“Was it worth it?”
“Eh?”
“Achieving the Grail? Was it worth it?”
Sir Bors blinked in confusion at the question.
“Why do you ask?”
Sir Gawain paused nervously, seeming surprised at his own boldness. The two knights sat in the great hall, and it was empty and dark. All the other members of the Court had departed following the feast, to sport or to hunting or to further feasting in private chambers — or, in the case of a few of that esteemed company’s more venerable members, to bed. Only Bors and Gawain had remained, for they had had a minor matter of disinteresting business to discuss.
The business having been concluded, the two had lapsed for a while into silence, disturbed only by the growling of dogs squabbling for bones under the great table. Indeed, Bors had just been thinking that he should be on his way himself and had been weighing up some suitably courteous leave-taking when Gawain had burst out with the unlooked-for question. Now, though, the bold knight shifted uncomfortably in his seat, clearly regretting his forwardness.
“I didn’t mean to offend, I’m sorry for asking,” said Gawain apologetically. “It’s just that, well, y’know…”
“No no, it’s quite alright,” said Bors hurriedly. He squinted in thought. “I was just surprised, that’s all. Ever since I got back, it’s been all praise and feasts and dreadful speeches in my honour. I don’t think anybody’s actually asked me…well. Asked me that, as it were.”
“Look, please don’t worry about it,” said Gawain uncomfortably. “I really didn’t mean to dismiss your success or anything like that. I know it’s a great achievement, and really do think very highly of you for it. I don’t know what came over me.”
“No, it’s fine, really,” said Bors again. “You see. I’ve wondered the same.”
“Oh,” said Gawain.
“Yes,” said Bors. He shifted uneasily in his chair. The hall suddenly seemed very quiet, and very empty.
“And?” asked Gawain cautiously.
“Well, I’m not really sure,” said Bors uncomfortably.
“Not sure!” burst out Gawain in surprise. “How can you not be sure?!”
“That’s just the thing, though!” said Bors. “I was sure. I think. Or I thought I was. And sometimes I still think I am, but then I am unsure of my surety. And then I am unsure how unsure I am, and then I am…ah!”
“You’re speaking in riddles,” said Gawain bluntly.
Bors laughed ruefully. “My apologies, but, well, it’s all terribly muddled — for me especially,” he said. “Here. Let me try again from the beginning. Maybe I can make myself clearer, if only to a point.”
To this, Gawain cheerfully assented, and Bors began to speak.
“Back when this whole business began with the Grail, of course, it seemed like the most splendid adventure.” (Gawain chuckled indulgently at this, recalling his own exuberance.) “And of course, it was, really. But, I don’t know – didn’t you find it wore off after a while?”
“The fun of it?” asked Gawain.
“Well, yes. That it all became quite sad and difficult.”
“I think so,” said Gawain. “No, that’s not true. I know so. That was the case for many of us, anyway. It seemed like quite a lark for a bit, but then, well…”
“But then it started to become properly difficult,” said Bors sombrely. “We met with real hardships, with dreadful trials. We met with death.”
“Yes,” said Gawain. “But that just confuses it all the more for me.”
Bors smiled apologetically and laughed, as Gawain continued. “See, I knew for ages that my heart was no longer in it, as it were. But if you felt that way too, why did you keep on questing at all?”
“I’ve wondered the same,” said Bors heavily. “Even on the Quest, I wondered the same. Can any of this possibly be worth it? Can any of this possibly be for the best?”
He turned away from Gawain, his gaze distant, as his left arm came to rest on the chair beside him, seemingly unconsciously. “I did nearly give up altogether at one point, you know,” he said. “When I met with Lionel, when he murdered Calogrenant. I nearly abandoned the whole thing then.”
“You can’t blame yourself for your brother’s actions, for his rash temper. You know how he is,” said Gawain comfortingly, but Bors shook his head.
