Happy Iteration Day!

It was two days after the Midsummer Tournament. King Arthur was in a cheerful mood.

“Happy Iteration Day, Lance!”

“Iteration Day?”

“Yes. I have just legislated the inaugural Iteration Day. It will be a day to mark the transition from one iteration of Fog Lake reenactments to the next. It will be a day to remember the events of the previous and make resolutions about the iteration to come.

We will celebrate the day with a picnic in the woods. Lady Charlotte-Elaine of Charlotte’s Web Weaving has made up lovely moss green woollen tunics and leggings for us all to wear, in order to present a stunning visual chorus effect, she said.”

Sir Lancelot du Lac looked unimpressed.

“A Pique-Nique?”

“Yes. We will eat grapes and chase maidens around trees.”

“So – like the MayING then? Will we be expected to gather flowERS as well?”

“Of course. It is very civilized!”

“Pique-Nique frivolities would not be conducive to discussions of the serious matters of Fog Lake Iterations! Whose idea was that?”

“Iteration Day was my idea based on a conversation I had with Malory Tennyson.”

Malory Tennyson was the owner of Malory Tennyson’s Cloudbank Cabin for Arthurian Studies, which was located on the shores of the Fog Lake. Re-enactments of the epic stories from Le Morte d’Arthur were played out by original canon characters in the Fog Lake. Artisans in Residence who worked in the cabin were able to view the reenactments from the porch of Cloudbank Cabin. Every time the story completed with King Arthur’s final battle at Camlann and subsequent long sleep on the isle of Avalon, the Fog Lake reset for a new iteration.

During the previous iteration there had been a Glitch in the Fog Lake and some of the stories appeared out of sequence. King Arthur returned prematurely from his long sleep on the Isle of Avalon ready for the next iteration before Sir Lancelot had completed his Hero’s To Do List from the previous one. Malory Tennyson was determined that it would not happen again this time.

One factor that could cause disruption was the presence of several characters who had been introduced in the previous iteration by the current Artisan in Residence in Cloudbank Cabin, Little Plump Jo. Jo was not a particularly disciplined author and she had allowed some of the regular canon characters to reinvent themselves. Only the fact that Little Plump Jo brought her five canine writing companions, the Dabrowski Dogs – Intellectual, Emotional, Sensual, Psycho Motor and Imaginational, with her to the cabin had dissuaded Malory from ejecting her. The dogs could hear a different range of sound and enabled communication between Jo and Malory and the Arthurian characters in the fictional dimension. So Malory hoped that he could steer Jo’s writing and produce some work of value. Not all the authors who came to Cloudbank Cabin were able to perceive the re-enactments in the Fog Lake and talk with the characters!

So Malory had determined to set some guidelines for the future. It would be like New Year resolutions! On Iteration Day the characters would discuss the events of the previous round and set some goals and take some oaths for the future.

“A Pique-Nique is not a proper setting for serious discussions and solemn vows! Whose choice was that?” demanded Sir Lancelot.

“Guinevere decreed it would be a picnic as the Maying picnic was washed out last time when The Glitch in the Fog Lake ruined the Camelot Perfect weather system.”

“She is here in Camelot?”

“Yes”

“How did she get here? Who escorted her?”

“I sent a treaty offer to King Leodegrance, requesting his allegiance and his daughter’s hand in marriage” said King Arthur. “Guinevere arrived with a delegation from Cameliard. Their answer to the treaty proposal had some complex legal terms in Latin that indicated that King Leodegrance questioned my right to the throne. Little Plump Jo’s dog, Intellectual Dabrowski, said that would be the ‘se nominato’ clause mentioned in the film Sword of Lancelot.”

“King Leodegrance was happy for me to marry his daughter to join our kingdoms on an equal footing. But he would not recognise me as his overlord and refused to give me the Round Table which belonged to my father Uther Pendragon. He is demanding a Trial by Combat to settle the matter. This happened while you were away in Corbenic being healed. I wanted to delay sending a reply until you returned. I want you to translate it for me, fight the Trial by Combat and then act as my Best Man.”

“So will she stay here until the matter is settled? Do I not get to escort her to you this time?”

“Not this time. Maybe it will be for the best.”

“So, if she is here in Camelot already, why was she not in the royal pavilion presenting the tournament trophies?”

“She was indisposed.”

“Oh.”

This iteration seemed to be already heading in a different direction from any Sir Lancelot had ever encountered. Usually there were two possible scenarios for his first meeting with Queen Guinevere.

In one version, King Arthur and Sir Lancelot had been fighting beside each other for years and building formidable reputations. When King Arthur asked King Leodegrance for his daughter’s hand in marriage, Lancelot, as the foremost of Arthur’s warriors, was sent to escort Guinevere to Camelot for the marriage. Sometimes there was an issue of King Arthur’s right to the throne being decided at the same time. Lancelot and Guinevere fell in love with each other on that journey.

In the other version, Arthur had been married to Guinevere for a number of years before Lancelot came to the court of Camelot from France. Lancelot was young, overconfident, and determined to impress Guinevere. Not aware of tournament procedures and etiquette, he challenged and defeated the whole field of competitors. When receiving his prize from Queen Guinevere, he had an absence moment, staring at her, which was interpreted as being struck by love at first sight.

