Elaine of Astolat

Elaine was the daughter of Sir Bernard of Astolat, an old baron whose castle stood near Winchester, and the sister of Sir Lavaine and Sir Torre, two young knights of promise. Her story first appears in an Italian book of tales written around 1300, where she is called the Maid of Scalot, but it was Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur of 1485 that made her immortal. In his account, King Arthur, the once and future king of Britain, proclaimed a great tournament at Winchester, which his court also called Camelot. Sir Lancelot, the champion of Arthur's Round Table fellowship and the secret lover of Arthur's queen, Guinevere, chose to attend in disguise and lodged at Astolat as a stranger. There Elaine saw him, and in that first meeting she loved him with a love that would cost her life. Lancelot borrowed the plain shield of the wounded Sir Torre so that no one would know him, and left his own famous shield in Elaine's keeping, a trust that bound her heart to him completely.

Before they rode out, Elaine begged Lancelot to wear her token at the tournament, a red sleeve embroidered with pearls. Lancelot, who had never worn any lady's favour in his life, agreed, thinking it the perfect disguise, for no one would believe the queen's own knight would bear another woman's colours. At the jousts he fought beside young Lavaine and outdid every knight of the Round Table who came against him. His own kinsman Sir Bors, not knowing him, struck him through the shield and into the side with a spear whose head broke off deep in the wound. Lancelot barely kept his saddle. Lavaine drew him from the press and carried him, bleeding and near death, to the hermitage of Sir Baudwin, a former knight of the Round Table turned holy man, who staunched the wound. When Elaine learned where he lay, she went to him and nursed him herself, day and night, until he could sit upright again.

When Lancelot was healed enough to travel, Elaine went to him and spoke plainly. She loved him, she said, and if he would not be her husband she would die. Lancelot answered as gently as he could: he could not marry, for his heart was given elsewhere, and he named no name. He offered instead to be her champion for the rest of his life and to dower her richly when she wed another man. Elaine refused his comfort and told him that as he was a noble knight he should have mercy on her. When he would not, she turned her face to the wall and would neither eat nor sleep. Within ten days she was dead, having confessed her love to God and made her final arrangements with the same clear mind she had shown in life.

Before she died, Elaine dictated a letter and commanded that her body be laid in a rich bed within a barge, covered over with black samite, with the letter placed in her right hand. A single trusted man was to row the barge down the Thames to Westminster, where the court then lay. The black-draped barge drifted up to the palace as Arthur and Guinevere stood watching, and the king had it brought before him. He read the letter aloud to all the court: here lay the Fair Maid of Astolat, dead for true love of Sir Lancelot, asking only a royal burial and his prayers for her soul. Guinevere turned on Lancelot and told him he might have shown the girl such gentleness as would have saved her life. Lancelot answered that love must rise from the heart of itself and cannot be commanded, and that he was sorrier for her death than anyone knew. Arthur ordered her buried with full honour, and Lancelot rode to the funeral and offered richly for masses to be sung for her soul.

Four centuries later, the Victorian poet Alfred Tennyson, Britain's Poet Laureate, found her in Malory's pages and split her into two legends. In The Lady of Shalott, first published in 1833, he transformed her into a cursed weaver imprisoned in an island tower, forbidden to look directly at Camelot. She sees Lancelot ride flashing past in her mirror, turns to look, and the mirror cracks from side to side. She lays herself in a boat and floats down the river, dying before she reaches the city, and the frightened courtiers gather on the wharves to read her name written on the prow. In his Idylls of the King of 1859 Tennyson retold Malory's version almost scene for scene, calling her the lily maid of Astolat. Victorian painters made her one of the most depicted women in British art, and the image of the pale girl in the black-hung boat, drifting towards Camelot with her letter and her song, has never since left the imagination of the English-speaking world.