And so at her bidding, he brought the roses to her. But when he had come nigh unto the lady, she, of a sudden, snatched at the cap and plucked it off from his head. Then, lo! he was upon the instant transformed; for instead of the gardener’s boy there stood before the Lady Guinevere and her damsel the appearance of a noble young knight with hair and beard like threads of gold. Then he let fall his basket of roses so that the flowers were scattered all over the floor, and he stood and looked at all who were there. And some of those damsels in attendance upon the Lady Guinevere shrieked, and others stood still from pure amazement and wist not how to believe what their eyes beheld. But not one of those ladies knew that he whom she beheld was King Arthur. Nevertheless the Lady Guinevere remembered that this was the knight whom she had found so sorely wounded, lying in the hermit’s cell in the forest.
Then she laughed and flung him back his cap again. “Take thy cap,” quoth she, “and go thy ways, thou gardener’s boy who hath an ugly place upon his head.” Thus she said because she was minded to mock him.
But King Arthur did not reply to her, but straightway, with great sobriety of aspect, set his cap upon his head again. So resuming his humble guise once more, he turned and quitted that place, leaving those roses scattered all over the floor even as they had fallen.
And after that time, whenever the Lady Guinevere would come upon the gardener’s lad in the garden, she would say unto her damsel in such a voice that he might hear her speech: “Lo! yonder is the gardener’s lad who hath an ugly place upon his head so that he must always wear his cap for to hide it.”
Thus she spake openly, mocking at him; but privily she bade her damsels to say naught concerning these things, but to keep unto themselves all those things which had befallen.