“I don’t,” he said simply. “What Lionel did was his fault, not mine. And yet…and yet. Had we not been on the Grail Quest in the first place, none of that would have ever happened. Lionel would not have been captured. I would not have had to choose whether to abandon him or not. And he never would have slain Calogrenant, or tried to slay me. That was the moment when I truly wondered – is this all really worth it? All this loss and sadness and failure – is it really worth it? Is Lionel’s own terrible failure worth it? And, even if it was, I started to worry that I was pursuing the right thing, but for the wrong reasons.”
“And yet you kept on going,” said Gawain.
“I did. I suppose…I suppose that I had to hope it might be worth it.” Bors blinked slowly and sadly, glancing back to Gawain. “Without that hope, you see, I think I would’ve had to abandon far more than the Quest. If I’d doubted it, well…I don’t know where my doubt would have ended..”
“But you still don’t sound convinced, even now,” said Gawain with some frustration.
“I’m not,” answered Bors simply. “That is, I wasn’t convinced then, and I am again unconvinced now. But in the moment when the Quest was achieved? In that wonderful, aweful moment; when I was in the very presence of the Grail; when I beheld its mysteries and understood the merest part of its divine revelations? Well, I was convinced then. In that moment, I was convinced of its worth (and of my own incredible fortune) more than I have ever been convinced by anything before or since. To have seen it, to have stood in its presence, to have been so graced…!”
He trailed off for a moment, shaking his head, lost in memory. “But that was then,” he said sadly. “It isn’t that I’ve forgotten it, as such – indeed, every waking moment I am haunted by it. But it has dimmed, Gawain. From the moment I departed home, it began to dim and now, it is but a shadow. A glorious, blinding shadow that overwhelms every other shadow – yet a shadow nonetheless.”
“I suppose, perhaps, that I should not be all that surprised. After all, how could any earthly mind possibly conceive of and hold on to the Infinite? We all of us are weak creatures, Gawain, scrambling in the dark. We are transient, careless, inconstant folk. I will never forget the Holy Grail, my friend, because the Grail cannot be wholly forgotten. But I will never wholly recall it, either.”
He sighed and laughed. “So there it is. In questing for it, I had doubts. In recalling it, I have uncertainties. All in all, is it really any surprise that I should find it difficult to answer your question? All that I can say is this: that in the very moment of I kneeling before the sacred vessel, I knew and understood its merit, more profoundly than I have ever known or understood anything else. And my reason and my faith both lead me to conclude that that impression was not folly on my part, nor trickery on anyone else’s. It is that reason and faith that I must hold to, in the absence of conviction.”
Gawain frowned. “But is that really it?” he asked searchingly. “A memory of something that has faded? Surely there must be more to your great achievement than that.”
“I think there is,” answered Bors quietly. “But I would be hard-pressed to name it.”
“But what about your achieving of it in and of itself?” said Gawain with some frustration. “Surely that’s worth something? Think about it, Bors – you know that you’re a good, holy, pious man now! You’ve had it proven to you beyond a shadow of a doubt, and there surely are few who can say that! Isn’t that certainty of your own virtue worth it?”
But to this, Bors violently exclaimed, “No! No, most assuredly not!”
“But you reached the Grail…”
“I did,” answered Bors more gently. “But I do not know that that makes me a good man.”
Gawain frowned in doubt. “But, then, what do you claim? That you achieved the Grail by chance, or because destiny deemed it must be so, regardless of your own failings?”
“Neither,” said Bors resolutely. “No, Gawain. This, too, I have had to consider. I think, if I were to put it plainly, I would say this: that when I reached the Grail, I was in whatever state of grace was then attainable for me at that very moment. And, further, that the very vision of the Grail was itself an extension of that grace. A gift, given to me in spite of my own mediocrities. That it was withheld from some does not speak ill of them, for no gift arises from judgement alone. And that it was granted to myself, to Galahad, and to Perceval, does not guarantee that any one of us were wholly righteous and inviolable. All it means, I think, is that we three were in a state at that very moment to achieve grace – and that we three took that chance. It does not mean we have never done ill, and nor does it preclude our…well, my, I suppose…doing ill in the future.”
Gawain smiled tightly at this. “Ah. Galahad and Perceval,” he said tartly. “The Paragon and the Fool.”
