"'My child,' said Gawain, 'I am here in your father's castle and he trusts me, and it is not right that I should talk to you of such things without his leave. And besides that, it is not right for me to think of such things now. You know that I am going to find the Knight of the Green Chapel. Your father has promised that on New Year's Day he will send me to him. Then the Knight of the Green Chapel will kill me. I have only three days more to live, and it is no time for me to think of love.'
"'But why must you find this wicked Knight of the Green Chapel?' she asked. 'Go back to Camelot and tell the King and the knights that you fought him and that he could not hurt you. Nobody will know but us. We never go to court and we never would tell anybody what you had done.'
"'No, no,' said Gawain, 'I promised him that I would find him. Now I must find him or I never could go back to King Arthur's court or be one of his knights again.'
"Then the girl started to go out of the hall, but when she was at the door she turned and came back to Gawain. 'Will you let me kiss you just once?' she said. And Gawain let her kiss him and she went away.
"At night, when the lord of the castle came home from the hunt, he brought with him a deer that he had killed. He gave it to Gawain and said: 'This is what I got in the hunt; now give me what you got by staying behind.'
"Then Gawain gave him a kiss. 'Indeed,' said the lord, 'I think that you have done better than I. Where did you get this?'
"'It was not in our bargain,' said Gawain, 'that I should tell you that.'
"'Very well, then,' said the lord, 'shall we make the same bargain for to-morrow?'
"'Yes,' said Gawain, 'if you wish it.'
"So the next day the lord rode to the hunt again and Gawain stayed behind, as he had done before. And again the lord's daughter came to him as he sat in the hall. 'Sir Knight,' she said, 'is it because you have some other lady whom you love that you will not let me be your lady? I do not ask you to love me, you know, only to let me love you.'
"'No,' Gawain answered, 'I have no lady, and if I might have any now, I could love you as well as any other, but I have only two more days to live and I must not think of such things.'
"Then the girl kissed him twice and went away. When the lord came back that evening he brought the head and the sides of a wild boar that he had killed. He gave these to Gawain and Gawain gave him two kisses. 'You always have better luck than I,' said the lord.
"Then they made the same bargain for the third day, and in the morning the lord rode to the hunt and Gawain stayed behind. As he sat in the hall the lord's daughter came to him again. 'Sir Knight,' she said, 'since you will do nothing else, will you not wear something of mine, as the knights at King Arthur's court do for their ladies? See, this is it, my girdle of green lace. And it is good for a knight to wear, for while you have this around your body you can never be wounded.'
"Then Gawain thought that such a girdle as this would indeed be of use to him, when the time came for the Knight of the Green Chapel to strike him with his axe. So he took the girdle and thanked her for it, and she kissed him three times and went away.
"That night the lord of the castle brought home the skin of a fox. He gave it to Gawain and Gawain gave him three kisses. 'Your luck grows better every day,' said the lord.
"Early the next morning Gawain rose and called for his armor and his horse. One of the lord's servants was to show him the way to the Green Chapel. The snow was falling again and there was a fierce, cold wind. It was not daylight yet. They rode over rough hills and through deep valleys for a long time, and at last, when it had grown as light as it would be at all on such a dull, dreary day, the servant stopped. 'You are not far now,' he said, 'from the Green Chapel. I can go with you no farther. Ride on into this valley. When you are at the bottom of it look to your left and you will see the chapel.'
"Then the servant turned back and left Gawain alone. He rode to the bottom of the valley and looked about, but nothing like a chapel did he see. But at last he saw a hole in a great rock, a cave, with vines, loaded down with snow, almost hiding its mouth. Then it seemed to Gawain that he heard a sound inside the cave, and he called aloud: 'Is the Knight of the Green Chapel here? Gawain has come to keep his promise to him. He has brought his axe, so that he may pay back the blow that he received a year ago. Is the Knight of the Green Chapel here?'
"Then a voice from the cave said: 'I am here, Sir Gawain, and I am waiting for you. You have kept your time well.'
"And then out of the cave came the Green Knight. It seemed to Gawain that he looked stronger and fiercer than when he was at Arthur's court, and that his hair and beard were longer and of a brighter green. 'Give me my axe,' he cried, 'and take off your helmet and be ready for my stroke. Let us not delay!'
"'I want no delay,' said Gawain, and he took off his helmet, knelt down on the snow and bent his neck, ready for the knight to strike. The Green Knight raised his axe, and then, in spite of himself, Gawain drew a little away from him.
