Back at the abbey, Uwaine has wandered off, but now there’s a terrible noise coming from one of the tombs in the backyard!  The monks are all freaked out, because this is not something that happens often.  Naturally they turn to Galahad to investigate, and he’s willing what with him being the best knight and all.

Galahad and a couple of burly monks head into the tomb, where Galahad has the monks lift the heavy stone lid up so he can look in.

“OoooooOOOoooOOOOooOOOO I’m a spooky ghost!” comes a voice from deep in the tomb.  “Galahad, holy knight, do not approach me or else I will have to go back to Hell which is where I am from!”

But Galahad doesn’t listen to the ghost!  He charges in and turns undead like a cleric four levels lower!  There came out so foul a smoke, and after he saw the foulest figure leap without that ever he saw in the likeness of a man; and then he blessed him and wist well it was a fiend.

“OoooOOOOooo!” says the spooky ghost again.  “Galahad, you’re surrounded by angels and I can’t even get close to you!”

“Right,” says Galahad.  “Ignore the ghost, boys; he’s powerless.  What we need to do is exhume this sinful body.  He shouldn’t be buried in a churchyard on account of he was heathen.  That’s the problem, here.”

So that happens, and afterwards Galahad is the toast of the abbey, with all the monks and nuns and priests and laity agreeing that he’s just awesome.  During dinner that night one of the monks sits with him and explains, in case Galahad didn’t get it, that the ghost in the tomb was a reflection of the inherent sinfulness of the world.  We live in a broken, terrible world, the guy says.  It’s pretty awful.  Fathers not loving sons, sons not loving fathers… Jesus came down and tried to fix it all, which he wouldn’t have needed to do if things hadn’t gotten themselves into a real state.

“Yep,” says Galahad.

Galahad and Melias stay overnight in the abbey.  In the morning Galahad finally gets around to knighting Melias, which is when Malory reveals his name and the fact that he’s the Prince of Denmark.

“You’d better be a good knight,” warns Galahad.  “Royal blood and all; it’s a lot to live up to.”

“Ain’t no thing!  But listen, now that I’m a knight, do me one reasonable favor, okay?”

“Sure.”

“I know you wouldn’t let Sir Uwaine travel with you, but let me. We’ll hunt the Holy Grail together, until a strange adventure transpires in which we’re irrevocably separated.”

“Enh, okay.”

The Galahad-Melias teamup ends almost as soon as it begins!  Malory tells us that this happens on a Monday morning, Galahad and Melias riding out from the abbey together.  They haven’t gone more than a few hundred yards out before they come to a mysterious fork in the road which hadn’t been there before, marked with a mysterious signpost pointing the two different possible paths.

On the signpost, in Merlin’s handwriting, are written letters of gold: Now ye knights errant, the which goeth to seek knights adventurous, see here two ways; that one way defendeth thee that thou ne go that way, for he shall not go out of the way again but if he be a good man an a worthy knight; and if thou go on the left hand, thou shalt not lightly there win prowess, for thou shalt in this way be soon assayed.

Merlin is not one for brevity.  He could have just written “strange adventures ho! Right for a test of virtue, left for a test of jousting ability,” but no.

Melias volunteers to go the jousting route, which he thinks he’s better-suited for than the other way.  Galahad actually tries to talk him out of it, but Melias insists.

Will Melias triumph?  The summary for the next chapter is “of the adventure that Melias had and how Galahad revenged him,” so I’m guessing no.