The Bright Sword: A Novel of King Arthur

Guinevere tells the knights the true story of what happened between her and Lancelot. Though Lancelot flirted with her at court, Guinevere knew it was just courtesy. She did find the idea of tempting the most fastidious, pious knight of Camelot exciting, so she would sometimes flirt back. However, when Lancelot turned up at her door, she had no intention of entertaining him.

However, Lancelot made his way in and bound and gagged her. Guinevere feared that he meant to rape her, but Lancelot had other plans. He took off his clothes and sat next to Guinevere, waiting to be discovered by Mordred, whom he had tipped off anonymously about his visit. Mordred and his knights arrived on the spot, saw the naked Lancelot, and assumed that he and the queen had committed adultery. Lancelot cold-bloodedly killed the knights, leaving only Mordred alive so that he could spread the lie about Guinevere and Lancelot. Guinevere hates the fact that Lancelot’s treachery will always be disguised under the false story of her and Lancelot as star-crossed lovers.

The queen tells the group that the ship, named the Errant, is headed to Avalon, where Arthur still clings to life. Guinevere leads the group to a tall, green hill, on top of which is an azure and gold pavilion, in which Arthur lies as if in a deep sleep. Next to him is Morgan le Fay. Morgan tells the group that Arthur nearly died when Mordred crushed his skull in the battle of Camlann. Her enchantments are barely keeping him alive. However, Arthur must soon be released from this state of limbo. Morgan also tells the knights that Merlin may have joined Lancelot.

Later, Palomides and Collum take a bath in the sea. Unexpectedly, Dinadan joins them, and Collum sees why he always bathed in private. However, his surprise soon turns to acceptance; Dinadan is as much of a man as Collum. That night, Collum and Nimue make love.

In the morning, Bedivere requests Nimue for a final word with Arthur. Nimue petitions Durelas, and they are transported into Arthur’s dream. Arthur looks young and healthy. He greets Collum but does not recognize him, indicating that Collum is not his hidden son after all. Arthur tells the group again that he cannot stay, much as he may wish to. However, they must not despair. He says that the world has “sea-changed” (583), but it still has marvels. The marvels may not be pulled out of stone any longer but can still be found if one looks hard enough.

The dream ends, and Arthur dies. When Collum steps out of the pavilion, Bedivere is on his knees on the grass, looking with wonder at his new, pink left hand.

Bidding goodbye to Morgan, the group boards the Errant for Cornwall to seek King Cador’s alliance against Lancelot. Guinevere reveals the story about Collum’s birth. Collum’s father is none other than Sir Bleoberys, the gentle, courtly Frankish knight. Bleoberys fell in love with a flower fairy, and the fairy bore his child. Morgan could not keep a child of Camelot in her realm, so she transported mother and child to Mull, where she thought they would be safe. Meanwhile, Sir Bleoberys came looking for his lover and child but found the fairy dead and his son gone. Collum is plunged into remorse that he killed his own father.

Just then, the raft begins to rock. Lancelot and Merlin are chasing the flying raft on their ships, trying to bring it down. The Errant crashes into the sea. A brainwave strikes Collum. Telling the others that he is seeking help, he dives underwater with the anchor. The anchor pulls him to the ocean and to the Lady of the Lake (a common term for the spirit of a body of water), who is holding Excalibur. The lady says that Collum can only get the sword the “hard way” and buries the sword in a stone. She disappears. Collum remembers Arthur’s words in the dream, and instead of pulling the sword out, he smashes the stone, releasing Excalibur. He swims up, holding the sword.

The narrative flashes back to two years after the quest for the Holy Grail ended. Finding Arthur restless about the fate of Britain, Bedivere suggests a hunt. Arthur’s instinct draws his company to Old Weald, the forest of his childhood. The forest leads him to the land of King Bran. The wasteland is now healed and lush. Ystradel and Elidir are in their thirties and have children of their own. Arthur seeks the duo’s forgiveness for killing King Bran. Ystradel asks Arthur to rise and leads him to the back of the castle, where she wants to show him a marvel that has recently appeared.

