The King Arthur Trilogy by Rosemary Sutcliff

knight in all Christendom.
    But now, the boy remembered nothing of this, for mortals who have been inside the Hollow Hills bring back no memory of that time, lest their lives should be spent in hopeless longing and in seeking for the way back.
    Therefore Merlin came to the palace of King Ban with Nimue beside him; and he spoke with the King and with Elaine the Queen, and then asked to see their son Lancelot.
    ‘What would you with Lancelot?’ said the Queen, who was always afraid of losing him, after that first time. ‘He is as yet no more than a squire.’
    ‘But he shall be more,’ Merlin said. ‘There are things I know of him that make me wish to see and speak with him this one time.’
    ‘And these things?’ asked the King.
    ‘I know that he was christened Galahad,’ said Merlin, ‘before ever he was confirmed in the name of Lancelot. I know that there was a time when you feared him lost to you. But be easy, I have not come to take him from you again – or not in the way you fear.’
    So then, still unwillingly, the King sent for his son.
    Lancelot was schooling a young goshawk. All his life he was to have more joy from flying a bird he had trained himself than one that had been trained, no matter how well, by a falconer. When they had shared together the ordeal of the terrible three days and nights that man must carry bird where ever he went, allowing no sleep to either, something grew between them that was lacking if the bird had shared it with someone else. Lancelot had reached that stage with Starstrike and had just won through the second night when his father’s summons reached him. He knew that if he set Starstrike down now, it would all be to do again, and the hawk might be marred for ever. So he went to his father’s Hall still carrying the weary goshawk on his gloved fist, and stood respectfully before the strange dark man and the lady whom he found there.
    And as he looked at them, especially as he looked at the lady, it seemed to him for a moment that he had seen them before. And for that moment there was a kind of mist in his head, like the mist that hangs over lake water, and in the mist some kind of vague half-memory that was gone again even before he knew that it was there.
    And Merlin looked at Lancelot searchingly, knowing what he knew of future days. Lancelot was a very ugly young man; even when he was not so tired, he was ugly; with a face under his thick arched crest of dark hair thatlooked as though it had been put together by someone who had not troubled to make sure that the two sides matched. One side of his mouth was straight-set and solemn, while the other curled up with joy. One of his thick black brows was level as a falcon’s wing, and the other flew wild as a mongrel’s ragged ear. Presently it would be a fighter’s face, and presently it would be a lover’s face; and the hand that was not hidden in the great leather hawking glove was already a swordsman’s hand. And though Merlin’s heart bled for the joys and sorrows of his destiny that he would feel more deeply than most men, it warmed with pride because it was a great destiny and the boy was matched to it.
    Then Merlin spoke to the Queen his mother, ‘Aye, he is as I believed that he would be; and one day he will be the greatest knight in all Christendom.’
    ‘Shall I live to see it?’ said his mother.
    ‘Surely, you shall live to see it, and for many summers and winters more. But though his fame shall be known in Benwick as in all other places, he shall not bide here with you.’
    And to Lancelot he said, ‘When you come to be eighteen, before the next Feast of Eastertide, let you leave this place and go to King Arthur at Camelot, and pray him to make you a knight of the Round Table.’
    Lancelot held himself very still, that he might not disturb the goshawk on his fist. ‘Often has the Kingmy father told me of Arthur Pendragon and how they fought side by side at Bedegraine; and the harpers sing of him beside