t quiet yet
fearless was Geraint's answering gaze.

'What ye have to say,' said Gawaine angrily, 'say it quickly and
begone. If ye are still of two minds, there seems no need to speak, and
there is no need to bring a bishop to your aid.'

'Gawaine,' said King Geraint, and his voice was quiet, yet with a ring
of menace in it, 'I think grief hath made you a little mad. Let the
bishop speak, I pray ye. He hath a message for the king.'

'My lord,' said the bishop, 'I come from his Holiness the Pope.'

At these words Sir Gawaine started forward, his hand upon his sword, as
if he would willingly in his madness slay the holy priest.

'And,' went on the bishop, his grave voice and his quiet look not
bating for all the wrathful fire in Sir Gawaine's eyes, 'I bear with me
the bull of his Holiness--see, here it is--by which his Highness doth
charge King Arthur of Britain, as he is a Christian king, to take back
Queen Gwenevere unto his love and worship, and to make peace with Sir
Lancelot.'

The murmurs of the wild young knights rose in a sudden storm, while Sir
Gawaine glared with looks of hatred at King Geraint and the bishop.

'And if ye do not this command,' rang out the voice of the bishop (and
there was sorrow in its tone, and silence sank on all), 'if ye do not,
then will his Holiness excommunicate this land. None of ye here have
seen so terrible a thing as a land laid under the interdict of the Holy
Church, and rarely doth she find her children so stubbornly evil as to
merit it. But the Father of the Church, seeing how this land is torn
and rent by this bitter war between brothers, and fearful lest, while
ye tear at each others' lives, the fierce and evil pagan will gain upon
ye and beat the lives from both of ye, and possess this fair island and
drive Christ and His religion from it utterly--seeing all this, his
Holiness would pronounce the doom if ye are too stiffnecked to obey
him. Then will ye see this land lie as if a curse were upon it. Your
churches will be shut, and the relics of the holy saints will be laid
in ashes, the priests will not give prayers nor the Church its holy
offices; and the dead shall lie uncoffined, for no prayers may be said
over them. Say, then, King Arthur of Britain, what shall be the answer
to the command of his Holiness which here I lay before thee.'

With these words the bishop held a parchment rolled out between his
hands before the eyes of the king. Men craned forward and saw the