"Carve me from this tree as much wood as will make me a spindle," she said.
"Ah, madam," said he, "I dare not cut the tree which our first mother planted."
"Do as you are bidden," she ordered. "Dare not disobey me."
But as he began to cut the tree drops of blood flowed out. Then he would have fled, but she made him cut sufficient to form a spindle. Next she went to the green and the white trees, which had grown from the roots of the other, and bade him cut as much from each of these. From this wood were three spindles wrought, which she hung up at the head of the bed.
"You have done marvellously well," said Solomon, on seeing this. "Wonderful things, I deem, shall come of all this, more than you yourself dream of."
"Some of these things you shall soon know," she answered.
That night Solomon lay near the ship, and as he slept he dreamed. There came from heaven, as it seemed to him, a great company of angels, who alighted in the ship, and took water that was brought by an angel in a vessel of silver, and sprinkled it everywhere. Then the angel came to the sword and drew letters on the hilt, and on the ship's bow he wrote, "You who shall enter this ship take heed of your belief," and further as the knights had read. When Solomon had read these words he drew back, and dared not enter, and there soon arose a wind which drove the ship far to sea, so that it was quickly lost to sight. Then a low voice said, "Solomon, the last knight of thy lineage shall rest in this bed." With this Solomon waked, and lo! the ship was gone.
This was the story that the fair damsel, Percivale's sister, told to the knights, as they stood curiously surveying the bed and the spindles. Then one of them lifted a cloth that lay on the deck, and under it found a purse, in which was a written paper, telling the same strange story they had just heard.
"The sword is here," said Galahad; "but where shall be found the maiden who is to make the new girdle?"
"You need not seek far," said Percivale's sister. "By God's leave, I have been chosen to make that girdle, and have it here."