And then I met Lancelot.
“You’re hardly more than a child,” Lancelot said to me.
“True, Lord,” I said. I was eating lobster soaked in melted butter and I do not think before or since I have ever eaten anything so delicious.
“Arthur insults us by sending a mere child,” Lancelot insisted.
“Not true, Lord,” I said, butter dripping into my beard.
“You accuse me of lying?” Prince Lancelot, the Edling of Benoic, demanded.
I smiled at him. “I accuse you, Lord Prince, of being mistaken.”
“Sixty men?” he sneered. “Is that all Arthur can manage?”
“Yes, Lord,” I said.
“Sixty men led by a child,” Lancelot said scornfully. He was only a year or two older than I yet he possessed the world-weariness of a much older man. He was savagely handsome, tall and well built, with a narrow, dark-eyed face that was as striking in its maleness as Guinevere’s was in its femininity, though there was something disconcertingly serpent-like in Lancelot’s aloof looks. He had black hair that he wore in oiled loops pinned with gold combs, his moustache and beard were neatly trimmed and oiled to a gloss, and he wore a scent that smelled of lavender. He was the best-looking man I ever saw and, worse, he knew it, and I had disliked him from the very first moment I saw him. We met in Ban’s feasting hall, which was unlike any feasting hall I was ever in. This one had marble pillars, white curtains that misted the sea view, and smooth plastered walls on which were paintings of Gods, Goddesses and fabulous animals. Servants and guards lined the walls of the gracious room that was lit by a myriad of small bronze dishes in which wicks floated in oil, while thick beeswax candles burned on the long table covered by a white cloth which I was constantly soiling with drips of butter, just as I was smearing the awkward toga that King Ban had insisted I wore to the feast.
I was loving the food and hating the company. Father Celwin was present and I would have welcomed a chance to talk with him, but he was annoying one of the three poets at the table, all of them members of King Ban’s beloved band offili, while I was marooned at the table’s end with Prince Lancelot. Queen Elaine, who was seated beside her husband, the King, was defending the poets against Celwin’s barbs, which seemed much more amusing than Prince Lancelot’s bitter conversation. “Arthur does insult us,” Lancelot insisted again.
“I am sorry you should think so, Lord,” I answered.
“Do you never argue, child?” he demanded of me.
I looked into his flat, hard eyes. “I thought it unwise for warriors to argue at a feast, Lord Prince,” I said.
“So you’re a timid child!” he sneered.
I sighed and lowered my voice. “Do you really want an argument, Lord Prince?” I asked, my patience at last nearing its end, ‘because if you do then just call me a child again and I’ll tear your skull off.” I smiled.
“Child,” he said after a heartbeat.
I gave him another puzzled look, wondering if he played a game the rules of which I could not guess, but if he did then the game was in deadly earnest. “Ten times the black sword,” I said.
“What?” He frowned, not recognizing the Mithraic formula which meant he was not my brother. “Have you gone mad?” he asked, and then, after a pause, “Are you a mad child, as well as a timid one?”
I hit him. I should have kept my temper, but my discomfort and anger overcame all prudence. I gave him a backswing with my elbow that bloodied his nose, cracked his lip and spilt him backwards off the chair. He sprawled on the floor and tried to swing the fallen chair at me, but I was too fast and too close for the blow to have any force. I kicked the chair aside, hauled him upright then rammed him backwards against a pillar where I smashed his head against the stone and put my knee into his groin. He flinched. His mother was screaming, while King Ban and his poetic guests just gaped at me. A nervous white-cloaked guard put his spear-point at my throat. “Take it away,” I told the guard, ‘or you’re a dead man.” He took it away.