and if I may find a hermit
that will receive me I will pray and do penance while my life lasts.
Wherefore, Madam, I beseech you to kiss me once again.'

'No,' said the Queen, 'that I may not do,' and Sir Lancelot took his
horse and departed in great sorrow. All that day and the next night he
rode through the forest till he beheld a hermitage and a chapel
between two cliffs, and heard a little bell ring to Mass. And he that
sang Mass was the Bishop of Canterbury, and Sir Bedivere was with him.
After Mass Sir Bedivere told Sir Lancelot how King Arthur had thrown
away his sword and had sailed to the valley of Avilion, and Sir
Lancelot's heart almost burst for grief. Then he kneeled down and
besought the Bishop that he might be his brother. 'That I will,
gladly,' said the Bishop, and put a robe upon him.

After the fifteen days were ended, and still Sir Lancelot did not
return, Sir Bors made the great host go back across the sea, while he
and some of Sir Lancelot's kin set forth to seek all over England till
they found Sir Lancelot. They rode different ways, and by fortune Sir
Bors came one day to the chapel where Sir Lancelot was. And he prayed
that he might stay and be one of their fellowship, and in six months
six other Knights were joined to them, and their horses went where
they would, for the Knights spent their lives in fasting and prayer,
and kept no riches for themselves.

In this wise six years passed, and one night a vision came to Sir
Lancelot in his sleep charging him to hasten unto Amesbury. 'By the
time that thou come there,' said the vision, 'thou shalt find Queen
Guenevere dead; therefore take thy fellows with thee and fetch her
corpse, and bury it by the side of her husband, the noble King
Arthur.'

Then Sir Lancelot rose up and told the hermit, and the hermit ordered
him to make ready and to do all as the vision had commanded. And Sir
Lancelot and seven of the other Knights went on foot from Glastonbury
to Amesbury, and it took them two days to compass the distance, for
it was far and they were weak with fasting. When they reached the
nunnery Queen Guenevere had been dead but half an hour, and she had
first summoned her ladies to her, and told them that Sir Lancelot had
been a priest for near a twelvemonth. 'And hither he cometh as fast as
he may,' she said, 'to fetch my corpse, and beside my lord King Arthur
he shall bury me. And I beseech Almighty God that I may never have
power to see Sir Lancelo