But he had gone barely five hundred paces when he suddenly tugged on the horse’s bit and stopped, rooted to the spot. He took out a finely embroidered kerchief and mopped his brow. It was dripping with cold sweat.
The penny had dropped.
“Everything seems to confirm,” he said quietly, “that I desire other women than the divine Guinevere.” He remained there for a whole hour, wondering what the explanation might be. During this time, to his horror and embarrassment, the image of the baker’s wife kept rising up before his mind’s eye, followed by a succession of others — a captain’s widow, two grape-picking wenches, a person of ill repute, and Guinevere’s three chambermaids. Only the Queen was missing.
In deep gloom he continued on his way until sunset. As night began to fall he passed through a rather charming little town with a handsome, high-roofed inn calling itself the Famous Griffin. He would gladly have stopped there for dinner, but it would have meant being late for the dragon. It usually emerged from its cave only in the early hours of darkness, to drink.
He arrived at a grim wood, where the strange shape of the trees, the dark green cliffs and fearsome airborne cries signalled the proximity of danger. He steadied the lance in his hand and, following his instinct, rode directly into the place where the air of menace seemed greatest. Only then did he begin to wonder why he had not encountered a single shepherd or ancient mountaineer warning him to proceed no further.
The way was precipitous, and, tormented by hunger, he was becoming ever more impatient. Finally he came across a great pile of human bones. At the start of the next turning he could see a cave. To the expert eye its shape betrayed, quite unmistakably, that it was tailor-made for a dragon. Bearing his lance stiffly before him (he had earlier taken care to remove the little English flag) he advanced warily.
But who could describe the rage he felt when, on reaching the entrance, he spotted a large notice announcing in flowery Gothic lettering that the dragon had since moved house, and now resided in the cave under the peak popularly known as the Dead Mountains’ Carnival Doughnut?
Lancelot knew only too well that the Dead Mountains lay some twenty miles to the north, and that, moreover, with its many precipitous ranges and three infamous passes where thieves waited to plunder travellers, the route, even ignoring the poor transport arrangements of the period, was not generally considered a very agreeable one.
After much humming and hawing, he turned his horse round, went back and stopped for the night at the Famous Griffin. Dinner began with some white breast of chicken, finely sliced, followed by a large carp, a highly spiced and very tasty leg of veal, some rather unusual regional pastries and a basket of superb apples. The wine was no less satisfactory. But the greatest surprise of all was that he wasn’t miserable.
Nor did his misery return the next morning. The sun shone. There was a cheerful clonking of bells under his window as a line of cattle went past on their way to the meadow, and the whole beautiful world was filled with the comforting smell of manure. The breakfast liqueur (a light vermouth) and the rabbit pâté that followed were both extremely pleasant. Lancelot felt an irresistible urge to bathe in the lake and then fall asleep in the grass.
And then he remembered the dragon, the three mountain passes bristling with robbers, and all the dismal hardships of the life of derring-do. For some hours he waged a difficult struggle with himself.
Finally, towards midday, he pulled on his boots and, thus attired, stamped his foot decisively on the floor.
“No, I won’t!”
And he set off, back towards Carreol, without the Queen’s shoe. And the dragon lived happily ever after, in its cave under the peak of the mountain popularly known as the Carnival Doughnut.
“He’s only human, after all,” Lancelot told himself.
A curious dullness crept through his brain. He was living in a new universe, one in which everything was pleasant and amiable — and that was precisely what was so terrifying and incomprehensible. The landscape of this new world was so impossible to find his way around that it simply annihilated thought. He felt like a man who has drunk a great deal of beer. And not without cause. He had knocked back a pint at every hostelry along the way.
And thus he arrived at Carreol, where Arthur held court in those days. He washed off the dust of the road and prepared to enter the exalted presence of the Queen. But he had barely stepped out of the door of his lodgings when he bumped into Gawain, who greeted him with the exciting news that it was two-all at half-time in the crucially important jousting tournament between Cornwall and Wales, and promptly dragged him along to watch. After the match there was a banquet in honour of the victors. Lancelot completely forgot himself in the general jollity, which continued until well after midnight, and it was only the next morning that he remembered his audience with the Queen.
By the time he reached the Palace she was already out walking with her ladies in the park. Fortunately he was very familiar with the route she took, and he dashed off to take his place behind the lime tree whence, according to the courtly custom that had grown up over the years, he would step out into her path, as if by chance, as she came strolling by.
But he arrived too late. She was already in the avenue. To hide behind a tree and then instantly reappear from behind it now seemed a rather pointless formality.
He knelt before her and kissed the hem of her garment. An ambiguous smile played on her lips, and she did not immediately pronounce her usual “Pray rise, worthy knight!” until Lancelot had grown tired of kneeling and a degree of irritation had infused itself into him.
“They tell me you came back yesterday,” she suddenly remarked.
“That is so, my lady,” he replied, blushing.
“Indeed? Then rise, worthy knight,” she declared, but with an offhand brusqueness that reduced the time-honoured phrase to a casual insult. Lancelot was deeply disconcerted. What worried him most was that the Queen’s anger seemed so distant — as if it had not been directed at him at all.
“My lady has grown even more beautiful in my absence, if that were possible,” he ventured, both clumsily and without any of the old sense of his heart in his throat at the sight of Guinevere’s newly enhanced beauty. She was extremely beautiful, to be sure, but some little monster hidden in the trees had whispered in Lancelot’s ear: “So what?”
“From which it is quite clear that you have never loved me,” she continued, somewhat illogically. “I simply do not understand your behaviour. But no matter. The question is — have you brought my shoe? Hand it over!”
“Indeed, my lady,” he stuttered. “That is to say… as regards the shoe… I forgot… I left it in my lodgings.”
“You left it in your lodgings?” (eyebrows raised to an impossible height).
“Strictly speaking, it isn’t actually in my lodgings, it’s…”
“It’s where, precisely?”
“That is to say, on my way back, it was stolen from me…”
“From you, the knight without a stain?”
“Now I remember — it was during a card game. I was forced to offer it as a pledge. To an Ishmaelite.”
“And how many heads did the dragon have?” she suddenly asked.
“Just the one,” he replied guiltily.
“And you didn’t cut it off!” she yelled.
“No. What happened was…”
But he was not allowed to explain. The Queen looked him up and down with unspeakable disdain, then turned her head away and made off at great speed, trailing her female entourage behind her.
Lancelot stood there, his head down on his collar. He had lost the Queen’s favour! He had expected the thunderbolt. He had expected the ground to open under his feet. He had been prepared for his soul to sizzle and flash as it was cleft in twain in indescribable agony. But the lightning had not struck. The ground, and his soul, had not been cleft in twain. In the new world in which he found himself, it seemed there were no thunderstorms, only little squirrels in the branches, and babbling brooks among the trees, and a general beer-swilling happiness. It was horrible.