"I CUT OFF MY HAIR AND WOVE IT INTO A GIRDLE."
Then she took the girdle out of a casket that she had brought, and it was indeed like a broad band of soft gold. And she fastened it upon the sword and bound the sword upon Galahad's side.
They saw that the ship was coming near the land again and soon it touched the shore. They all went on shore, and, when they had gone a little way they saw a great castle before them. When the three knights and Percivale's sister came near the castle, men came out of it and told them that they could not pass till they had done the custom of the castle. And the custom of the castle was that the maiden must give a silver dish full of her blood to cure a sick lady. The three knights would have fought the men of the castle and tried to pass by force, but Percivale's sister would not let them do it. "The lady of the castle shall have my blood," she said, "and it will cure her."
"But if you lose so much blood," said Galahad, "you may die yourself."
"Yes," she answered, "I shall die, but it is no matter for that. All that I had to live for was to give you the sword that you have, to make the girdle for it of my hair, and to cure this lady. When I have done that I shall have done all that I had to do. Now let me tell you what to do when I am dead. When I am dead, do not bury me here, but put me in the ship that we have come in. Leave me in it alone and go on your way. You will see me again sooner than you think, but there is something still for you to do here. You must go to the Castle of Carbonek to heal King Pelles's wound. After that you three must bring the Holy Grail to the City of Sarras. I shall be there as soon as you and there you must bury me. And two of you will not live long after that, and you will be buried beside me. For you, Galahad, and you, my brother Percivale, will stay there with me, and then you, Bors, must come back to England and tell the King and the rest all that we have seen and done. Now let us talk of it no more. The Holy Grail has shown me all that I must do and neither you nor I must try to change it."
All this, you may be sure, made the three knights very sad, but Percivale's sister had shown them and had told them so much that was wonderful that they did not dare to disobey her. They all stayed in the castle that night. In the morning Percivale's sister gave the silver dish full of her blood and it cured the lady of the castle, and soon after that Percivale's sister died.
The three knights carried her to the shore and put her into the ship again, as she had told them to do. As soon as they were on the shore again, the ship started out to sea and they stood and watched it. It went away from them swiftly and they looked till its canopies of white silk seemed no more than the wings of a sea-bird resting on the water, and then, with a last fading flash in the morning sunlight on the edge of the ocean and the sky, it was gone. Yet still they watched and they saw a little brown spot of mist rise up where the ship had vanished. It grew larger and came toward them and spread over the sky and shut off the water from their eyes and it wrapped them all around. They could scarcely see the path before them as they turned to go away. The cold, damp, sad mist cloud was over all the land and the ocean, only before them there was a pale, silvery shimmer of the sun still shining on the cloud.
The Dove with the golden censer