However their story developed after either of those scenarios, the fact that they did love each other was never in doubt. Whether it was a chaste, noble loving from afar or a steamy adulterous (and treasonous) affair depended on the intended audience of the retellings.

But what was happening this time did not fit either of those scenarios. Lancelot had challenged over half the combatants in the jousting in the first round. It had not been arrogance. He had intended it as to be a protest against commercialization of the sport.

If Guinevere was already in Camelot she should have been presenting the prize! Sir Lancelot was puzzled about the word indisposed. Was that the same as ‘disinclined’? Did it mean that Guinevere had not wanted to present the prize? Was she trying to avoid him? Or could it mean that she was suffering from the malady of ‘indispose’?

If someone were fevered, they were suffering from fever.

If someone were fatigued, they were suffering from fatigue.

So what malady would this ‘indispose’ be? Lancelot determined to ask Morgan Todd, the court physician, about it.

In Cloudbank Cabin Malory Tennyson was briefing his Artisan in Residence about the purpose of Iteration Day.

“We will be reviewing the episodes of the previous iteration and making resolutions and swearing oaths about intentions for the current one” he told Little Plump Jo.

“I understood that the Knights of the Round Table swore oaths of allegiance and such at the feast of Pentecost,” challenged Intellectual Dabrowski, the Border Collie.

“Well yes, that is true,” replied Malory “and that will happen in Fog Lake re-enactments episodes. But we must endeavour to be more organised than we were last time. So Iteration Day will be addressing the method and choreography rather than the content of the episodes. And technically they are not the Knights of the Round Table yet as King Leodegrance has not sent the dowry gifts for Guinevere.”

“Why did you choose a picnic for the celebration?” asked Jo.

“I definitely did NOT choose a picnic!” Malory shouted. “They need to concentrate and be focussed for these discussions – not swinging from trees, quaffing wine and canoodling in bushes!”

“Malory, you look just like Sir Lancelot when you yell and your eyebrows knit like that!” observed Psycho Motor Dabrowski.

“Of course he does, Psycho. Malory wrote about Sir Lancelot as the character that he wanted to personify himself” informed Intellectual. “Who is your character, Little Plump Jo – is it Guinevere or Elaine?”

“Leave me out of this story. I am just recording what these characters do. I am portraying them as I see them and how Malory Tennyson has described them under his pen names of Sir Thomas Malory and Alfred Lord Tennyson. I am not creating their stories. I am JUST observing and recording.”

“So why have you written about characters who were never in any of the Arthurian stories? And why is Elaine the Lily Maid of Astolat now Lady Charlotte-Elaine, Lady of Shalott and entrepreneur owner of Charlotte’s Web Weaving?” demanded Malory.

“I blame that on Imaginational’s input,” barked Intellectual, pointing his paw at the little Bedlington Terrier, Imaginational Dabrowski. “There would not have been any trouble if she had just worked from the information I brought for her.”

“I believe it will be necessary for me to exert more editorial control during this next iteration” Malory stated. “I fear that there are still some of the influences of The Glitch in the Fog Lake and some of the newly created or adapted characters are still active.

Emotional Dabrowski, the English Springer Spaniel, came in quietly, wearing her Therapy Dog coat. Emotional could not always put a name to her own feelings but could be relied upon to tell Jo what the various characters were feeling.

“Sir Lancelot has great trepidation about the direction this next iteration appears to be taking” she said. “He says it is a different future from any of the past iterations. He say that everyone says you must go forward, go on, do not look back to the past. But he says there are some things from the past that must be preserved in order to make the future succeed.”

“What is his greatest worry?”

“He had a number of concerns about the legal ramifications of the se nominato clause in King Leodegrance’s edict. But I think he is even more upset about his relationship with Lady Guinevere. He has been denied both possible options for their love at first sight and now is being asked to secure King Arthur’s right to the throne and act as his Best Man without those opportunities for Guinevere to love him. He thinks she has been avoiding him and wonders whether that is part of some plan to prevent their love from blossoming. He asked what being ‘indisposed’ meant. Was it a lack of inclination or a malady of some kind?”

“I don’t think I helped matters when I said that when ladies say they are indisposed it often means they have problems they do not want to name; like sometimes when Little Plump Jo says she has a headache. I put air quotes around the headache. Lancelot said surely if she only had a ‘headache’ she would have been able to present the tournament prize. He himself often rides into battle with a headache!”

“Then he said that, as Lady Guinevere is not married yet, maybe he should just take her away to France now. He had it all worked out. He would win the Trial by Combat for Arthur to secure the kingdom for him and then marry Guinevere (Arthur could be his Best Man). They would go to France. Lancelot would defeat the usurper Claudas who took Benoic from his father. He would then be a king, a loyal ally to Arthur, ready to bring the whole of Benoic’s forces to fight with Arthur against Mordred and the Saxons.”

“I pointed out that Lady Guinevere would be leaving a settled country where she was to be Queen and going into to the uncertainty of a war which may not succeed. We discussed all the ethical and moral issues surrounding that course of action. And, I am fairly sure he has decided against it.”

“But he does not want to discuss the future iteration at the picnic and refuses to ‘ponce around’ in tunic and leggings. He will be going in full armour in case Someone Else tries to steal Lady Guinevere at the pique-nique!”