I have served in the role of the page. Or I have tried. Like so many writers and storytellers. Keep the idea alive even when everyone who fought for that evasive better world has died.
This will take some explanation. If you have never read the brilliant The Once and Future King by T.H. White, do yourself a favor. It will give you such joy. And sadness that will leave you weeping. Spoilers ahead if you have not read this, a book that well-addresses both culture and the zombie apocalypse we seem to perpetuate despite our best intentions. A masterful adaptation of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, probably the best of the King Arthur retellings.
In my youth, I discovered the mythical world of King Arthur guided by T.H. White and his masterful, The Once and Future King. What a tale. Magical filled with wonder and despair. I must have been around ten when I first encountered this book, stealing it away to my secret glade by the creek, followed by my loyal dog, Winston.
How I loved the boy, Wart, and the eccentric Merlyn. And I so wished for Wart’s schooling, being turned into animals, learning from nature. I especially loved the tale of the embryos told by the badger.
The Once and Future King is actually four books in one. The first, The Sword and the Stone, was adapted into a popular Disney film which ended in triumph as Wart drew the sword from the stone revealing himself to be King Arthur. Sadly, that was not the end of anything. Only the beginning.
The book went on. And my fear of growing up and leaving my little glade was born in the pages that followed. I struggled with the story in my child’s mind, wondering why, why could there not be a better fate for young Wart? Why did Merlyn have to leave him? Arthur was no great thinker. He needed Merlyn. And how did Merlyn let himself be fooled by Nimuae. He knew she was going to trap him. Forever. He knew. Why did he do nothing to stop that awful nymph. What.An.Idiot. This broke the world, I thought, forgetting I was reading fiction and not history. After all, White loved breaking the fourth wall (speaking directly to the reader like this was all real).
The true history, of course, was quite a bit darker with no magic. No romance. A bunch of Romans. A bunch of warring clans. A maybe here. A guess there. No Camelot, not really.
My little brain broke on the final part of the book, “A Candle in the Wind”. I remember how I wept then, my dog looking at me with those dopey eyes, wondering if he might comfort me somehow as the light of day faded. The call for dinner came over the summer breeze. Winston, my sweet dog, dutifully answered, but I stayed there in despair, gripping the book to me, reading the title over and over again. “The Once and Future King.”
In the final pages of the book, King Arthur faces an army he cannot defeat. He knows he will die so he calls a young page called Tom. He tells the youngster not to fight. He tells him his story, how the Round Table fought for a better world by protecting instead of bullying the weak, by all sorts of virtues I could scarcely comprehend at the time. He told the boy to carry the idea, to let the idea live in him for the next fifty or sixty years. I remember feeling resolved. I would tell the story for the king so that he might return.
I left that glade almost a half century ago, treasured book in hand, tears streaming down my cheeks, unable to explain my distress to my friends or family. Mordred remained. He won. I cursed Lancelot and Guenever as weak and useless and cruel. How could they do what they did? I was so angry. A good man betrayed by those he loved the most. It rang true to me, inevitable. I felt the monster inside me want to fight, to take my revenge.
I am the page. The king ordered me not to fight so I might tell his story. There are a lot of us, ordered to tell these stories of these ideas that might lift us out of our zombie state. And yet, Mordred lives. And he must be slain. There is no other answer.
The Business End of Things
The second book of my series, A Rooke’s Tale, is underway. The first book is available now. Give it some love if you like. And drop me a comment. Are there works of art, in literature and music, that have drawn a visceral response from you?