67 pages • 2 hours read
Lev GrossmanThe Bright Sword: A Novel of King Arthur
Lev GrossmanFiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 12-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “A God of Sand and Dust”
Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary: “The Novice”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, rape, death by suicide, and transgender discrimination.
On the second day of the quest with the Green Knight, the group takes a detour to the nunnery where Queen Guinevere has confined herself, hoping for an answer about Arthur’s heir. Guinevere tells them that Arthur did not appoint a successor. The only advice she can give the group is that if they’re looking for a king, they must not seek another Arthur. The next day, the group rescues Sir Scipio, a knight whom they believe lost at the Battle of Camlann (though Scipio is not the object of their quest). Up close, Collum sees that Scipio has unusual and lavish blue tattoos all across his body and face.
Later, Bedivere reveals an important bit of information. Unlike what is believed, Arthur did not die from his injuries after the Battle of Camlann. Arthur asked Bedivere to get rid of Excalibur. Bedivere threw Excalibur into the sea, where a woman’s hand caught it. Collum thinks that this is what the fairy woman at the inn meant when she said that the sword was “in the sea.” After throwing away the sword, Bedivere sat with a raving Arthur in a chapel. Arthur called out not just to Jesus but also the Pagan gods of his childhood. In the morning, a barge with a magnificent pavilion arrived for Arthur.
On the barge were some women, including the queen of Northgalis, a powerful sorceress who is Morgan le Faye’s friend, and the queen of the Waste Lands, a Christian mystic. One of the women referred to Arthur as “brother.” Bedivere laid Arthur on the barge, and he murmured that he was leaving for the mystical land of Avalon. The barge sailed away.
Bedivere walked back to a church, where a priest told him that some ladies had arrived at the church the previous night, supposedly to bury Arthur. The priest even showed Bedivere Arthur’s grave. The confusing circumstances of Arthur’s supposed death make Bedivere believe that Arthur himself is the missing knight for whom they are questing.
Part 2, Chapter 13 Summary: “The Tale of Sir Palomides, Part II”
The narrative returns to Palomides’s story. Isolde becomes the sole preoccupation of Palomides. However, like all great love stories, theirs also has an impediment. Isolde is not only unhappily married to King Mark of Cornwall, but she is also in love with his dashing nephew, Sir Tristan of the Round Table. Nevertheless, Palomides does not lose hope. He emulates British ways to gain Isolde’s attention, dressing like a knight and winning tournaments. However, Isolde remains unmoved. Palomides’s unrequited love for her turns into a joke at court.
To get away from the ridicule, Palomides begins chasing the elusive fabulous monster known as Glatisant, or the Questing Beast. Glatisant leads Palomides into unfamiliar places but always stays out of his reach. Moreover, even hunting for Glatisant cannot fully soothe Palomides’s heartbreak. One day, he seeks Tristan out for a duel, hoping that Tristan will kill him. However, noble Tristan refuses to gravely harm Palomides and instead baptizes him a Christian.
Two years later, Palomides, away from Camelot, receives the news that King Mark has killed Tristan and that an inconsolable Isolde has died by suicide. Filled with sorrow, Palomides returns to Camelot, only to find the battlefield of Camlann strewn with corpses. Palomides crawls to a nearby forest and lies down on its floor, devoid of hope.
Soon, he feels something soft brush his face. He opens his eyes and sees Glatisant’s great serpent head nuzzling him, indicating that he still has a role to play in Arthur’s story. Palomides rises and heads to Camelot castle.
Part 2, Chapter 14 Summary: “The Well of Ink”
In the present timeline, the knights reach windy, cold Cornwall, from where only Collum is allowed forward. Collum proceeds to a stone circle, beyond which is a barn. Inside the barn is a sprawling garden, where an old man sits on the rim of a stone well filled with ink. From this point on, a series of confusing occurrences take place that land Collum in an inn, where the same woman he saw in Chapter 2 serves him the well’s ink in a wine cup.
