Idylls of the King · The Last Tournament (1/3)

The Last Tournament

Dagonet, the fool, whom Gawain in his mood

Had made mock-knight of Arthur’s Table Round,

At Camelot, high above the yellowing woods,

Danced like a withered leaf before the hall.

And toward him from the hall, with harp in hand,

And from the crown thereof a carcanet

Of ruby swaying to and fro, the prize

Of Tristram in the jousts of yesterday,

Came Tristram, saying, “Why skip ye so, Sir Fool?”

For Arthur and Sir Lancelot riding once

Far down beneath a winding wall of rock

Heard a child wail. A stump of oak half-dead,

From roots like some black coil of carven snakes,

Clutched at the crag, and started through mid air

Bearing an eagle’s nest: and through the tree

Rushed ever a rainy wind, and through the wind

Pierced ever a child’s cry: and crag and tree

Scaling, Sir Lancelot from the perilous nest,

This ruby necklace thrice around her neck,

And all unscarred from beak or talon, brought

A maiden babe; which Arthur pitying took,

Then gave it to his Queen to rear: the Queen

But coldly acquiescing, in her white arms

Received, and after loved it tenderly,

And named it Nestling; so forgot herself

A moment, and her cares; till that young life

Being smitten in mid heaven with mortal cold

Past from her; and in time the carcanet

Vext her with plaintive memories of the child:

So she, delivering it to Arthur, said,

“Take thou the jewels of this dead innocence,

And make them, an thou wilt, a tourney-prize.”

To whom the King, “Peace to thine eagle-borne

Dead nestling, and this honour after death,

Following thy will! but, O my Queen, I muse

Why ye not wear on arm, or neck, or zone

Those diamonds that I rescued from the tarn,

And Lancelot won, methought, for thee to wear.”

“Would rather you had let them fall,” she cried,

“Plunge and be lost⁠—ill-fated as they were,

A bitterness to me!⁠—ye look amazed,

Not knowing they were lost as soon as given⁠—

Slid from my hands, when I was leaning out

Above the river⁠—that unhappy child

Past in her barge: but rosier luck will go

With these rich jewels, seeing that they came

Not from the skeleton of a brother-slayer,

But the sweet body of a maiden babe.

Perchance⁠—who knows?⁠—the purest of thy knights

May win them for the purest of my maids.”

She ended, and the cry of a great jousts

With trumpet-blowings ran on all the ways

From Camelot in among the faded fields

To furthest towers; and everywhere the knights

Armed for a day of glory before the King.

But on the hither side of that loud morn

Into the hall staggered, his visage ribbed

From ear to ear with dogwhip-weals, his nose

Bridge-broken, one eye out, and one hand off,

And one with shattered fingers dangling lame,

A churl, to whom indignantly the King,

“My churl, for whom Christ died, what evil beast

Hath drawn his claws athwart thy face? or fiend?

Man was it who marred heaven’s image in thee thus?”

Then, sputtering through the hedge of splintered teeth,

Yet strangers to the tongue, and with blunt stump

Pitch-blackened sawing the air, said the maimed churl,

“He took them and he drave them to his tower⁠—

Some hold he was a table-knight of thine⁠—

A hundred goodly ones⁠—the Red Knight, he⁠—

Lord, I was tending swine, and the Red Knight

Brake in upon me and drave them to his tower;

And when I called upon thy name as one

That doest right by gentle and by churl,

Maimed me and mauled, and would outright have slain,

Save that he sware me to a message, saying,

‘Tell thou the King and all his liars, that I

Have founded my Round Table in the North,

And whatsoever his own knights have sworn

My knights have sworn the counter to it⁠—and say

My tower is full of harlots, like his court,

But mine are worthier, seeing they profess

To be none other than themselves⁠—and say

My knights are all adulterers like his own,

But mine are truer, seeing they profess

To be none other; and say his hour is come,

The heathen are upon him, his long lance

Broken, and his Excalibur a straw.’ ”

Then Arthur turned to Kay the seneschal,

“Take thou my churl, and tend him curiously

Like a king’s heir, till all his hurts be whole.

The heathen⁠—but that ever-climbing wave,

Hurled back again so often in empty foam,

Hath lain for years at rest⁠—and renegades,

Thieves, bandits, leavings of confusion, whom

The wholesome realm is purged of otherwhere,

Friends, through your manhood and your fealty⁠—now

Make their last head like Satan in the North.

My younger knights, new-made, in whom your flower

Waits to be solid fruit of golden deeds,

Move with me toward their quelling, which achieved,

The loneliest ways are safe from shore to shore.

But thou, Sir Lancelot, sitting in my place

Enchaired tomorrow, arbitrate the field;

For wherefore shouldst thou care to mingle with it,

Only to yield my Queen her own again?

Speak, Lancelot, thou art silent: is it well?”

Thereto Sir Lancelot answered, “It is well:

Yet better if the King abide, and leave

The leading of his younger knights to me.

Else, for the King has willed it, it is well.”

