CHAPTER V

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*"CAMELOT, THAT IS IN ENGLISH WINCHESTER"*

Even while we were at Camelford, and again while we were at Cadbury Castle, I had not forgotten the words of my favorite book, "Camelot, that is in English Winchester." If we were talking about hard history, I suppose that I should have to say that, if there ever was a real Camelot at all, it was probably that pleasant hill-top that we had seen in Somerset. Yet, when a story-teller whom I love as much as I do good old Sir Thomas says that Winchester was Camelot, it shall be Camelot for me, at least while I am there. So we went down from London to see if this third Camelot pleased us as much as the two that we had seen.

First we walked about the streets and aimed at nothing in particular. That is a good thing to do on the first day when you are in a strange city. "If I were to try to tell you," I said, "all the interesting and useful and delightful things that there are to tell about Winchester, I should have to go first and learn the most of them for myself. And then you would get tired of listening to them, for there would be enough of them to make a book as big as a dictionary. We are supposing, you know, while we stay, that King Arthur lived here, and, whether he did or not, other kings of England lived here more or less for I don't know how many hundred years. King Alfred lived here and King Canute lived here and William the Conqueror built a castle here, on the very spot, we will let ourselves believe, where King Arthur's castle stood."

If the first thing to be done in a town newly visited is to walk about the streets, the second is to go to the cathedral, if there is one. So the next thing that we did was to go to Winchester Cathedral. It is not much to look at from the outside, though it is pretty enough, with the trees and grass around it. It has only the lowest of towers. It had a higher one once, but when King William Rufus was killed, they buried him in the cathedral and seven years afterward the tower fell down. They thought that it must be because they had buried such a wicked man in the church. But I think that there are kings as bad as William Rufus buried under some English towers that have not fallen down. There are kings and kings, good and bad, lying here in this cathedral. Canute is here, and it was here that he brought his crown and put it up over the cross, after he had found, down yonder at Southampton, that he could not rule the waves, as England has since been supposed to do. To be fair to the cathedral, I ought to say that, though it is unpromising outside, it is surely very beautiful inside. After that I think I do not need to say anything more about it at all, because there are so many people who can tell you about this cathedral and others so much better than I can.

We left it and walked up the street to find the castle. I think I forgot to say at the proper place that the whole town of Winchester that day was in a state of breathless excitement about a cricket match. The boys of Winchester College were playing against the boys from Eton, and pretty nearly everybody in town had gone to see the game. When we got to the castle, the man who ought to have been there to show it to us had gone to see the cricket match, like the rest. But his wife, who was a very pleasant elderly lady, said that she would show it to us.

They hold court in the castle still. Not the sort of court that King Arthur used to hold, but courts of justice for the County of Hants. The old woman took us into one room after another and told us about the trials that had taken place in them. We pretended to be greatly interested, but we were not a bit. But by and by she took us to a place where we were interested. It was the great hall of the castle. I should feel sorry for anybody who was not interested in the great hall of Winchester Castle. It belonged to the old castle that William the Conqueror built, where more kings and queens lived or were born or died or did other fascinating things than I should dare to try to remember. And this was the hall of Parliament for almost four hundred years. "And we may as well believe," I said, "that now we are standing in King Arthur's hall. If Winchester was Camelot there is no reason to suppose that his castle was not on this very spot, and there is no reason to suppose, either, that the great hall was not on this very spot. Henry VII. believed it, when his son was born here and he named him Arthur."

It is a beautiful room as it stands to-day. It is long and wide and high. It has fine arches and cluster columns and windows of stained glass. But what we gazed at most hung high up on the wall at the west end of the hall. The old woman told us that it was King Arthur's Round Table. Well, there was no doubt that it was round, and she said that there was no doubt that it had been a table once, because there were places at the back of it to fasten legs. We found a picture of the back of it afterwards in a book about Winchester, and it showed that she was right. The table is eighteen feet across, if you insist on my being exact. The table is painted in quite an elaborate style. There is a big rose in the middle of it, and then there is a border, and in the border are the words: "This is the round table of King Arthur and his twenty-four Knights." This did not make us believe in the table any the more, because we knew very well that twenty-four knights would not make any show at all in King Arthur's hall. Above the rose, as the table hangs now, and with his feet resting on it, is a picture of King Arthur himself. The rest of the table, except the outer edge, is painted with broad stripes of dark and light, which run from the border around the rose to the larger border of the whole table. The old woman asked us to notice that the names of the knights were around the edge of the table.