The inn falls open like a box, flattening to a landscape. The barmaid, now dressed in emerald robes and a crown, introduces herself as Morgan Le Fay and welcomes him to the Otherworld. Morgan sends Collum off to find the knight he seeks, placing him on a raft on a flat, icy river. As the raft proceeds downstream, Collum sees many fabulous things, including a fairy city; its buildings are tall and densely packed in impossible shapes.
Collum grows more desperate until he sees Scipio, Bedivere, and Dinadan fighting three fairy knights on the riverbanks. Gathering his courage, Collum jumps from the raft to the shore but falls into the water. He almost drowns before a giant fishes him out of the water and deposits him on the shore. Nearby, there is a castle made of glass.
Part 2, Chapter 15 Summary: “The Glass Castle”
Collum walks into the castle and finds the rest of his company at a long table, inordinately merry. It is clear that they are under a spell. On a throne nearby is a red-faced knight, Sir Kay, Arthur’s foster brother and the object of their quest. Morgan wants a private word with Collum to tell him the real story of Arthur and Britain, which he will not like.
Morgan lived happily in Tintagel, Cornwall, with her parents and two sisters. Untouched by Christianity, their mother, Igraine, taught the sisters the old, magical ways. Things changed when Igraine and her husband went to Camelot to pay homage to King Uther Pendragon. Uther was seized by desire for Igraine, followed her to Tintagel, and married her after Morgan’s father died in battle. He brought Igraine and her daughters to Camelot, forcing them to learn Latin and forget all their old ways. Arthur, born after Uther raped Igraine, stayed with his sisters for a month before he was sent away.
Morgause, Morgan’s older sister, was married off to King Lot of Orkney against her will when she was 15. Morgan, who had made herself too disagreeable to be married, was sent to a nunnery. In the nunnery, Morgan found a coven of women who knew witchcraft. She learned from them and grew in power until she was discovered and thrown out. Morgan escaped into the forest and found her way into the Otherworld, where she became queen. With the Grail quest a failure and Arthur gone, the old magic is coming back. The time has come for Britain and the fairy world to unite, with Morgan as their ruler. Collum needs to help Morgan succeed Arthur.
However, Collum refuses Morgan’s offer. Though he is truly sorry for what was done to Morgan and her family, he believes that Britain deserves the rule that God and Arthur intended, not a return to Pagan ways. Morgan sets her fairy knights on Collum, and he kills the fairies. Morgan allows him to take away Sir Kay and the knights of the Round Table, but before that, she shows Collum in a magic mirror that he has shimmery wings and a crown on his head: Collum may not be who he thinks he is. Collum and the knights then land in Camelot, where they see King Rience’s forces attacking Camelot.
Part 2, Chapter 16 Summary: “The Battle of Camelot”
Collum and the knights join the battle. In his element as a prodigious swordsman, Collum kills many soldiers in the name of Camelot. Nevertheless, more and more of Rience’s soldiers continue to pour into the field.
The battle turns in Camelot’s favor when Nimue charges into the field, chanting a spell that roils the field and drops lightning on Rience’s soldiers. Camelot wins the battle, but Collum feels a sense of emptiness, sinking to the ground as he watches Scipio and Dinadan chase the fleeing enemy soldiers.
Part 2, Chapter 17 Summary: “The Tale of Sir Dinadan”
The narrative shifts to the tale of Sir Dinadan. Lord Dugfall of Great Wold Valley in Ebrauc has twin children: a girl named Orwen and a boy named Oriel. However, Orwen knows that, like his brother, he is really a boy. Orwen tells Oriel his secret, but his brother dismisses it as rubbish.
Desperate for help, Orwen leaves out honey cake and wet hay to summon a fairy, as an old wives’ tale suggests. A grumpy, old fairy called John Punch pays Orwen a visit, immediately seeing that Orwen is a boy. Though he cannot change Orwen’s body, John Punch agrees to train Orwen as a knight in the fairy world every night while a likeness of Orwen sleeps in his bed. The training will have a price, which John Punch will reveal in time.