In the backyard is a stone circle, as if made by the fairies. At the center of the circle is a fallen obelisk, atop which sits the Holy Grail. Ystradel tells Arthur the Pagan creation myth of the Milky Way, in which a king keeps trying to separate two lovers but the killed lovers find a way to be together through an arch of stars connecting their graves. Arthur understands that the story implies that magic and religion are two halves of the same whole.

Respecting the story’s wisdom, Arthur steps into the stone circle to drink rainwater from the Grail. Lancelot yells at him, calling him a fool, and grabs Excalibur to bring it down on the Grail. The chalice disappears. Lancelot throws the sword into the mud and runs away to Camelot, halting only at Queen Guinevere’s door.

When Collum comes ashore, Lancelot’s forces have captured his friends. Merlin mocks Dinadan, calling him a woman. Collum challenges Lancelot to a duel. Lancelot’s strokes with Arondight, his own famed sword, are so quick that the man seems made of liquid metal. Collum understands that he may be no match for Lancelot’s clean swordplay, so he must use Aucassin’s lessons on fighting dirty.

Collum brings Lancelot down. He is about to kill the unconscious Lancelot but is stopped by Guinevere. Collum asks the soldiers to untie his friends. It is then that Dinadan grabs Arondight and stabs Merlin through the heart from behind. When Merlin turns around to see who has struck him fatally, he is seized by surprise. Merlin dies. Collum proclaims Guinevere the queen of Britain in God’s name. Bedivere is the first knight to take a knee to Guinevere.

When Arthur was “Art,” a small boy in Sir Ector’s castle, Sir Ector would frequently beat him for faults committed by his own son, Kay. The beatings were a part of Arthur’s life. His one sanctuary was the forest of the Old Weald.

One day, Art wanders into the forest and comes across three girls, the oldest a teenager. They look like princesses or fairies. They are Morgause, Morgan, and Elaine, his half-sisters. They tell him that they’ve come to see him but cannot take him away. Morgan presses an old coin into his hand and tells him that their mother used to call him “little bear” when he was a baby. Arthur must never forget that his name is not just a Roman name but also one that means “bear” in British. Telling Art that she loves him and hates him in equal measure, Morgan runs away with her sisters.

As the friends head back to Camelot on the raft, Morgan appears by their side in the form of a sea eagle, saying that she has something to show them. She flies with them to the North Sea, where they see the shore crowded with thousands of humans. Morgan tells them what will come to pass since the fairies can see all of time at once. The incoming people are the Saxons, Jutes, and Angles (all Germanic peoples), refugees emigrating to Britain because their lands are being flooded, as well as invaded by the Huns.

As the Saxons keep arriving, some Britons will flee west and be called Welsh (“foreigner” in the language of the Saxons). Other Britons will mingle with the Saxons. The language of the Saxons will come to dominate, eventually turning into English. Britain will come to be known as Angle-land, and from that, England. The mixed Saxon-Briton-Roman people will make Arthur their national hero.

When Bedivere says that they will not hand over Camelot to the Saxons so easily, Morgan reminds him that the Britons came to Britain from somewhere else, too (historians believe from either Gaul or central Europe, or both in the first millennium BCE). Guinevere now understands that this is the change that Arthur spoke about. It wasn’t a change of kings but the coming of a new people.

The group wonders what to do with Excalibur. Guinevere wants them to promise that the humans will keep Excalibur. The fairies and gods handed them the sword, washing their hands of human affairs, and the world now belongs to humans. Palomides turns to Guinevere to take his leave: He has decided to go with Morgan.

By the time Dinadan is 70, all of Morgan’s predictions have come true. The Anglo-Saxons thrive in Britain, spreading their culture. Camelot is no longer the capital of Britain but of a small kingdom. It is ruled by King Bedivere, Guinevere’s son with her second husband, named after Guinevere’s first knight. Dinadan has been married and widowed.

Dinadan is seized by a desire to travel. He puts on his armor and visits nations that lie even beyond the Byzantine empire. He finally arrives at a land where no one knows the names of Arthur and Camelot. When Dinadan’s time comes, he lies down on a hot hill under the shade of an olive tree. A single perched bird on the tree seems to glow from within. As Dinadan, the last of the Round Table knights, dies, he looks up at the sky and wonders, “[W]hy it should be that we are made for a bright world, but live in a dark one” (670).