"'How is this?' said the Green Knight; 'are you afraid? I did not flinch when you struck me, a year ago.'
"'I shall not flinch again,' said Gawain; 'strike quickly.'
"Then the knight raised his axe a second time and Gawain was as still as a stone. But this time the axe did not fall. 'Now I must strike you,' said the Green Knight.
"'Strike, then, and do not talk about it,' said Gawain; 'I believe you yourself are losing heart.'
"This time the knight swung the axe quickly up over his head and brought it down with a mighty force upon Gawain's neck, and it made only a little scratch. The girdle of green lace would not let him be wounded. Then he sprang up and drew his sword and cried: 'Now, Knight of the Green Chapel, take care of yourself. I have kept my promise and let you strike me once, but I warn you that if you strike again I shall resist you.'
"'Put up your sword,' the Knight of the Green Chapel answered; 'I do not want to harm you. I could have used you much worse than I have, if I had wished. I tried only to prove you, and you are the bravest and the truest knight that I have ever found. I am the lord of the castle where you have stayed for this last week. I knew where you got your kisses, for I myself sent my daughter to you to try you, and you would not do what you thought would not be right toward me, and you would not let any thoughts of love turn you aside from your promise to the Knight of the Green Chapel. You were well tried and you proved most true. It was because of that and because you kept your word to me on the first two days that I went to the hunt, that I did not strike you the first or the second time that I raised my axe. But the third time I did strike you, because you were untrue to me in one little thing. For you said that you would give me all that you got by staying in the castle, yet you did not give me the girdle of green lace. It was I who sent that to you by my daughter, too. But you kept it only to save your life, and so I forgive you, and to show you that I forgive you, you may keep it now always.'
"But Gawain tore off the girdle and threw it at the feet of the Knight of the Green Chapel. 'Take it back!' he cried, 'I do not deserve ever to be called an honorable knight again! I came here for the honor of the Round Table, and then I broke my promise to you. Tell me why you came to our court and why you brought me to this shame, and then I will go back to King Arthur and tell him that I am not worthy any longer to be one of his knights. He will ask me why you did this, so tell me and let me go away, for now I have lied to you and I cannot look you in the face.'
"'I did it,' said the Knight of the Green Chapel, 'because the great enchantress, Queen Morgan-le-Fay, King Arthur's sister, who hates him, told me that all his knights were cowards. She said that all who praised them lied or were themselves deceived and that some good knight ought to go and prove them to be the cowards that they were. So I went to try whether they were brave or not, and it was by the magic of Queen Morgan-le-Fay that I was not killed when you cut off my head. But now I see that what I did was wrong. It was Morgan-le-Fay, I see now, who hoped to bring shame on King Arthur's court, because she hated him. And you have shown me that Arthur's knights are brave and true, for you took my challenge and came up here into the North to find me and to let me kill you. Now come back with me to my castle and help us to keep the festival of the New Year. Take up your girdle and come.'
"But Gawain was still filled with shame and horror at what he had done. 'I will not go back with you,' he said, 'but I will keep the girdle to remind me of this time. If I ever feel that I am doing better things and if I ever begin to grow proud of them, I will look at this girdle and it will make me remember how I broke my word.'
"And Gawain would not listen to anything more that the knight said, but he mounted his horse and turned him toward the south and rode away. Gawain never knew what happened to him on that journey back to Camelot. Perhaps the nights were as cold and the ways as rough as they had been before. Perhaps the wild beasts came against him again. Perhaps the storms still drove the snow and the sleet against him, so that they cut him in the face and froze into his armor. He cared for none of these things and he remembered none of them afterwards. His one thought was to get back to Camelot and tell the King that he was no longer worthy to be his knight, and then to go where no one who had known him should ever see him again.
"And so he rode on, as fast as he could, for he did not know how many days, and at last, in the early winter evening, he saw the glow in the windows of the castle at Camelot. Once more he hurried his horse till he reached the gate. He threw himself down from the saddle and hastened to the hall, where a great shout went up: 'Gawain is alive and he has come back!' and the knights and the ladies crowded around him to ask him where he had been and what he had seen and done. He pushed his way through them all and threw himself down upon the floor before the King. He told all of his story, how he had gone out for the honor of the Round Table and how he had broken his word and been shamed, and at the end he held up the girdle of green lace and said: 'My lord, I shall leave you now and I shall never see you again, for I am not worthy to be your knight, but I shall carry this with me, and shall always wear it, so that I never can forget my shame."
