“Camelot!” said Alexander, when they had both read the letter.

“Camelot!” sighed Alice. “I used to think I wanted to go there more than anything in the world!”

“And don’t you now?”

She smiled, smoothing her hands down over the soft swell of her body. “Fine dresses, satins, jewels? They’d not fit me for long! No, it was a girl’s dream. I have all I want here. And you?”

“A boy’s dream, no more,” he said. His hand went out to lie gently over hers. “All I want, all I shall ever want, is here, too.”

It is a fact that Alexander never did get to Camelot. It was written later, by the chronicler, that “He lost his way, and wandered for a great while.”

But he knew, and we know, that he had found it.

THE LEGEND

(The tale of Sir Alisander le Orphelin and Alice la Beale Pilgrim, as related by Thomas Malory in Le Morte d’Arthur, Book X.)

King Mark of Cornwall had a younger brother, Boudwin, whom the people loved. There came a time when the Saracens attempted to invade Cornwall from the sea, and Boudwin, raising the country against them, put wildfire in three of his own ships, and sent these among the enemy ships, destroying them, and killing the whole invading army of forty thousand men.

King Mark, already jealous of his brother’s popularity, was angry at Boudwin’s success, and planned to kill him. He sent for him to come to court with his wife Anglides and their infant son Alisander. At supper the king picked a quarrel with Boudwin and stabbed him to death. Queen Isoud sent to warn Anglides that her son was in grave danger, so, helped by Sir Tristram, she fled from Mark’s castle, taking with her Boudwin’s blood-stained shirt and doublet as a reminder of a murder which must be avenged.

Meanwhile Mark, raging through the castle and failing to find the child to kill him, sent a knight called Sadok to catch the fugitives and bring them back. But Sadok had been Boudwin’s friend, so when he came up with Anglides and the child he let them go, only requiring her to promise that one day, when Alisander was grown, she would send him to avenge his father’s murder. Then Sadok rode back to tell King Mark that he had drowned the boy himself. At which Mark rejoiced.

Anglides travelled on till she came to the castle of Arundel in Sussex, which belonged to a cousin. She was made welcome, and lived there in safety till Alisander was grown. Then, on Lady Day, when he with twenty others was made knight, she showed him the bloody shirt and doublet, and bade him avenge his father’s murder.

When the feasting and jousting were over Alisander set out to ride to London, but, missing his way, journeyed on, fighting in one tournament after another, always overcoming his opponent, until eventually he was wounded in a fight undertaken for a damosel who owned a castle nearby. The damosel had the wounded Alisander carried into her castle, where Morgan le Fay (who suspected the damosel’s motives, and who wanted him for herself) tended him for a while. At length, after drugging him, she carried him off to her own castle, where she promised to heal him on condition that he made no attempt to leave her lands for a year and a day. Perforce, he promised, and she did heal him.