Orwen trains with John Punch in a bubble under the water of nearby Cow Pond, secretly becoming the best warrior in Great Wold Valley. When Orwen is 16, his parents arrange his marriage. Orwen has no option but to flee Great Wold. He says goodbye to John Punch, and fairy grants Orwen a matte-blue sword. John Punch finally reveals the price of Orwen’s training: He will have to kill Merlin the sorcerer. Orwen agrees. He will call himself “Dinadan,” a nonsensical name with a nice ring; bind his breasts and stuff his crotch to pass as what the world recognizes as a man; become a knight; and, when the time is right, kill Merlin.
Part 2, Chapters 12-17 Analysis
These chapters deepen the text’s exploration of The Conflict Between Magic and Religion. The title of Book 2 is taken from a statement by Morgan le Faye in Chapter 15. When Collum tells Morgan that he cannot support her bid for ruling Britain because the king must be chosen by God, she retorts that the Christian God has left the British Isles and gone back to Israel, where he belongs. God was never meant for their green lands because “he’s a desert god, a god of sand and dust” (236), the dust symbolizing his harsh nature.
In contrast, Britain, which she calls a “cool green island” (236), belongs to gods whose nature is lush and magical. She argues that magic and the world of Faerie need to drive out Christianity from Britain because the Christian God is a jealous, harsh god who is not tolerant or merciful. Morgan also makes the point that King Uther raped Igraine not because he loved her but because she was a Pagan woman proud of her culture.
Morgan describes the colorful world of fairies and magic to Collum, underscoring the perils of the homogenizing narrative of Christianity. When adopting a single God, a land is in danger of losing a thousand others. She tells Collum that before Jesus was forced on Cornwall, “[they]’d had a wealth of gods” (228). By imposing one mainstream narrative on a diverse culture, history loses out on a rich, colorful tapestry of powerful gods like Sol Invictus, Taranis, and Joan the Wad. It also loses out on the presence of magic in daily life, such as Morgan describes in her childhood, where her mother “always wore one glove inside-out to keep the piskies [pixies] from leading her astray” and ill children were healed by passing them nine times “widdershins” (anticlockwise) through a hole in a rock (227).
Grossman uses rich, figurative language packed with allusions and metaphors to describe the portions of the narrative set in the fairy world. For instance, when Morgan serves Collum in the inn, “the inn’s roof split[s] open overhead and its walls f[a]ll outward in all four directions like a box unfolding, revealing a vast blue sky striped like a trout with golden-pink sunset clouds” (208). The simile likens the collapsing inn to a cardboard box, while these detailed descriptions illustrate the fairy and folk cultures of the British Isles, teeming with fantastic and wonderful elements.
The coexistence of magic and reality is also highlighted in the story of Sir Dinadan. Christian doctrine tells Dinadan that a woman wearing a man’s clothes is an “abomination unto the Lord thy God” (262), yet he also notes that throughout history, various Christian saints, such as Saint Pelagia, have dressed and lived as men. However, mainstream religion gives him no help, so he turns to the world of fairies, summoning a spirit through the reverse sign of the cross and offerings. Unlike Christian doctrine, John Punch does not judge Dinadan. He gives him what he asks for, though the offer is conditional. Magic offers the possibility of transformation that mainstream religion, with its many rules, denies.
Since the novel plunges the reader straight into action, it does not delve much into exposition. Instead, the narrative uses the perspective of “outsiders” like Collum and Palomides for the purpose of world building. Palomides notes, for instance, that though Britain is known in the world as a Romanized Christian land, its truth is more complicated. As he travels the British countryside, he sees that “there [i]s an entirely different British people here, too, the Britons who sp[eak] an older language than Latin” (191). Palomides’s observation paints the picture of a society that has only adopted Roman ways in small pockets.
In terms of plot development, the novel sets up many mysteries, such as Collum’s true identity. Morgan shows Collum that he is more than he thinks he is, with the crown suggesting that he may be Arthur’s successor. Characters in the novel often consider this possibility, which adds suspense and mystery to the narrative.
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