be the sword of his right – the clean flashing blade that shall be raised only in the cause of right, shining on the earth until the time comes when they shall call it back again … Arthur is your King! Year by year as he reigns, his kingdom shall grow – not Britain, nor the islands of the seas, no, nor Armorica and Gaul – but Logres, the land of blessing, God’s Kingdom upon earth, which Arthur shall show you for a little space before the darkness falls again.’

  There was silence for a while when Merlin had finished speaking, for all those who heard him felt that they were at the beginning of a time of wonders, and that Arthur was more than just a King who ruled because his father had been King, or because he was the strongest man amongst them.