Lancelot at the chapel

Lancelot, riding the quest, comes to a stone cross by a ruined chapel and lies down to sleep in his armour beside his horse.

Half asleep, he sees a sick knight carried up on a litter, complaining of his pain. And then the candlestick and the Grail come out of the chapel of their own accord, and the sick man drags himself to the vessel, touches it, kisses it, and is healed — gets up, entirely well, and gives thanks.

Lancelot lies there through all of it and does not move. Not out of choice: he cannot.

The healed knight sees him lying there in his armour and says out loud, to a squire, that this must be some man who is in deadly sin and unconfessed, since the holy vessel came and he did not stir — and takes Lancelot's horse and helm and sword, and goes.

Lancelot wakes and cannot decide whether it was a dream. Then he hears a voice: harder than stone, more bitter than wood, more naked and barren than the fig tree, and it tells him to withdraw from this holy place.

What he does next is why this sequence is the best thing in the Grail quest. He does not argue. He goes to a hermit and makes the first full confession of his life — that he has loved the queen for twenty-four years, that everything he has done in arms he did for her, and that he has never asked God for anything. He weeps. He is told he may go no further and that his son will achieve what he cannot.

And he accepts it, and keeps riding, and gets closer than anyone but the three — as far as the door of the chamber where the Grail is, where a voice tells him not to enter and he enters anyway, and is struck down by a blast of fire and lies in a coma for twenty-four days. One for each year.

He wakes and says he has seen more than any tongue may tell. Then he goes home.