Gareth in the kitchen

A tall young man arrives at Arthur's court at Pentecost, leaning on the shoulders of two companions as though he cannot stand, and asks for three gifts — the first now, the other two in a year. The first is meat and drink for twelve months. Arthur, who is disappointed by so small a request, grants it and hands him to Kay.

Kay, who is Kay, names him Beaumains — fair hands — because his hands are large and white, and says a man who asks only for food is fit only for the kitchen. He puts him to work there.

Gareth serves for a year without complaint, and is fed scraps, and is mocked. Lancelot and Gawain are both uneasy about it and treat him kindly; neither knows who he is.

At the next Pentecost a damsel called Lynette comes asking for a champion to relieve her besieged sister, and Beaumains claims the adventure. She is appalled — a kitchen boy — and spends the entire journey telling him so, at length, in detail, and does not stop when he defeats the Black Knight, the Green Knight, the Red Knight, or the Blue. She tells him he smells of kitchen grease. He answers her, every time, with unfailing courtesy, and keeps going.

He is Gareth of Orkney, Gawain's youngest brother, and he asked for the kitchen deliberately so that nobody would advance him for his family's name.

There is no French source for this book. Malory may have written it himself. It is the warmest thing in the Morte, and its warmth is precisely what makes the ending unbearable: the reader who loves Gareth here is the reader who will watch Lancelot kill him, unarmed and unrecognised, in Book XX.