Then Arthur rose and Lancelot followed him,

And while they stood without the doors, the King

Turned to him saying, “Is it then so well?

Or mine the blame that oft I seem as he

Of whom was written, ‘A sound is in his ears’?

The foot that loiters, bidden go⁠—the glance

That only seems half-loyal to command⁠—

A manner somewhat fallen from reverence⁠—

Or have I dreamed the bearing of our knights

Tells of a manhood ever less and lower?

Or whence the fear lest this my realm, upreared,

By noble deeds at one with noble vows,

From flat confusion and brute violences,

Reel back into the beast, and be no more?”

He spoke, and taking all his younger knights,

Down the slope city rode, and sharply turned

North by the gate. In her high bower the Queen,

Working a tapestry, lifted up her head,

Watched her lord pass, and knew not that she sighed.

Then ran across her memory the strange rhyme

Of bygone Merlin, “Where is he who knows?

From the great deep to the great deep he goes.”

But when the morning of a tournament,

By these in earnest those in mockery called

The Tournament of the Dead Innocence,

Brake with a wet wind blowing, Lancelot,

Round whose sick head all night, like birds of prey,

The words of Arthur flying shrieked, arose,

And down a streetway hung with folds of pure

White samite, and by fountains running wine,

Where children sat in white with cups of gold,

Moved to the lists, and there, with slow sad steps

Ascending, filled his double-dragoned chair.

He glanced and saw the stately galleries,

Dame, damsel, each through worship of their Queen

White-robed in honour of the stainless child,

And some with scattered jewels, like a bank

Of maiden snow mingled with sparks of fire.

He looked but once, and vailed his eyes again.

The sudden trumpet sounded as in a dream

To ears but half-awaked, then one low roll

Of Autumn thunder, and the jousts began:

And ever the wind blew, and yellowing leaf

And gloom and gleam, and shower and shorn plume

Went down it. Sighing weariedly, as one

Who sits and gazes on a faded fire,

When all the goodlier guests are past away,

Sat their great umpire, looking o’er the lists.

He saw the laws that ruled the tournament

Broken, but spake not; once, a knight cast down

Before his throne of arbitration cursed

The dead babe and the follies of the King;

And once the laces of a helmet cracked,

And showed him, like a vermin in its hole,

Modred, a narrow face: anon he heard

The voice that billowed round the barriers roar

An ocean-sounding welcome to one knight,

But newly-entered, taller than the rest,

And armoured all in forest green, whereon

There tript a hundred tiny silver deer,

And wearing but a holly-spray for crest,

With ever-scattering berries, and on shield

A spear, a harp, a bugle⁠—Tristram⁠—late

From overseas in Brittany returned,

And marriage with a princess of that realm,

Isolt the White⁠—Sir Tristram of the Woods⁠—

Whom Lancelot knew, had held sometime with pain

His own against him, and now yearned to shake

The burthen off his heart in one full shock

With Tristram even to death: his strong hands gript

And dinted the gilt dragons right and left,

Until he groaned for wrath⁠—so many of those,

That ware their ladies’ colours on the casque,

Drew from before Sir Tristram to the bounds,

And there with gibes and flickering mockeries

Stood, while he muttered, “Craven crests! O shame!

What faith have these in whom they sware to love?

The glory of our Round Table is no more.”

So Tristram won, and Lancelot gave, the gems,

Not speaking other word than “Hast thou won?

Art thou the purest, brother? See, the hand

Wherewith thou takest this, is red!” to whom

Tristram, half plagued by Lancelot’s languorous mood,

Made answer, “Ay, but wherefore toss me this

Like a dry bone cast to some hungry hound?

Lest be thy fair Queen’s fantasy. Strength of heart

And might of limb, but mainly use and skill,

Are winners in this pastime of our King.

My hand⁠—belike the lance hath dript upon it⁠—

No blood of mine, I trow; but O chief knight,

Right arm of Arthur in the battle-field,

Great brother, thou nor I have made the world;

Be happy in thy fair Queen as I in mine.”

And Tristram round the gallery made his horse

Caracole; then bowed his homage, bluntly saying,

“Fair damsels, each to him who worships each

Sole Queen of Beauty and of love, behold

This day my Queen of Beauty is not here.”

And most of these were mute, some angered, one

Murmuring, “All courtesy is dead,” and one,

“The glory of our Round Table is no more.”

Then fell thick rain, plume droopt and mantle clung,

And pettish cries awoke, and the wan day

Went glooming down in wet and weariness:

But under her black brows a swarthy one

Laughed shrilly, crying, “Praise the patient saints,

Our one white day of Innocence hath past,

Though somewhat draggled at the skirt. So be it.

The snowdrop only, flowering through the year,

Would make the world as blank as Winter-tide.

Come⁠—let us gladden their sad eyes, our Queen’s

And Lancelot’s, at this night’s solemnity

With all the kindlier colours of the field.”