“What of them?” asked Bors in confusion.
Gawain did not immediately answer the question, but turned, staring out over the great table for a while, at a seat that once had stood empty, and now would ever stand empty again. “I don’t know,” he murmured. “It’s just, well. It’s all a bit dull, don’t you think?”
“Dull?!”
“Not the Grail as such, no!” said Gawain hurriedly. “But, well, think about it. From the very beginning of this whole strange affair, wasn’t it completely obvious that it would be at least Galahad who would achieve the Quest? I mean, it was an entirely foregone conclusion, or so it always seemed to me. Holy knight, virtuous and virginal, the best of us in every way and all that. I mean, it’s just…dull.”
“Oh,” said Bors and he blinked. “I didn’t realise that one might think of it that way.”
“What other way is there to think of it?” asked Gawain.
“That Galahad earned it, I suppose?” said Bors dubiously.
“But even so,” said Gawain crossly, “It makes for a fairly dissatisfying turn, don’t you think? Here we are, the Knights of the Round Table, champions of the greatest kingdom of our age, doing all sorts of great and marvellous deeds — only for the greatest and most marvellous of them all to be, well. Rather rote, even bland, when you actually think about it.”
“I still don’t know what you’re getting at,” said Bors. “I mean, it sounds to me as if you ought to be just as unhappy whenever the best cook makes the best cake, or the best minstrel performs the best song.”
“Unhappy? Absolutely not!” said Gawain. “But think about it, Bors. When was the last time you heard a good story about such a character? ‘Once upon a time, there was a great cook. One day, he cooked well, just like he did every day, and everyone was jolly pleased with him and told him he was the best cook they knew, and then he died.’ You can’t tell me that that would ever make for a good tale!?”
“I suppose not,” said Bors quizzically. “But are we doing all this because it’ll make a good tale? Or because, well, you know…because it’s the right thing to do?”
“Can’t it be both?” said Gawain.
“I suppose it can,” answered Bors. “But I’d rather be good than be in a good tale, as it were. Besides, remember how terribly exciting it was when Galahad took the Perilous Seat?”
Gawain smiled tightly, glancing again to the empty chair. “I do,” he said. “But the most exciting point of a story shouldn’t really be the beginning, should it. Now, if there had been the chance of failure, that would’ve been something.”
“The chance of failure?” repeated Bors quietly. “But how can you know that there wasn’t that chance?”
“Why, because of the whole affair with the prophecy in the first place,” said Gawain.
“I suppose,” said Bors. “But he still had to do it, didn’t he?”
“But he was always going to do it, because it’d been foretold that he was always going to do it,” answered Gawain.
Bors seemed to struggle with this for a moment. “Does that lessen his own achievement, though?” he asked at last. “Sure, there was a prophecy and all that. But didn’t he still need to do the work to fulfil the prophecy? What if he’d failed?”
“Could he have failed?” asked Gawain pointedly.
“I don’t know,” answered Bors haplessly. “But maybe we’re going about this all the wrong way. If there’d been no prophecy, would Galahad have still achieved the Grail regardless?”
The question caused Gawain pause. “I suppose he could have?” he answered unsurely. “I mean, I certainly can’t claim that he wouldn’t have.”
“Maybe that’s it, then,” said Bors thoughtfully. “In any case, I certainly don’t think that you can claim that the prophecy lessens the worth of Galahad’s achievement.”
“But even so, what was the point of the prophecy?” asked Gawain.
“I don’t know,” answered Bors haplessly. “Maybe…maybe it was necessary for our sake, and not for Galahad at all? But I’m not sure.” He chuckled ruefully. “I do take your point, though, it does make for a less dramatic story. But in any case, you cannot say the same of Perceval, surely? I mean, even I was surprised at first, when I began to wonder if he might achieve the Quest – to my own discredit, I must say, but even so.”
“Perceval? He’s worse than Galahad!” cried Gawain. “At least Galahad obviously deserved it. But Perceval? It’s like you say – whoever could have ever guessed that he’d achieve the Quest too? I mean, he was a perfectly nice sort of chap, in his own sort of way. But if one had to set anyone forth as being the best of us?”
