The Story of the Champions of the Round Table | Page 6

were very bright, shone like jewels set into ivory. And she saw that the lady was very wonderfully beautiful, so that the beholder, looking upon her, felt a manner of fear--for that lady was Fay.
(And that lady was the Lady of the Lake, spoken of aforetime in the Book of King Arthur, wherein it is told how she aided King Arthur to obtain that wonderful, famous sword yclept Excalibur, and how she aided Sir Pellias, the Gentle Knight, in the time of his extremity, and took him into the lake with her. Also divers other things concerning her are told of therein.)
Then the Queen came near to where the lady was, and she said to her,
"Lady, I pray you give me my child again!" Upon this the Lady of the Lake smiled very strangely and said: "Thou shalt have thy child again, lady, but not now; after a little thou shalt have him again." Then Queen Helen cried out with great agony of passion: "Lady, would you take my child from me? Give him to me again, for he is all I have left in the world. Lo, I have lost house and lands and husband, and all the other joys that life has me to give, wherefore, I beseech you, take not my child from me." To this the Lady of the Lake said: "Thou must endure thy sorrow a while longer; for it is so ordained that I must take thy child; for I take him only that I may give him to thee again, reared in such a wise that he shall make the glory of thy house to be the glory of the world. For he shall become the greatest knight in the world, and from his loins shall spring a greater still than he, so that the glory of the House of King Ban shall be spoken of as long as mankind shall last." But Queen Helen cried out all the more in a great despair: "What care I for all this? I care only that I shall have my little child again! Give him to me!"
[Sidenote: The Lady of the Lake taketh Launcelot into the Lake] Therewith she would have laid hold of the garments of the Lady of the Lake in supplication, but the Lady of the Lake drew herself away from Queen Helen's hand and said: "Touch me not, for I am not mortal, but Fay." And thereupon she and Launcelot vanished from before Queen Helen's eyes as the breath vanishes from the face of a mirror.
For when you breathe upon a mirror the breath will obscure that which lieth behind; but presently the breath will disappear and vanish, and then you shall behold all things entirely clear and bright to the sight again. So the Lady of the Lake vanished away, and everything behind her where she had stood was clear and bright, and she was gone.
Then Queen Helen fell down in a swoon, and lay beside the lake of the meadow like one that is dead; and when Foliot came he found her so and wist not what to do for her. There was his lord who was dead and his lady who was so like to death that he knew not whether she was dead or no. So he knew not what to do but sat down and made great lamentation for a long while.
[Sidenote: The Lady Helen taketh to a Nunnery] What time he sat thus there came that way three nuns who dwelt in an abbey of nuns which was not a great distance away from that place. These made great pity over that sorrowful sight, and they took away from there the dead King and the woeful Queen, and the King they buried in holy ground, and the Queen they let live with them and she was thereafter known as the "Sister of Sorrows."
[Sidenote: How Launcelot dwelt in the lake] Now Launcelot dwelt for nigh seventeen years with the Lady Nymue of the Lake in that wonderful, beautiful valley covered over with the appearance of such a magical lake as hath been aforetime described in the Book of King Arthur.
And that land of the lake was of this sort that shall here be described:--
Unto anyone who could enter into the magic water of that lake (and there were very few of those who were mortal who were allowed to come to those meadows of Faery that were there concealed beneath those enchanted waters) he would behold before him a wide and radiant field of extraordinary beauty. And he would behold that that field was covered all over with such a multitude of exquisite and beautiful flowers that the heart of the beholder would be elated with pure joy to find himself in the midst of that