"And the King answered: 'Gawain, you are still among the best of my knights. You failed a little at last, but it was no coward and no false knight who went up there to seek his death and to keep a promise that he need not have kept. Wear your girdle, but it shall be no shame to you. And that it may be none all my knights shall wear girdles of green lace like it.
"So the story says that all of King Arthur's knights wore green lace girdles in honor of Gawain. I don't know what became of the girdles afterwards, but they cannot have worn them always, or at least Gawain cannot have worn his. For you know he could never be wounded while he had it on, and he certainly was wounded afterwards. But I will tell you about that when I get to it."
About the time that we got to the end of this story we came to a place which the driver said was as far from Glastonbury as he had ever been in this direction. We stopped at a little inn by the road, and the driver asked the way to Queen Camel. We also asked the man who told him if he had ever heard of a hill or of any sort of place about here called Camelot, but he never had. So we went on to find it for ourselves. After more riding and more asking of the way and more showers, we came to Queen Camel. It was past luncheon-time then, and, what was more to the point, it was past the horse's luncheon-time. So we decided that we would not go any farther till we had all had something to eat.
The Bell looked like the best hotel in the place, so we went there and astonished the proprietor and all the servants by asking for something to eat. But we got it, and while we were at luncheon the driver put the horse in the stable and then talked with the proprietor, to find out whether he knew anything about Camelot. Now the keeper of this bit of an hotel must have been a remarkably intelligent man, for he really did know something about it. He came in to see us and he said that he thought that it must be Cadbury Castle that we were looking for. Then a great light shone upon me and I remembered what I ought to have remembered before, that one of my books at home had said that it was called Cadbury Castle now. "But do they not call it Camelot too?" I asked him. I did not like to give up that name.
"Oh, yes, sir," he said, "they call it Camelot too."
"And do they say that King Arthur lived there?"
"No, sir, he didn't live there; he placed his army there."
Then the landlord went away and came back with a big book, a history of Somersetshire, or something of that sort, to show us what it had to say about Cadbury Castle. It did not say much that I did not know before, but it said enough to prove what I wanted to know most of all. And that was that this Cadbury Castle was without any doubt the place that we were looking for. We finished our luncheon, the landlord showed us our way, and we went on again.
It was only a little way now. We were to find a steep road that led up the side of the hill to Cadbury Castle. It was too steep, we were told, to take our carriage up, and we should have to leave it at the bottom and walk. And so it proved. We found the hill and the steep little track up its side. We got down from the carriage, and, while we waited for the driver to find a safe place to leave the horse, we gazed up the hill, along the rough little road, and knew that at last we were before the gates of Camelot.
CHAPTER III
THE BOY FROM THE FORESTWe walked up the steep road, and just before we came to the top of the hill the rain began again. There was one little house near the top and we decided to let Camelot wait for a few minutes longer and go into the house and stay till the rain stopped.
The woman of the house seemed to be glad to see us, and she asked us to write our names in her visitors' book. The names and the dates in the book showed that Camelot had some six or eight visitors a year. Of course we tried to get the woman to tell us something about the place, and of course we failed. She knew that it was called Cadbury Castle and sometimes Camelot and sometimes the Camp. She knew that the well close by her house was called King Arthur's Well, but she did not know why. The water in it was not good to drink, and in dry times they could not get water from it at all. She got drinking-water and in dry times all the water that she used from St. Anne's Wishing Well, a quarter of a mile around the hill. She did not know what that name meant either. She used to have a book that told all about the place, but she couldn't show it to us, because it had been lent to somebody and had never been returned. The vicar had studied a good deal about the place too, and he knew all about it. Could we find the vicar and get him to tell us about it? Oh, no, it wasn't the present vicar, it was the old vicar, and he was dead.
So we gave up learning anything and waited for the rain to stop, and then went out to see as much as we could for ourselves. The hilltop was broad and level. I can't tell just how broad, because I am no judge of acres, but I believe it was several. It had a low wall of earth around it, covered with grass, of course, like all the rest of the place. When we stood on the top of this wall and looked down, we saw that the ground sloped away from us till it made a sort of ditch, and then rose again and made another earth wall, a little way down the hillside. Then it did the same thing again, and yet once more. So in its time this hilltop must have had four strong walls around it. It really looked much more like a fort or camp than like a city. It seemed too small for a city, though it might have been a pretty big camp. If we had been looking for hard facts, I think we should have believed what the hotel-keeper had said, that this was not where King Arthur lived, but where he placed his army.