J. Powers - Morte D'Urban

When the weather turned clear and cold — it was now late in October — Wilf got out his devil’s-food coat, Brother Harold put discount-house anti-freeze in the pickup truck and station wagon, and Father Urban plugged in the electric heater. “I’m afraid there’s another overshoe down there somewhere,” he told Wilf.

“Run it on low, will you?” said Wilf. He was busy with retreatants these days, and only stopped in to see Father Urban for a few minutes in the evening. If Jack and Rex happened to be there, Wilf, when he left, took Rex with him. “Heat’s bad for a dog like this.” There was more to it than that, though. Rex had become attached to Jack, and Wilf was jealous. “C’mon, boy!” and “Here, boy!” he’d cry, with a dubious look in his eye. Rex and Wilf would go away together, but Rex soon returned to Father Urban’s room and Jack. There wasn’t much Wilf could do about it. He’d read about a rabid skunk in the Farmer , and didn’t care to have the dog out at night, unattended, or to be out very long himself. “You know where that wind’s coming from, don’t you? Hudson Bay.”

Jack brought his manuscript to Father Urban’s room in the evening, and worked on it there, in comfort. The first time Father Urban got a look at it, he was alarmed. A huntress, chasing a deer, had shot an arrow into Sir Launcelot by mistake, the arrow going into him past the barb, “in such a place,” Jack had written, “that he might not sit in no saddle.”

“Hey,” said Father Urban. “What kind of English is that?”

“Malory kept the double negative to preserve the spirit of the original French,” Jack said. “And that’s what Mr Thwaites wants to do — to preserve the spirit of the original English.”

“Should be great for children.”

“We’ll have an explanatory note, of course.”

“‘That he might not sit in no saddle’! Let’s face it, Jack. It sounds like hell.”

“It did to me at first .”

Father Urban was pretty sure that Jack was wasting his time with Sir Launcelot — as Jack called him. Father Urban called him Lancelot. “Have you heard from Dickie lately?”

“Mr Thwaites? No, not lately.”

“Have you done anything with St Adalbert?”

“I still have some way to go with this, and this comes first.” Poor Jack!

There were five hundred seven chapters in Malory, and even those dealing directly with Sir Launcelot were too many for the planned edition. It was necessary, too, to treat of such events as the coming of Arthur, and the founding of the Round Table, and such characters as Merlin, Guenever, Morgan le Fay, Sir Gawaine, and Sir Galahad. Jack regarded Sir Galahad as the real hero of the book, and had given him the full treatment. He had wished to do more for Sir Percival and Sir Tristram, whom he rated next to Sir Galahad in holiness, but this was impossible, for reasons of space. The biggest problem for Jack, though, was Sir Launcelot.

“There are times when I don’t know where I am with him,” Jack told Father Urban. “He’s the Hamlet of the book.” Jack could find no evidence that Sir Launcelot and Lady Elaine had been married before a priest. Sir Launcelot had been under a spell when he begat the child of their union, but the same could not be said for Lady Elaine. Why hadn’t their union been regularized later? With another Elaine, the fair maid of Astolat, Sir Launcelot had been chaste enough — she had literally died as a result. What Sir Launcelot had to say, by way of explanation, was certainly to his credit: “She would none other ways be answered but that she would be my wife, outher else my paramour; and of these two I would not grant her, but I proffered her, for her good love that she showed me, a thousand pounds yearly to her, and to her heirs, and to wed any manner knight that she could find best to love in her heart… I love not to be constrained to love; for love must arise of the heart, and not by no constraint.” This, though, was no help where the first Elaine was concerned. Young Galahad, through the negligence of both parents, relatives on both sides, and the clergy, too, it would appear, had been born a bastard.

This was a matter that would not be dealt with in the planned edition, but it did worry Jack. Had he been able to understand it, then he thought he might have understood the relationship between Sir Launcelot and Guenever. This would have to be dealt with somehow, for it was this relationship that had led to war between King Arthur and Sir Launcelot (a war fortunately nipped in the bud by the Pope), to the dissolution of the fellowship of the Round Table, to King Arthur’s death, to Sir Gawaine’s death, to Guenever’s entering a nunnery (as a nun), and to the vocation of Sir (later Father) Launcelot.

“I see what you mean,” Father Urban said. “What do they usually do in children’s editions?”

“One I have refers to ‘sinful love.’”

“You’ll have to do better than that.”

“I’ve thought of ‘untrue love.’”

“That’s better.”

“Or ‘high treason.’”

“I’d say that’s it.”

Jack, however, didn’t regard Sir Launcelot guilty as charged. “Malory seems to be of two minds about the Queen, too.” Jack read a couple of passages to Father Urban. “See?” he said.

“Look. I don’t know anything about this,” Father Urban said. “I’ve always heard that Sir Lancelot and the Queen were that way, but I don’t know .”

“There’s good evidence that Sir Launcelot, on the night he was surprised by Sir Agravaine and others , was innocent. I could show you where.”

“No, thanks,” said Father Urban, and went back to his own reading. He had brought up several volumes from The Works of Theodore Roosevelt , one of the few sets in the Hill’s library that was all there, and was enjoying a respite from the Dark and Middle Ages. It was surprising, though, how often he came across passages that started him thinking on his own life. “Killing a deer from a boat while the poor animal is swimming in the water, or on snowshoes as it flounders helplessly in the deep drifts, can only be justified on the plea of hunger. This is also true of lying in wait at a lick. Whoever indulges in any of these methods, save from necessity, is a butcher pure and simple, and has no business in the company of true sportsmen.” And sometimes just a word would start Father Urban thinking: “… we are glad to sit by the great fireplace, with its roaring cottonwood logs”; “… spangled with brilliant red berry clusters”; “Sometimes we racked, or shacked along at the fox trot, which is the cow-pony’s ordinary gait.”

A couple of evenings later, though, Father Urban was drawn into the question of Sir Launcelot’s guilt or innocence. In the end, after considering the text, he was inclined to agree with Jack. Sir Launcelot’s past performances with the Queen were against him, it was true. Yes, even if, as Malory said, “love that time was not as is nowadays,” Sir Launcelot had “brast” the iron bars clean out of the window to Guenever’s chamber on one occasion, and had taken his “pleasance and liking” until dawn. But on the night he was surprised by Sir Agravaine, Sir Mordred, Sir Colgrevance, and others, Father Urban found him not guilty. “He says he’s innocent, and I, for one, believe him,” said Father Urban.

“My, I’m glad to hear you say that,” Jack said. He had been bogged down in the book, and now went on swiftly, writing that Sir Launcelot and the Queen were “wrongly accused of high treason on this occasion,” rushing through the battle scenes, and on to the hermitage where the Archbishop of Canterbury was hermit in residence. There Sir Launcelot died to the world and, after the customary six years of study, took Orders and was instrumental in the vocations of Sir Bors, Sir Galihud, Sir Galihodin, Sir Blamore, Sir Bleoberis, Sir Villiers, Sir Clarras, and Sir Gahalantine. “And there was none of these knights but they read in books,” Jack wrote, “and holp for to sing Mass, and rang bells, and did bodily all manner of service. And so their horses went where they would, for they took no regard of no worldly riches. For when they saw Sir Launcelot endure such penance, in prayers, and fastings, they took no force what pain they endured, for to see the noblest knight of the world take such abstinence that he waxed full lean.”