book 16
Sir Gawaine's Failure and Sir Bor's Victory on the Quest
Was it... the Bull Dream ?
After leaving the company of Aglovale and Griflet, Gawaine soon got bored with the lack of violence and the endless, pointless wandering (what did he expect ?), until after Michaelmas he met Launcelot's brother Sir Ector, who said everyone else had the same problem too and no-one had seen Launcelot, Galahad, Percivale or Bors.
Sleeping in an old, abandoned chapel eight days later Gawaine dreamed of 147 black bulls that got hungry and went off seeking better pasture (them), and two white (Galahad and Percivale) and one white with a black spot (Bors) that did not need to. Of course, he didn't understand it at the time.
Ector, however, dreamed of his brother Launcelot riding an ass to find the source of a well that emptied when he himself tried to drink of it.
When they awoke they were both ticked off by a floating hand, and went in search of a hermit hoping for an explanation.
Nacien II
Picking a random joust Gawaine soon stupidly killed his own cousin and best friend Uwaine, and after a tearful funeral stumbled across a hermit called Nacien (presumably not the same one as Launcelot's great-great-great-great-grandad buried near Galahad's shield in the White Abbey), who listened to Gawaine and Ector recount their dreams and yet again explained that they were far too sinful to achieve the Sangreal, even Launcelot (because he had been shagging Guenever for twenty-four years).
Then Gawaine and Ector rode on, for a long time failing to find any adventure.
Sir Bors' Tale
After leaving Camelot (and, like the others, never thinking of looking for the Sangreal where it was last seen, in Castle Corbin) Sir Bors quickly found his own hermit who gave him a red coat to wear as a sign of chastisement.
He soon also recovered the lands a maiden had received from King Aniause by overcoming an older woman's champion Sir Pridam le Noire, then moved on for weirder adventures, virtuously having had her not.
The Temptation of Sir Bors
He came across, and was forced to abandon, his brother Lionel, who was being thorn-lashed naked by a couple of perverts, in order to save the virginity of a nearby maiden from a nasty knight. By the time he had sorted her out and set out to find his brother, all he found was a battered corpse, which he duly entombed in a feeble old chapel by a high tower.
The attendant priest explained that he would soon face another choice, between a woman who would die if he didn't shag her and his uncle Launcelot who would die if he did. Fortunately, when the ultra-temptatious crumpet made her appearance he let her and her twelve handmaidens jump off the high tower rather than loosen his breeches, and they all turned out to be fiends in disguise after all.
The next Abbot explained everything, and Bors went his way.
Oh, Brother !
Bors headed for a joust between the Earl of Plains and "the lady's nephew of Hervin", where he discovered his brother Lionel was alive after all, and EXTREMELY pissed off, promising to kill him for having abandoned him. Lionel slew a priest and Sir Colgrevence who got in the way, and was only saved from fratricide by a mysterious cloud that came down and told Bors to do a runner seaward.
At the coast Bors was picked up by Percivale in the priest's ship that had rescued him from his own island of temptation, and off they both sailed looking for Galahad.
Retreat to book 15
Move onward to book 17
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