And then they rode to the divided way,
There kiss’d, and parted weeping; for he past,
Love-loyal to the least wish of the Queen,
Back to his land; but she to Almesbury
Fled all night long by glimmering waste and weald,
And heard the spirits of the waste and weald,
Moan as she fled, or thought she heard them moan.
And in herself she moan’d, “Too late, too late!”
Till in the cold wind that foreruns the morn,
A blot in heaven, the raven, flying high,
Croak’d, and she thought, “He spies a field of death;
For now the heathen of the Northern Sea,
Lured by the crimes and frailties of the court,
Begin to slay the folk and spoil the land.”
And when she came to Almesbury she spake
There to the nuns, and said, “Mine enemies
Pursue me, but O peaceful Sisterhood,
Receive and yield me sanctuary, nor ask
Her name to whom ye yield it till her time
To tell you;” and her beauty, grace, and power
Wrought as a charm upon them, and they spared
To ask it.
So the stately Queen abode
For many a week, unknown, among the nuns,
Nor with them mix’d, nor told her name, nor sought,
Wrapt in her grief, for housel or for shrift,
But communed only with the little maid,
Who pleased her with a babbling heedlessness
Which often lured her from herself; but now,
This night, a rumor wildly blown about
Came that Sir Modred had usurp’d the realm
And leagued him with the heathen, while the King
Was waging war on Lancelot. Then she thought,
“With what a hate the people and the King
Must hate me,” and bow’d down upon her hands
Silent, until the little maid, who brook’d
No silence, brake it, uttering “Late! so late!
What hour, I wonder now?” and when she drew
No answer, by and by began to hum
An air the nuns had taught her: “Late, so late!”
Which when she heard, the Queen look’d up, and
said,
“O maiden, if indeed ye list to sing,
Sing, and unbind my heart that I may weep.”
Whereat full willingly sang the little maid.
“Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill!
Late, late, so late! but we can enter still.
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.
“No light had we; for that we do repent,
And learning this, the bridegroom will relent.
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.
“No light! so late! and dark and chill the night!
O, let us in, that we may find the light!
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.
“Have we not heard the bridegroom is so sweet?
O, let us in, tho’ late, to kiss his feet!
No, no, too late! ye cannot enter now.”
So sang the novice, while full passionately,
Her head upon her hands, remembering
Her thought when first she came, wept the sad
Queen.
Then said the little novice prattling to her:
“O pray you, noble lady, weep no more;
But let my words—the words of one so small,
Who knowing nothing knows but to obey,
And if I do not there is penance given—
Comfort your sorrows, for they do not flow
From evil done; right sure am I of that,
Who see your tender grace and stateliness.
But weigh your sorrows with our lord the King’s,
And weighing find them less; for gone is he
To wage grim war against Sir Lancelot there,
Round that strong castle where he holds the Queen;
And Modred whom he left in charge of all,
The traitor—Ah, sweet lady, the King’s grief
For his own self, and his own Queen, and realm,
Must needs be thrice as great as any of ours!
For me, I thank the saints, I am not great;
For if there ever come a grief to me
I cry my cry in silence, and have done;
None knows it, and my tears have brought me good.
But even were the griefs of little ones
As great as those of great ones, yet this grief
Is added to the griefs the great must bear,
Silence, they cannot weep behind a cloud;
As even here they talk at Almesbury
About the good King and his wicked Queen,
And were I such a King with such a Queen,
Well might I wish to veil her wickedness,
But were I such a King it could not be.”
Then to her own sad heart mutter’d the Queen,
“Will the child kill me with her innocent talk?”
But openly she answered, “Must not I,
If this false traitor have displaced his lord,
Grieve with the common grief of all the realm?”
“Yea,” said the maid, “this all is woman’s grief,
That she is woman, whose disloyal life
Hath wrought confusion in the Table Round
Which good King Arthur founded, years ago,
With signs and miracles and wonders, there
At Camelot, ere the coming of the Queen.”
Then thought the Queen within herself again,
“Will the child kill me with her foolish prate?”
But openly she spake and said to her,
“O little maid, shut in by nunnery walls,
What canst thou know of Kings and Tables Round,
Or what of signs and wonders, but the signs
And simple miracles of thy nunnery?”
To whom the little novice garrulously:
“Yea, but I know; the land was full of signs
And wonders ere the coming of the Queen.
