Amesbury, and the death of Lancelot

Guinevere, when the news comes that Arthur is dead and Mordred with him, goes to Amesbury and takes the veil, and Malory says she wore white and black and did great penance, and that never creature could make her merry.

Lancelot arrives in England too late for everything. Gawain is dead, the king is dead, the fellowship is dead. He rides west, looking for her, and finds her at Amesbury.

She sees him coming across the cloister and faints. When she recovers she speaks to her sisters, in front of him, and tells them that through this man and her, all this war was wrought, and the death of the noblest knights of the world — and that through their love the most noble king that ever was is slain.

Then she turns to him and asks him, for the sake of the love that was between them, never to look on her face again, and to go back to his kingdom and take a wife and pray for her.

He asks her to let him do the same as she has done — to take the same austerity of life — and she does not believe he will. He tells her that if she can do it, he can, for he never was false to his promise, and that God defend he should be false now.

And then he asks her to kiss him once, and she says no. Never again.

He rides away, and finds the hermitage where the Bishop of Canterbury is, and puts on the habit, and stays. Later, when she dies, he buries her beside Arthur at Glastonbury, and after that he will not eat or drink, and lies on the tomb, and shrinks away.

Sir Ector's speech over his body is the last thing of any weight in the book, and it does not mention the queen at all. It says: thou were the courteoust knight that ever bare shield, and the truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrad horse, and the kindest man that ever struck with sword.