So dame and damsel glittered at the feast

Variously gay: for he that tells the tale

Likened them, saying, as when an hour of cold

Falls on the mountain in midsummer snows,

And all the purple slopes of mountain flowers

Pass under white, till the warm hour returns

With veer of wind, and all are flowers again;

So dame and damsel cast the simple white,

And glowing in all colours, the live grass,

Rose-campion, bluebell, kingcup, poppy, glanced

About the revels, and with mirth so loud

Beyond all use, that, half-amazed, the Queen,

And wroth at Tristram and the lawless jousts,

Brake up their sports, then slowly to her bower

Parted, and in her bosom pain was lord.

And little Dagonet on the morrow morn,

High over all the yellowing Autumn-tide,

Danced like a withered leaf before the hall.

Then Tristram saying, “Why skip ye so, Sir Fool?”

Wheeled round on either heel, Dagonet replied,

“Belike for lack of wiser company;

Or being fool, and seeing too much wit

Makes the world rotten, why, belike I skip

To know myself the wisest knight of all.”

“Ay, fool,” said Tristram, “but ’tis eating dry

To dance without a catch, a roundelay

To dance to.” Then he twangled on his harp,

And while he twangled little Dagonet stood

Quiet as any water-sodden log

Stayed in the wandering warble of a brook;

But when the twangling ended, skipt again;

And being asked, “Why skipt ye not, Sir Fool?”

Made answer, “I had liefer twenty years

Skip to the broken music of my brains

Than any broken music thou canst make.”

Then Tristram, waiting for the quip to come,

“Good now, what music have I broken, fool?”

And little Dagonet, skipping, “Arthur, the King’s;

For when thou playest that air with Queen Isolt,

Thou makest broken music with thy bride,

Her daintier namesake down in Brittany⁠—

And so thou breakest Arthur’s music too.”

“Save for that broken music in thy brains,

Sir Fool,” said Tristram, “I would break thy head.

Fool, I came too late, the heathen wars were o’er,

The life had flown, we sware but by the shell⁠—

I am but a fool to reason with a fool⁠—

Come, thou art crabbed and sour: but lean me down,

Sir Dagonet, one of thy long asses’ ears,

And harken if my music be not true.

“ ‘Free love⁠—free field⁠—we love but while we may:

The woods are hushed, their music is no more:

The leaf is dead, the yearning past away:

New leaf, new life⁠—the days of frost are o’er:

New life, new love, to suit the newer day:

New loves are sweet as those that went before:

Free love⁠—free field⁠—we love but while we may.’

“Ye might have moved slow-measure to my tune,

Not stood stockstill. I made it in the woods,

And heard it ring as true as tested gold.”

But Dagonet with one foot poised in his hand,

“Friend, did ye mark that fountain yesterday

Made to run wine?⁠—but this had run itself

All out like a long life to a sour end⁠—

And them that round it sat with golden cups

To hand the wine to whosoever came⁠—

The twelve small damosels white as Innocence,

In honour of poor Innocence the babe,

Who left the gems which Innocence the Queen

Lent to the King, and Innocence the King

Gave for a prize⁠—and one of those white slips

Handed her cup and piped, the pretty one,

‘Drink, drink, Sir Fool,’ and thereupon I drank,

Spat⁠—pish⁠—the cup was gold, the draught was mud.”

And Tristram, “Was it muddier than thy gibes?

Is all the laughter gone dead out of thee?⁠—

Not marking how the knighthood mock thee, fool⁠—

‘Fear God: honour the King⁠—his one true knight⁠—

Sole follower of the vows’⁠—for here be they

Who knew thee swine enow before I came,

Smuttier than blasted grain: but when the King

Had made thee fool, thy vanity so shot up

It frighted all free fool from out thy heart;

Which left thee less than fool, and less than swine,

A naked aught⁠—yet swine I hold thee still,

For I have flung thee pearls and find thee swine.”

And little Dagonet mincing with his feet,

“Knight, an ye fling those rubies round my neck

In lieu of hers, I’ll hold thou hast some touch

Of music, since I care not for thy pearls.

Swine? I have wallowed, I have washed⁠—the world

Is flesh and shadow⁠—I have had my day.

The dirty nurse, Experience, in her kind

Hath fouled me⁠—an I wallowed, then I washed⁠—

I have had my day and my philosophies⁠—

And thank the Lord I am King Arthur’s fool.

Swine, say ye? swine, goats, asses, rams and geese

Trooped round a Paynim harper once, who thrummed

On such a wire as musically as thou

Some such fine song⁠—but never a king’s fool.”

And Tristram, “Then were swine, goats, asses, geese

The wiser fools, seeing thy Paynim bard

Had such a mastery of his mystery

That he could harp his wife up out of hell.”

Then Dagonet, turning on the ball of his foot,

“And whither harp’st thou thine? down! and thyself

Down! and two more: a helpful harper thou,

That harpest downward! Dost thou know the star

We call the harp of Arthur up in heaven?”

And Tristram, “Ay, Sir Fool, for when our King

Was victor wellnigh day by day, the knights,

Glorying in each new glory, set his name

High on all hills, and in the signs of heaven.”