So said my father, and himself was knight
Of the great Table—at the founding of it,
And rode thereto from Lyonnesse; and he said
That as he rode, an hour or maybe twain
After the sunset, down the coast, he heard
Strange music, and he paused, and turning—there,
All down the lonely coast of Lyonnesse,
Each with a beacon-star upon his head,
And with a wild sea-light about his feet,
He saw them—headland after headland flame
Far on into the rich heart of the west.
And in the light the white mermaiden swam,
And strong man-breasted things stood from the sea,
And sent a deep sea-voice thro’ all the land,
To which the little elves of chasm and cleft
Made answer, sounding like a distant horn.
So said my father—yea, and furthermore,
Next morning, while he past the dimlit woods
Himself beheld three spirits mad with joy
Come dashing down on a tall wayside flower,
That shook beneath them as the thistle shakes
When three gray linnets wrangle for the seed.
And still at evenings on before his horse
The flickering fairy-circle wheel’d and broke
Flying, and link’d again, and wheel’d and broke
Flying, for all the land was full of life.
And when at last he came to Camelot,
A wreath of airy dancers hand-in-hand
Swung round the lighted lantern of the hall;
And in the hall itself was such a feast
As never man had dream’d; for every knight
Had whatsoever meat he long’d
for served
By hands unseen; and even as he said
Down in the cellars merry bloated things
Shoulder’d the spigot, straddling on the butts
While the wine ran; so glad were spirits and men
Before the coming of the sinful Queen.”
Then spake the Queen and somewhat bitterly,
“Were they so glad? ill prophets were they all,
Spirits and men. Could none of them foresee,
Not even thy wise father with his signs
And wonders, what has fallen upon the realm?”
To whom the novice garrulously again:
“Yea, one, a bard, of whom my father said,
Full many a noble war-song had he sung,
Even in the presence of an enemy’s fleet,
Between the steep cliff and the coming wave;
And many a mystic lay of life and death
Had chanted on the smoky mountain-tops,
When round him bent the spirits of the hills
With all their dewy hair blown back like flame.
So said my father—and that night the bard
Sang Arthur’s glorious wars, and sang the King
As wellnigh more than man, and rail’d at those
Who call’d him the false son of Gorloïs.
For there was no man knew from whence he came;
But after tempest, when the long wave broke
All down the thundering shores of Bude and Bos,
There came a day as still as heaven, and then
They found a naked child upon the sands
Of dark Tintagil by the Cornish sea,
And that was Arthur, and they foster’d him
Till he by miracle was approven King;
And that his grave should be a mystery
From all men, like his birth; and could he find
A woman in her womanhood as great
As he was in his manhood, then, he sang,
The twain together well might change the world.
But even in the middle of his song
He falter’d, and his hand fell from the harp,
And pale he turn’d, and reel’d, and would have fallen,
But that they stay’d him up; nor would he tell
His vision; but what doubt that he foresaw
This evil work of Lancelot and the Queen?”
Then thought the Queen, “Lo! they have set her
on,
Our simple-seeming abbess and her nuns,
To play upon me,” and bow’d her head nor spake.
Whereat the novice crying, with clasp’d hands,
Shame on her own garrulity garrulously,
Said the good nuns would check her gadding tongue
Full often, “and, sweet lady, if I seem
To vex an ear too sad to listen to me,
Unmannerly, with prattling and the tales
Which my good father told me, check me too
Nor let me shame my father’s memory, one
Of noblest manners, tho’ himself would say
Sir Lancelot had the noblest; and he died,
Kill’d in a tilt, come next, five summers back,
And left me; but of others who remain,
And of the two first-famed for courtesy—
And pray you check me if I ask amiss—
But pray you, which had noblest, while you moved
Among them, Lancelot or our lord the King?”
Then the pale Queen look’d up and answer’d her:
“Sir Lancelot, as became a noble knight,
Was gracious to all ladies, and the same
In open battle or the tilting-field
Forbore his own advantage, and the King
In open battle or the tilting-field
Forbore his own advantage, and these two
Were the most nobly-manner’d men of all;
For manners are not idle, but the fruit
Of loyal nature and of noble mind.”
“Yea,” said the maid, “be manners such fair fruit?
Then Lancelot’s needs must be a thousand-fold
Less noble, being, as all rumor runs,
The most disloyal friend in all the world.”
To which a mournful answer made the Queen:
“O, closed about by narrowing nunnery-walls,
What knowest thou of the world and all its lights
And shadows, all the wealth and all the woe?
