The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [140]
"I see a great deal. If I set out to look, and if God wills it, I see."
The colour came into her face, and her look lightened, as if something had set her free. Before, I had believed her innocent; now I knew it. "So you, too, have told my lord the truth. When he did not come for me himself, I was afraid."
"You have no need to be, now or ever. I think you need never doubt that he loves you. And I can tell you, too, Guinevere my cousin, that even if you never bear an heir for Britain, he will not put you aside. Your name will stand alongside his, as long as he is remembered."
"I will try," she said, so softly that I could hardly hear it. Then the towers of Camelot came in sight, and she was silent, bracing herself against what was to come.
***
So the seeds of legend were sown. During the golden weeks of spring that followed, I was more than once to hear men talking under their breaths of the "rape" of the Queen, and how she had been taken down almost to the dark halls of Llud, but brought back by Bedwyr, chiefest of Arthur's knights. So the sting of the truth was drawn; no shame attached to Arthur, none even to the Queen; and to Bedwyr was credited the first of his many glories, the story growing, and its hero gaining in stature, as his hurts healed and at last were well.
As for Melwas, in the way these things have, if the "Dark King" of the Underworld became linked in men's minds with the dark-avised king whose stronghold was the Tor, it was still without blame to Guinevere. What Melwas thought nobody knew. He must have realized that Guinevere had told Arthur the truth. He may have grown tired of being cast as the villain of the story, and of waiting (as everyone was waiting) for the High King to move against him. He may even have cherished hopes, still, that he might in some dim future come to possess the Queen.
Whatever the case, it was he who made the next move, and by doing so gave Arthur his way. One morning he rode to Camelot, and, perforce leaving his armed escort outside the council hall, took his seat in the Chair of Complaining.
***
The council hall had been built on the style of a smaller hall that Arthur had seen on one of the visits paid to the Queen's father in Wales. That had been merely a larger version of the daub-and-wattle round house of the Celts; this in Camelot was a big circular building, impressively built to last, with ribs of dressed stone, and between them walls of narrow Roman brick from the long-abandoned kilns nearby. There were vast double doors of oak, carved with the Dragon, and finely gilded. Inside, the place was open, with a fine floor of tiles laid out from the center, like a spider's web. And like the outer ring of a web, the walls were not curved, but sectioned off with flat panelling. These panels were covered with matting of a fine golden straw to keep out the draughts, but in time would be ablaze with needlework; Guinevere already had her maids set to it. Against each of these sections stood a tall chair, with its own footstool, and the King's was no higher than the next man's. This place was to be, he said, a hall for free discussion between the High King and his peers, and a place where any of the King's leaders could bring their problems. The only thing that marked Arthur's chair was the white shield that hung above it; in time, perhaps, the Dragon would shimmer there in gold and scarlet. Some of the other panels already showed the blazons of the Companions. The seat opposite the King's was blank. This was the one taken by anyone with a grievance to be settled by the court. Arthur had called it the Chair of Complaining. But in later years I heard it called the Perilous Chair, and I think the name was coined after that day.
***
I was not present when Melwas tabled his complaint. Though I had at that time a place in the Round Hall (as it came to be called), I seldom took it. If his peers were equal there to the King, then the King must be seen to match them in knowledge, and to give his judgements without leaning on the advice of a mentor. Any discussions Arthur and