The Seeds of Civil War - Arthur and Lancelot
West Coast Eisteddfod Short Story Competition 2014
Civil wars are a garden, not a rose. Whose seed is sown in the deepest soils, rich with not hatred and envy unaided, but rather as much with love.
The place of this Civil War sewn in the like manner that pricks all common men. Woe for Cymru that it smote Princes!
Twas a contest of ‘who saw her first’ and by the smallest grain of time, twas Arthur whose eyes first met those of amatory Gwenhwyfar.
At school.
Perhaps, rather, it is the age and not the setting that makes the scholastic years so paramount. The music a man enjoys at fourteen, he enjoys at eighty. The scents that ignite his memories at forty and ten were first ponged at ten and four. His policy of strife and forgiveness, of style and disposition; all established at fourteen.
And so it is both meet that Arthur should be crowned at such an age and see her in school the same year; twin events to forever impact the Blessed Isles.
Maelgwn was sixteen. And again, he yielded to the young Pendragon from the South.
Controversy already and alway surrounded the Blood Hound Prince of Gwynedd. Already two heads taller than any Briton, lean with muscles and sinew strong from his toes to his eyebrows, he was more god than Man.
Maelgwn slew his uncle to have his wife and was sent south for fostering, forbearance and schooling with the royal households of the Silures.
It was more a banishing to let the folly of his youth cool in the memories of his kinsmen in Gwynedd. But when he looked upon the painted princess with eyes like unto the felines found in Persia and the markings in her skin (for her father permitted her to paint herself like unto the Picts, though she were Cymry) he loved her in an instant, and forever.
And he loved Arthur.
For the King’s part, he had to master the grace of ever being second.
Second pertaining comeliness.
Second with sword.
Second at dancing and dazzling.
Second at the hunt.
Second in grappling and fighting arts without steel.
Second in the sports of fleet of foot.
Second in all the things that mean all to a Man, but maybe to the wise, ought not.
Yet first at character, grace and kindness. These virtues seemed as vices when sharing a schoolroom, fighting and being in the presence of a warrior to whom Achilles would beg quarter.
And for all this, he loved Maelgwn.
But this time!! This one time, Arthur had been first!
Illtud, the King’s cousin, taught the children at a small chapel within the monastic college that bore his name. A place of learning envied all the way to Alexandria, it had every convention and accommodation to sneak away from the toil of learning at times of recess and master the art of falling in love.
Yes, Arthur had seen her first and she was his for the taking but the curse of the young King’s character bit him. His humility and equity flowed him over with thoughts of ‘let her decide.’
And though her words chose for Arthur, the lust of her eyes burned towards Maelgwn and Arthur knew it as lust but Maelgwn took it for love.
That same season the Saxon Wars began in earnest and their schooling cut short and unfinished. The young princes knew not to speak of the matter and the painted Gwenhwyar returned to her father’s lands.
Arthur was made King in Caerleon, crowned by pious Dubricious and given for a wife a stately woman; powerful, strong, learned, warm and maternal. The type of woman the Lord places on earth to perform the greatest and most difficult of all enterprises; Motherhood.
This was a red headed fair lady who bore the name but not the unbridled of eroticism of the painted girl who the Bards would call Gwen II but who for Maelgwn and Arthur, was really, and between them alone, Gwen I.
Through the military mastery of Merlin, Arthur won the Saxon Wars and helped reestablish kings in the North. This allowed Maelgwn, two decades passed, to at last return home.
The greater in power had served the lessor for the sake of Nation, and at long last, he could enjoy being King over his own courts again.
As the Golden Age unfolded for the Common Man; enjoying plenty of harvest and even more liberty of thought and enterprise, Arthur was enduring dark hours; losing his wife and Queen to madness.
All the sons the King gave her had perished in the Saxon Wars and one even at his father’s hand for the unpardonable sin against State; treachery.
A craze of sorrow struck at Gwenhwyfar. Too despondent to walk, let alone rule, she abdicated the crown for the simple black tunic, putting herself away in a primitive order for women similar to later nunneries.
Arthur demanded sons of Maelgwn come reinforce the strength of his own plenary courts against the wishes of Arthur (and the duality of Maelgwn had manifested through reports of raiding Arthur’s lands) and again, Maelgwn acquiesced to the greater good and the orders of the King.
The garden of hurts grew as Maelgwn observed his youngest son grow to make all of the Blood Hound Prince’s sins right through the greatness of his progeny.
His son shimmered wheresoever he walked, his promenade at once on and off the earth. He was better with sword than his father, rendering him for one small season, the greatest warrior in the history of the world.
The counselors, both of men and women, the Royal Clans and people of influence recommended with much force that Arthur, now not quite so young as Sovereigns go, marry again and get sons. A rivalry was yet a fester between the two eligible edlings; Gwalchmai and Medraut, the nephews of the King.
But Arthur favored the young son of Maelgwn.
Many eligible damsels of various pedigree, background and temperament were available to court the Pendragon.
The memories of being fourteen returned and Arthur sought the hand of Gwenhwyfar, the Painted Pictish Briton.
Universally this decision was bemoaned by all and with Merlin now gone to his sleep of imprisoned exile, the King made his choice, alone and without support.
Gwen II’s eyes were full of adultery and the way of loyalty and fidelity, she knew not. Her look could fracture a nation and her touch, render it as apocalyptic rubble.
