Not long after this. Merlin was sitting at his table one day, and Ninianne was beside him, and he said to her, “My Lady of the Lake, if you loved King Arthur at all and you knew what is being prepared for him! Morgan, his sister, whom he trusts, has recently taken away Excalibur, his good sword that he trusts, scabbard and all, and has given him a worthless counterfeit that looks the same. Tomorrow he must fight man to man against another knight; in this way he is in danger of death, for the sword will fail him at need, and the other knight will be equipped with the best sword any knight now bears and with such a scabbard that the man who wears it will never lose a drop of blood.”

“By my faith,” said the maiden, “this is great and perilous bad luck. Now I wish that you and I were there where the battle is to take place, for certainly if King Arthur is killed there, it will be the greatest harm that could take place in our time.”

“He will be defeated and killed,” said Merlin, “if Our Lord does not see to it. And this will be for a sin that I know well he has committed since Our Lord placed him in the high position he is in.”

She asked him what it was.

‘That I must not reveal to you,” he said, “for it doesn’t concern me or you. It concerns Him who takes vengeance for great sins at His will.”

‘You are right,” she said, “and it was outrageous of me to ask you. But now tell me, could you in any way turn aside this battle and delay it while we go from here to Great Britain?”

‘Yes, indeed,” he said.

Post-Vulgate Merlin