If ever Lancelot, that most noble knight,
Were for one hour less noble than himself,
Pray for him that he scape the doom of fire,
And weep for her who drew him to his doom.”
“Yea,” said the little novice, “I pray for both;
But I should all as soon believe that his,
Sir Lancelot’s, were as noble as the King’s,
As I could think, sweet lady, yours would be
Such as they are, were you the sinful Queen.”
So she, like many another babbler, hurt
Whom she would soothe, and harm’d where she
would heal;
For here a sudden flush of wrathful heat
Fired all the pale face of the Queen, who cried:
“Such as thou art be never maiden more
For ever! thou their tool, set on to plague
And play upon and harry me, petty spy
And traitress!” When that storm of anger brake
From Guinevere, aghast the maiden rose,
White as her veil, and stood before the Queen
As tremulously as foam upon the beach
Stands in a wind, ready to break and fly,
And when the Queen had added, “Get thee hence!”
Fled frightened. Then that other left alone
Sigh’d, and began to gather heart again,
Saying in herself: “The simple, fearful child
Meant nothing, but my own too-fearful guilt,
Simpler than any child, betrays itself.
But help me, Heaven, for surely I repent!
For what is true repentance but in thought—
Not even in inmost thought to think again
The sins that made the past so pleasant to us?
And I have sworn never to see him more,
To see him more.”
And even in saying this,
Her memory from old habit of the mind
Went slipping back upon the golden days
In which she saw him first, when Lancelot came,
Reputed the best knight and goodliest man,
Ambassador, to lead her to his lord
Arthur, and led her forth, and far ahead
Of his and her retinue moving, they,
Rapt in sweet talk or lively, all on love
And sport and tilts and pleasure,—for the time
Was may-time, and as yet no sin was dream’d,—
Rode under groves that look’d a paradise
Of blossom, over sheets of hyacinth
That seem’d the heavens upbreaking thro’ the earth,
And on from hill to hill, and every day
Beheld at noon in some delicious dale
The silk pavilions of King Arthur raised
For brief repast or afternoon repose
By couriers gone before; and on again,
Till yet once more ere set of sun they saw
The Dragon of the great Pendragon-ship
That crown’d the state pavilion of the King,
Blaze by the rushing brook or silent well.
But when the Queen immersed in such a trance,
And moving thro’ the past unconsciously,
Came to that point where first she saw the King
Ride toward her from the city, sigh’d to find
Her journey done, glanced at him, thought him cold,
High, self-contain’d, and passionless, not like him,
“Not like my Lancelot”—while she brooded thus
And gre
w half-guilty in her thoughts again,
There rode an armed warrior to the doors.
A murmuring whisper thro’ the nunnery ran,
Then on a sudden a cry, “The King!” She sat
Stiff-stricken, listening; but when armed feet
Thro’ the long gallery from the outer doors
Rang coming, prone from off her seat she fell,
And grovell’d with her face against the floor.
There with her milk-white arms and shadowy hair
She made her face a darkness from the King,
And in the darkness heard his armed feet
Pause by her; then came silence, then a voice,
Monotonous and hollow like a ghost’s
Denouncing judgment, but, tho’ changed, the
King’s:
“Liest thou here so low, the child of one
I honor’d, happy, dead before thy shame?
Well is it that no child is born of thee.
The children born of thee are sword and fire,
Red ruin, and the breaking up of laws,
The craft of kindred and the godless hosts
Of heathen swarming o’er the Northern Sea;
Whom I, while yet Sir Lancelot, my right arm,
The mightiest of my knights, abode with me,
Have everywhere about this land of Christ
In twelve great battles ruining overthrown.
And knowest thou now from whence I come—
from him,
From waging bitter war with him; and he,
That did not shun to smite me in worse way,
Had yet that grace of courtesy in him left,
He spared to lift his hand against the King
Who made him knight. But many a knight was slain;
And many more and all his kith and kin
Clave to him, and abode in his own land.
And many more when Modred raised revolt,
Forgetful of their troth and fealty, clave
To Modred, and a remnant stays with me.
And of this remnant will I leave a part,
True men who love me still, for whom I live,
To guard thee in the wild hour coming on,
Lest but a hair of this low head be harm’d.
Fear not; thou shalt be guarded till my death.
Howbeit I know, if ancient prophecies
Have err’d not, that I march to meet my doom.