“See, that’s what I came to quite like about Perceval,” said Bors quietly. “I don’t think that he ever was the best of us, as it were. But I also came to realise that, well, there’s quite a lot of good beyond us. That he was the best of that which isn’t us, if that makes any sense.”
Gawain frowned at that. “I suppose so,” he said at length. “And again, I cannot stress enough that I’m not suggesting he shouldn’t have achieved the Grail. That’s hardly up to me, and thank God for that! Just, you know. That it didn’t make a lick of sense – from the outside, at least. You know, comparing Perceval and Galahad, it’s like comparing, well, like comparing…some piece of furniture with something, well. Incomparable.”
“But is it a matter of comparison at all?” asked Bors. “That was never the question of the Grail, was it – to measure us against each other? Only to measure us against ourselves.”
At this, Gawain was struck into a silence troubled by his own miserable introspection, and for a while, they sat quietly together. But Gawain’s unhappy thoughts were broken after a spell, as Bors said wryly, “The Paragon and the Fool, eh? I dread to imagine what moniker you’ve come up with for me, then.”
Gawain cocked his head in thought. “You know? I’ve not actually thought about it,” he said in surprise. “I’m not sure why. Maybe because, well…because you’re Bors. You know.” He waved his hand haplessly and laughed. “Just, well. Bors.”
“Just Bors?” said Bors with a merry chuckle. “Alas! Of any accusation you could have leveled against me, I suppose I cannot quarrel with that one.”
“No no no, but that’s not quite what I’m trying to say either!” said Gawain. “No, it’s that…you know. You came back. You’re still here with us, feasting and fighting and questing with us. You didn’t, well…”
“Die,” said Bors solemnly.
“Indeed,” said Gawain, and his face was now no less grave. “It’s strange, really, that you should have come back when they didn’t.”
“Would you rather that I had perished?” asked Bors, but it was clear that he had taken no offence, for his voice was light and jesting.
“No, of course not!” said Gawain forcefully. “No, that’s not what I mean at all. Indeed, if only one of you could come back, I’m awfully pleased it was you…ah! but I don’t mean it like that either, even if I spoke unkindly of your companions just now. No, I would far rather have had it that you all made it back, of course.”
Bors sighed heavily. “I think I would have too,” he said sadly.
“But that speaks to what I was trying to say in the first place,” said Gawain. “Why were you permitted to return, and not them? Why did they die, and not you? Did you do something differently? Did you want something different? And was it you who was rewarded in the end, as it were? Or rather them?”
Bors did not answer at once. “I have wondered the same,” he said quietly. “It’s difficult not to, I suppose. Yes. Why me, indeed.”
He stirred and looked Gawain in the eye. “But maybe it’s better (if only for my own peace of mind) to think of it this way. I do not think I was not rewarded, as such. But maybe the nature of that reward was different for me than it was for Galahad and Perceval. Not for either to be measured against the other. Just different.”
Gawain smiled thinly. “You did not approve of my thinking about the drama of the whole thing before,” he said. “But were it not for you, we would not have the full story of it at all.”
“I have thought that too,” said Bors evenly. “But it is a dangerous thought. I would not wish to elevate myself beyond my station, Gawain.”
Now it was Gawain’s turn to glance sharply at Bors. “And nor should you,” he said. “But consider, Bors, that it is not wrong to rise to your station. Were the prophets of old not convicted of the merit of their words? Did they not fully believe in their right to teach and to lead?”
“But the words of the prophets were put into their mouths by God Himself,” said Bors dubiously. “I highly doubt the same to be true of me!”
“Indeed,” said Gawain carefully. “But I wonder if the prophets mightn’t have felt that same doubt.” He laughed. “Besides, you have seen the Holy Grail, my friend. If any one of us may be so inspired, who else? And then if that is so? Then it would not be arrogance on your part to accept that we might benefit from heeding your wisdom.”
