CHAPTER XLI.
ALL WELL ENDED.
To bless Arthur
Arthur the blessed.
– TALIESSIN.
AT the opening of that night, Arthur held high state in the great palace-hall of Camelot, the new-made empress by his side. Guinevere was rea**ured now, and lovelier than ever in their triumph; proud also with the a**urance that, through every chance and turmoil, still in her own especial endeavor she had completely won.
Aurelia, too, was there, most like some gracious Olympian figure of Grecian fancy, but with more of human warmth and purity in her gray eyes than ever any goddess owned. Near her, Sanawg, tall in her swaying velvet twilight beauty, overrun with hidden fire, an amba**adress from the Orient and the elder time. Also Cian and Llywarch together, equally merry, for there rested now no cloud at all on the spirit of the poet-seer. Caradoc likewise, that battle-knight of the brawny arm, wound-hampered now, yet towering in his corner. Noble dames, too, in numbers, city rulers and mountain chiefs, lowland kings [Page 391] and notable priestly warriors of the Druid isle, each in his own especial bravery.
Into this presence entered Lancelot, attired even beyond what was usual with him, beautiful immortally – but it was a sinister beauty. At the door, doubt showed itself wistfully in his face. A step farther he felt the chill, and hardened. Yet, as he told his tale before the Emperor, his composure was nearly shaken, and his eyes drifted, with appeal, toward the most contemning ones of Guinevere, who would in no way forgive him that he had not come when called. It was a goodly story, well-sounding to those who did not know. He had been delayed, he had used great effort, and not wholly without avail. The hostile dead lay on the field where he had left them. He had lost hardly one man.
Arthur heard him through, and made answer, –
"Lancelot, a late gift is better than none, and a little bread than famine. For doing no worse, all thank you. But do not look for grateful ecstasy. Let the future better the past. Return home. Free Vortimer. One wishes it who is brave and fair, and of a house that was his enemy. Moreover, I see no fitness in such custody."
The Prince of Gwynedd flushed and scowled, then looked again toward the throned lady, less in hope than with that soul-compulsion which answers to the magnetic needle's aim. But her eye showed only [Page 392] enjoyment of his distress, recalling how she had signalled and signalled him, with no reply. He faced her; then he faced the Emperor, at full height, under strain. For the moment he dared not trust his voice. All could see what pa**ions tore him, – outraged love, real to infatuation, though selfish and lawless; the helpless writhing under ridicule which no other man could feel so keenly; the strong, upsurging, hateful desire to utterly humiliate and shame those who had brought him low – even her. This pa**ed; but in after years, when the great evil was coming on the land, his soul went back to it in some sort working out the bitterness.
At last he made a mocking obeisance, and said, "It shall be done;" then pa**ed forth with such lack of courtesy that some counselled seizing him before he should do harm. But at that Arthur shook his head.
"No need," said he. "Lancelot is not the dullard that will risk all for nothing, nor Cerdic that sort of Saxon to make compact with one who has failed him, if there were aught between them, that is, concerning which I have no wish to hear further. We shall yet have, as of old, good service from Lancelot."
Another power than prudence was working in the baffled Prince toward the same end. Exiled from the court imperial, how could he hope to see Guine- [Page 393] vere? And what exile more complete than that of hostility? The binding of her fortune with Arthur's was beyond any undoing now; but equally so was the bond of his own infatuation, when resentment against her paled with time. Yet this did not wholly pa** away, but survived, rather, in a deadening of scruple as to what must lessen her gravely in men's eyes.
It was long before any incitement from her had part therein, for the crisis of her danger and bridal came with too hard and close a strain. During all this season of estrangement he was diligent in service to the Emperor, being held in power, and prized there, over all North Wales. Watching this, or seeing it with no watching, it is little wonder if every shadow of distrust left the mind of Arthur. Yet a treachery was latent, biding its opportunity, which had in it, as the world knows, the ruin of them all.
Apart from this soul-warping, Lancelot of Gwynedd had noble graces other than those of form. Hence, loosening his captive, he did not fail to enlarge on Aurelia's share in that boon, and brighten her image and claims with every pleasing color. At first Vortimer, bleached and haggard from confinement, was in disquiet over this unlooked-for blossoming. But, as he found that no harm came, he reconciled himself thereto, and at last went toward Silchester (where she awaited him) with a gallant [Page 394] escort, quite easy in mind and body, and most ready for friendliness with his queen. The old prosperity of person had partly revived, but not the old turbulence as yet; for a subtle change had been wrought by unexpected and ruinous downfall. There could be no doubt of his present willingness to do her service and honor.
This was even as she had dared to hope; for, in truth, it was not only to please her people and restore him to daylight that her good word had been spoken. Cian's own realm was far from London, and that city could not be left uncared for in going to a new life, sorely as it had tried her by unreason and petulance, and by the meanness of wilful desertion in her great need. In the future, if a true viceroy, who had the hearts of London, could be found, it would be easier for her to forget such unloveliness while far away.
This duly came to pa**; for already the major part of that city was in fear and adoration of her concerning whom it had reckoned so wrongly, and wild with eagerness to receive its own especial hero back again. Therefore their progress was a thing of flowers and beauty, and every house in every street blazed out with window-tapers at their entry. And their confidence and good-will toward effort were such in every way that it took little bargaining to close a peace with all the neighbor Saxons, which left her people more freedom of the Thames, and [Page 395] more security against inroad and foray than ever before in the memory of men. So there was nothing left but what Vortimer could very well do for the queen, and in her stead. She gave the northern prince her hand, and they went their way.
Would you know more of Cian of the Chariots? In the far North, with the power of Arthur behind him, he held the land, even to the region of lakes far beyond the great wall, securely for Britain. And many poems he wrote and sang, of a strange and mystic beauty known in many countries for centuries, and the fame of which, though every book that held them is lost to men, lasted until our own day. Loving best the hills and woodlands wherein he had been born, he yet went southward at the Emperor's call to that great day of need which brought the great victory and long prosperous peace of Mount Baden; often, too, as a brief visitant of the court at Caerleon with scant approval for the new growth of luxury which foredoomed its own ruin; or to that London which now slumbered on unsafely in a partly reviving dream of greatness toward its final overthrow. Last of all was he drawn to the utter disaster of Camlan, his last days being divided between his battling princedom of the North and Brittany beyond the sea, where one or two of his songs yet linger on peasant tongues and in peasant memories.