book 14
Sir Percivale on the Quest
The Queen of the Waste Lands
Meanwhile, Percivale was still hanging out with the recluse, who turned out to be his aunt and called herself the Queen of the Waste Lands. She told him about how his mother died of grief when he left home, and how Merlin created the Round Table to represent the world, and hence how knights valued its fellowship so much that they gave up the world and their families for it. She also made a veiled reference to the three Sangreal-achievers-to-be Galahad (virgin), Percivale (virgin) and Bors (almost-a-virgin) as three white bulls.
Then she told Percivale where to find Galahad at his cousin's Castle Goothe (or failing that, back at Castle Corbin), so off he went, Goothe-bound.
King Evelake
Percivale spent the next night in the same house where the ancient, crumbling, blind King Evelake still waited "till the good knight of my blood of the ninth degree be come". so that he could see the Sangreal achieved.
Then he rode off and was soon mugged by twenty nasty knights who slew his horse, but Galahad popped up from nowhere and chased them all off. Stranded, Percivale tried to follow Galahad on foot but lost him, and after losing another borrowed horse to another nasty knight, eventually received a suspiciously fine black steed off a strange woman, which carried him four days journey in an hour.
Percivale in the Wilderness
Sir Percivale eventually recognised the rampant fiend between his legs when it paused at a roaring water, and he drove it off by making the sign of the cross on his own forehead, to find himself stranded on a rocky island. Then he made friends with a lion by slaying the serpent it was fighting, and as he slept under its protection he dreamed of two ladies; a maiden on a lion who warned him that the next day he would "fight with the strongest champion of the world", and a crone on a serpent who threatened to "take" him for slaying her other serpent earlier.
When he woke an old priest arrived in a white samite-draped ship, who comforted him by explaining that the serpent-bourne crone was the old pagan law, and the lion-bourne maiden the new Christian one. Then he sailed off again and Percivale spent another night with his huge furry pal.
The Temptation of Sir Percivale
Next morning a black silk-draped ship arrived, and the beautiful woman aboard it told Percivale that the old man was evil, and that she would help him. Her servants prepared a picnic, and it being a warm day all her clothes soon fell off and even Percival ended up buck-naked and in terrible danger of losing his virginity. Fortunately, a split second before the very first shove he happened to glance at the red cross in the pommel of his sword lying nearby and made the sign of the cross again, driving the temptress off shrieking.
For penance he stabbed himself through his own thigh, then the old man came back and explained that the evil crumpet was, in fact, Lucifer in drag. Then he also vanished and Percivale sailed away from the Island of Temptation in the priest's boat with his virginity intact.
Retreat to book 13
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