We tried to make out the names and we did make out some of them. There were Lancelot and Lionel and Tristram and Gareth and Bedivere and Palamides and Bors and Kay and Mordred and others that we could not read. The old woman said that there were some of them that nobody had ever been able to read, and we were not so proud as to try to read what we were told that nobody could. It was King Henry VIII. who had this table painted in such a gorgeous way, and it seemed to us that the picture of King Arthur did not look quite unlike Henry. No, we could not quite believe in the table after all. King Arthur's Round Table had places, as we knew, for a hundred and fifty knights, and this had places for only twenty-four. Still we could not help being uncommonly interested in anything that had even been called King Arthur's Round Table for four hundred years at the very least, and probably for six hundred.

"You see," said the old woman, "the three pictures on the windows over the Round Table are King Arthur and King Alfred and King Canute, a Briton and a Saxon and a Dane."

We looked up at the three kings on the stained glass windows, and it was then that I made a dreadful mistake. It came into my mind that it would be a good plan to show off to this good lady who had so kindly shown us the hall, how much we knew about these three kings. Pride does sometimes go before a fall. "Helen," I said, "tell this lady something about King Arthur, just to show her how much we have learned."

"I don't want to tell about him," Helen answered, "I would rather you would tell a story about him."

"But I am not going to tell any story now," I said, "I want you to tell one--any one you like, just to show that you can do it."

"But I don't want to show that I can do it."

"Helen, if you do not tell us something about King Arthur at once, I will not tell you another story for a week."

And then what did this horrible child do but stand there and recite:

"When good King Arthur ruled this land He was a goodly King; He stole three pecks of barley meal To make a bag-pudding. A bag-pudding the king did make, And stuffed it well with plums; And in it put great lumps of fat, As big as my two thumbs. The King and Queen did eat thereof, And noblemen beside; And what they could not eat that night, The Queen next morning fried."

I tried to look as sorrowful as I could. "You know very well," I said, "that that is not true at all. That was written by some enemy of King Arthur. There are plenty of good things that you know and might have told us; and so, to punish you for telling that, you shall tell us now about King Canute and his courtiers."

Now Helen did not like this any more than she liked telling about King Arthur, but she must have seen how very determined I looked, and she gave a little gasp and said: "King Canute's courtiers told him that he was the greatest King in the world, and that the sea would obey him if he told it to do anything. So he had his chair put on the sand and he ordered the tide not to come up and wet him, and it did come up and wet him. And he told his courtiers not to flatter him any more, and he never smiled again."

"You get worse every minute," I said. "You know very well that it was not Canute who never smiled again, and for telling that story wrong you shall tell us now about King Alfred and the cakes."

By this time Helen saw that it was getting serious and that it would not do any good to make any more mistakes, so she said: "King Alfred was hiding from his enemies, and he was in the house of a cowherd. And the cowherd's wife was baking some cakes, and King Alfred was sitting by the fire. And the cakes burned and he was so busy mending his bows and arrows that he didn't know it, so the cowherd's wife said: 'Can't you look at the cakes and not let them burn? You'll be ready to eat them fast enough when the time comes.' And she didn't know that he was the King."

"I can't say," I said, "that you have told that quite as well as you might, but it will do. And now, who was it that never smiled again?

"Henry I."

"And why?"

"Because his son William was drowned when the White Ship was lost."

"Very well. The first class in English history could sit down, if there was anything to sit on."

The old woman was quite speechless with astonishment by this time. I don't suppose anybody had ever come into this hall and tried to tell her so many things about the kings who used to live in Winchester before. We thanked her for her trouble and said good-by, and she just managed to get back enough of her senses to say that we were welcome and to bid us good-by in turn. "And now," I said, "suppose we do what everybody else in town is doing and go and see the cricket match."

[Illustration: Winchester Cathedral]

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