And those Persian eyes often found Maelgwn when he was visiting his son at Court. And onlookers, needing not the history about their schooling, could see the love in his visage matched with the intrigue in hers.
A great calamity from the skies fell upon the Isles in the Sea, destroying so much life of both man and creature kind. Many felt that Maelgwn, ever so absent from his own Court in Gwynedd and Arthur’s courts in Caerleon, Gelliweg and Caermelyn, was helping make the great Sovereign a cuckold with Gwenhwyfar II.
The King fell sick and much of the Isles a Great Wasteland.
Maelgwn was innocent, save in heart. The new Merlin, Taliesin, approached Maelgwn. Though all feared the Blood Hound Prince, he had no such affect on Taliesin, who cursed Maelgwn oft for his erratic behavior.
‘Your son will achieve the Grail, and be the healing balm of this Land.”
In the betwixt and between of dispensations whereby magic and ways of Old blended with the Christian Faith, Maelgwn knew all too well what was being foretold.
When a King was no longer viral, he was sacrificed so that the Land might rejuvenate, and live. The rites of Sacral Kings, though fading, were not fully retired to the realm of superstition.
When a King was desired by the Clans to yet live, though the land was dying, a proxy was chosen.
“Not my son!” cried Maelgwn with a cry heard through the corridors of history for never was a human father such stricken with hurt.
But the greater in power served the lessor (who had no sons) and allowed Taliesin’s prophecy to unfold. Maelgwn’s son erected the sword, a proxy for Excalibur, he achieved the Grail in the stead of the ailing king and died too too young, the Galahad, the Gilead or healing balm of the Land.
To the forests went Maelgwn’s body, to parts unknown went his mind, to his own assigned hell of grief went his soul.
The Garden grew.
Some time later, Maelgwn, who was bade visit Arthur’s court and serve as Seneschal as was his station, could not.
The look of Gwen II in the arms of the man who had made a terminal borrowing of his glorious son and who now was coupled with such a dark and desirable companion nearly finished the remainder of twenty years of friendship, making it as vapor. Maelgwn could function neither as King in his own lands, nor as servant and fellow in Arthur’s. Only the solitude of the forest gave him an uneasy, interrupted peace.
Through the process of time, partially because he had healed to a degree and partially for the purpose of seeing Gwen II, Maelgwn visited Caerleon, to great reception by the King’s Fellowship. Yet Arthur was absent.
Gwen II sought to seduce Maelgwn without hesitation or reservation.
However, firmly planted in the double minded and o’ so troubled mind of Maelgwn were the words Merlin gave him ere the Old Wizard turned Christian disappeared so long ago (and besides, Maelgwn like the original Merlin more than the latter),
“when it comes time to do that which you would do, Lancelot, I beg you, do it not!”
And though she pressed upon him through secret and shortly written messages, through contrived reasons fabricated for pernicious and carnal visits, though she pressed and pressed, Maelgwn yielded to her not (though for the score of women and seven he had known biblically, this harlot had poisoned his heart and he loved her).
For all his failings, this treachery was not his. And to Medraut’s bed Gwen II turned.
Maelgwn found them in the very act of their tryst at a field in Glamorgan that bears the name of the deed to this day. The King was undone by his second wife, and by his nephew.
Knowing Arthur’s grace and temperance, Maelgwn carried a shaky comfort with the delivery that Arthur would divorce the Queen and kill the vermin Medraut and that the Kingdom would be scarred of scandal, yet not broken.
However, Maelgwn’s exile in the wilds of his own choosing left him derelict on current political events. Arthur was presently in Brittany succoring his great ally and friend King Howell against the tyrant Mark.
Medraut had taken the Queen, quite willingly, and meant to have the throne. To have Britain.
As the fleets and ships of the great King returned, Maelgwn begged Arthur forgive the Painted Gwenhwyfar her adultery and Arthur committed to doing the same.
The traitors fled north where Medraut had lands and yet further North to the Pictish village of Perth.
Unrelenting was Arthur’s pursuit, likened more unto a Bear made of iron than that of a Man. Arthur yielded to rage rare and unbridled and made a Jezebel ensample of the Queen; throwing her to his war dogs.
Like unto a slimy and poisonous frog, Medraut slipped through Arthur’s too tight clasp.
In the confusion and calamity Maelgwn, maneuvering to spare the Queen, had mortally wounded Gwalchmai.
Three men died to Arthur that day and yet lived. Gwalchmai for his wounds inflicted by Maelgwn, Medraut for his treachery, and Maelgwn for his attempt to abort justice.
The woman Maelgwn loved since aged sixteen lie in pieces and chunks. More red than flesh colored substance remained of her. It did not matter that Maelgwn was only capable of loving one who would not requite it. Nor did his periodic raiding of Arthur’s lands, nor his seasons of corruption give any balance to the loss of son that Arthur might live, or the loss of love that Arthur might marital justice.
Though Medraut was a weasel, Maelgwn was to join him in Civil War against King Arthur. Yes, over an affair, but not as recorded by the Bards.
However, as the infamy of Camlan drew to it’s event horizon and Maelgwn knew Medraut’s advantage escalating, the Blood Hound signaled and his men switched sides to support his friendship and ally ancient, ensuring that King Arthur would win the day.
‘Twas he who saw her first,” thought Lancelot.
updated by @dr-zane-gregory-newitt: 02/13/16 12:54:07AM