“I suppose so,” said Bors heavily. He bowed his head and rubbed at his eyes wearily. “But I don’t know that I really feel that I can, Gawain. I don’t know that I wish to take that responsibility upon myself.”
“And yet there is nobody else who can,” answered Gawain.
“I suppose not,” said Bors unhappily. “But that fear remains, Gawain. The fear that, even now, I may have done the right thing, but that it may have been driven (if only in small part) by the wrong reasons.”
“But surely your achievement of the Quest speaks to your reasons having been right,” said Gawain. “And I’m not entirely sure that I understand what you mean in the first place by talking about right things and wrong reasons.”
Bors frowned. “Well, let me see…” he said slowly. “Take our queen and Lancelot, for example.”
Gawain let out an exclamation. “What…what are you talking about?” he spluttered.
But Bors laughed gently and waved a hand. “Ah! come!” he said quietly. “Just because our king refuses to acknowledge what passes between them does not mean that we cannot speak of it. Indeed…perhaps our king’s reticence gives us all the more need to speak of it ourselves.”
Gawain looked around him as if checking for eavesdroppers, but the hall was dark and quiet. “Even so,” he muttered. But he did not prevent Bors from continuing.
“So…Lancelot and the queen. Their affection for each other is genuine, is it not?”
“It is,” said Gawain cautiously.
“Exceedingly genuine,” continued Bors. “And such a love as they share – is that not what we all should aspire to? Is it not a goodly, noble, fulsome love? A right thing, in short – but their reasons for pursuing it are not goodly, and thus do they do ill.”
“Equally could one say that they do the wrong thing in pursuing their passion, but that their reasons for it are good,” said Gawain dubiously.
Bors shrugged. “Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps the debate of such semantics is beyond me. Be as that may, though, that was once my fear: that I pursued the Grail for the wrong reasons. And now, having achieved it? I fear that I may come to celebrate the grace shown to me for equally wrong reasons.”
“I see,” said Gawain morosely. “Nonetheless. If I might beg of you any favour, Bors, it would be this: do not fear to instruct us in the mysteries you beheld, nor in your part in coming to behold them. For we have nobody else to do so.”
Bors looked to Gawain with a curious affection. “You are right, I suppose,” he said. “Yes. Thank you, my friend.”
To this, Gawain smiled slightly and bowed his head. But he seemed now gripped by an ill mood. “It truly is a bad affair,” he said glumly after a moment.
“The Holy Grail?!”
“No,” said Gawain flatly. “Lancelot and Guinevere.”
Bors nodded in agreement, which in turn emboldened Gawain. “But your words on it being ‘right,’ if for the wrong reasons, made me wonder: with whom do you side? With them, or with Arthur?”
Bors groaned and squirmed in his chair. “Must we take sides?” he asked unhappily. “Cannot we agree that the whole thing is a wretched mess, and be done with it?”
“We can agree on that,” answered Gawain forthrightly. “But I’m not so sure that we cannot pick sides, my friend. There is discontent brewing among our company. Soon, this whole thing may well come to a head. And when that happens? Then will we all have to choose a side.”
Bors smiled grimly. “And then would we all be making the wrong choices, and all would be made for the right reasons,” he muttered. “Perhaps you are not mistaken, my friend. But you cannot put such a question to me and not have an answer yourself. With whom would your sympathies lie?”
“My sympathies?” asked Gawain. “That I cannot say so easily. The king is kin, but Lancelot is as a brother to me. I love both dearly.”
He bit at his lip. “But if it came to it, my part is clear, for my choice would not be made for sympathy, but for loyalty. It is the king who is my liege, and it is with him that I would stand. But also would I say this: that it is he who has been wronged in this matter, he who has been ill-used by his friend and spurned by his wife. Aye! I have sympathy for them all, but it is not Arthur who has caused this evil to be. I would stand with him.”
“Loyalty?” mused Bors. “Well. If it’s loyalty that we are considering, then I would have to stand behind my own kinsman. For such a bond of blood that Lancelot and I share must take preference over even my obedience to my king. This, I hope, you can understand – being family with the king yourself.”
