Sir Bedivere

Bedivere is one of the two oldest companions — he and Cai are with Arthur in the Welsh material long before Lancelot exists — and he is given the last real scene in the book.

After Camlann, with the army dead and Arthur dying, the king orders him to throw Excalibur into the water and report what he sees. Twice Bedivere goes, looks at the sword, decides that throwing away something so valuable would be a waste, hides it, and comes back with a lie: he saw nothing but waves and wind. Twice Arthur knows he is lying.

The third time he does it, and there came an arm and an hand above the water and met it, and caught it, and so shook it thrice and brandished, and then vanished away the hand with the sword in the water.

It is the most human moment in the ending. The world's last loyal knight cannot follow one simple instruction, because he is grieving and the object is beautiful and it seems like such a waste — and the marvellous is waiting the entire time for him to get on with it.

He is also the reason we have the ending at all. Malory's last book is narrated as testimony: Bedivere goes to the hermitage at Glastonbury, finds the hermit burying a body brought at midnight by a company of ladies, and stays there for the rest of his life as a monk. Everything the reader is told about Arthur's death comes through him, and he did not see it happen either. He saw a barge go out.