Pelleas on a blood-red charger, riding away eastward with the white falcon flying above him, bound on a long quest for a magical cauldron called the Grail.

Nyneve, her chestnut hair and green gown gilded by torchlight, dancing with King Arthur while Guinevere looked on.

A young knight, Sir Torre, greeting me, telling me with greatest good cheer, “I’m Pellinore’s bastard.” Smiling at me. “There’s no shame in being a bastard, Mordred.”

King Arthur tripping over Gull and saying to her, “I beg your pardon, brachet.”

The blind harper—I happened to look from the topmost tower at sunset, and far to the west I saw a solitary figure on a crag, black against the bright sky. It was the blind harper, who that day had left Camelot, slowly walking toward Cornwall, his raven on his shoulder.

Gawain riding forth in only chain mail, and refusing to yield the road to a haughty French knight in full armor, and sending him over his horse’s tail with the lance, then driving him to the ground with the sword, and when the French knight demanded to know who had defeated him, telling him to mortify him, “A humble yeoman of King Arthur’s mighty court.”

King Arthur in the meadow with the royal horses, great white mares and their mighty black colts, riding the wild colts bareback one after another, laughing, calling to me, “Choose which one you want for yourself, Mordred.”

King Arthur remarking to me, “Unless I am much mistaken, Mordred, your brachet is in whelp.”

King Arthur riding to tourney on a white destrier as I watched him, thinking what it might mean to be a knight of the Round Table and face lances and swords for his sake.

King Arthur sentencing a deserter to death. The man wept for mercy, but King Arthur gave no mercy. “You have done the deed and you must bear the punishment,” he said, and his gray-eyed gaze strayed to me.

“I should go away,” I said to Nyneve.

In the top room of her tower, standing at the window, she turned troubled eyes to me.

I said, “When Arthur was my age, he was King, he was putting down the rebels, he was fighting for his throne and his life.” In a year or so I would be knighted, but I did not think I would ever be worthy to serve him.

Nyneve smiled, though the smile did not take away the sadness in her eyes. “You like him.”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” My first summer in Camelot was over, and I dreaded harvest and winter, the season of gifts. “He is—he is all generosity.” King Arthur singled me out for special favor, he gave to me and gave to me, and with each gift he gave me I felt more keenly that he had not gifted me with the words “my son.”