To this, Gawain nodded, and Bors continued. “And you are not wrong. The king is blameless in the cause of this dreadful mess. But I do not see him as being blameless in the whole.”
At this, Gawain laughed sharply, but Bors was not dissuaded. “Listen to me, Gawain! Again I say, the first sin does not lie with the king, but nonetheless is he not blameless. For far too long, he has chosen the easy path. For far too long has he chosen to turn a blind eye, to indulge in the whims of his wife and his friend, even as the envy of it eats at him. And by permitting it, he himself partakes in their wrongdoing.”
“Were it any other woman than his own wife, he would rebuke her for bringing shame upon his court. And were it any other knight than Lancelot, he would cast him from our Order and banish him from Camelot. And he would be right to do so! But he does not. Not because the wrong that they do is lesser than other such wrongs, but because it is equal (and perhaps even greater) and he lacks the fortitude to challenge it as he should.”
“Aye, Lancelot and Guinevere fall short of virtue. But Arthur is our king. If he does not lead us in the achievement of virtue, then he fails in the only true duty he has. So no, I do not hold him blameless.” As Bors had spoken, his voice had raised, becoming more and more animated. But now, he caught himself, and added, in a sad and subdued tone, “I do not hold him blameless. Though I do not envy him this task that has been set before him. I pity him.”
For his part, Gawain had sat silently through Bors’ speech, though now he stirred and let out a long breath. “Who ever would have thought it might come to this?” he muttered. “Aye, you are not wrong. We all of us have fallen short in our duty, have done right for wrong and wrong for right.”
“Indeed. The wrong thing for the right reasons,” repeated Bors slowly, thoughtfully. “Perhaps that must always our lot, Gawain. To be pursuing the wrong thing for the right reasons, or the right for the wrong. Perhaps we’ll never really escape that.”
“We? Mankind?” asked Gawain.
“Camelot, at least,” answered Bors. “But maybe — just maybe, mind — that was the whole point of the Grail all along. To grant us, if only for a moment, and if not to be invariably achieved, the possibility to pursue the right thing beyond the shadow of a doubt, even if it were for base and impure reasons.”
“Weak and fallible creatures we are, Gawain, doomed to never wholly commit to any fully right thing for any fully right reason. But in this one, wonderful adventure? Despite all the misfortunes and tragedies and wickednesses that befell us all along the way, and despite whatever wrong reasons we may have pursued it for, we were at least pursuing the right thing, and we knew it to be so.”
“Maybe,” said Gawain. He stirred and sighed. “And maybe that makes it all the bitterer to have failed. To have had such a chance, and to have squandered it so.”
Bors frowned at this. “And yet you pursued that chance,” he said mildly. “To have pursued the right thing, even if it were not entirely for the right reasons, is not so very wrong.”
“And yet it is not so very right,” said Gawain, and still his mind dwelt upon Lancelot and upon his own failings.
“And perhaps it is not for us to judge,” said Bors. “We can but pursue, and discern.”
Gawain glanced keenly at him. “And yet you discern that the king avoids that judgement that he must pass,” he said. “Perhaps it is not for us to not judge, but to judge when we must pass judgement.”
Bors did not answer at once. “Yes,” he said at last, and his voice was unwilling. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”
He stirred and sighed. Dusk lay upon Camelot, and the fires were burning low, and the chill of evening was upon them. Soon, the light would pass into darkness. But for now they sat there, the two knights, content in the company of the other. At last, though, Gawain said, “It is late, and I am tired. But I must thank you, Bors, for your patience with me. I have gained much from your instruction, despite my many impertinences. Truly, I am grateful.”
“Funny,” said Bors. “I was just about to say the same to you.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks for reading – feel free to check out anything else you may be interested in on the blog, there’s plenty more to discover! Follow me on Facebook and on Twitter to stay up to date with The Blog of Mazarbul, and if you want to join in the discussion, write a comment below or send an email. Finally, if you really enjoyed the post above, you can support the blog via Paypal, and keep The Blog of Mazarbul running. Thanks for reading, and may your beards never grow thin!
Beautiful and thought provoking