Scene change!  Or not so much, because we’re still talking about the town of Corbin.  King Pellam, you remember him?  He has a nephew named Castor, whom he knights on Candlemas.  Castor celebrates by giving everyone presents — specifically, gowns.  I’m not sure whether this is a Candlemas thing or a knighting thing.  Anyway, he has a big pile of gowns and he passes them out to everyone in the court, including the court’s fool, that was Sir Launcelot.

Pellam and his court don’t realize that the crazy forest hermit dog man and Sir Launcelot are the same guy, remember.  Although when he puts on a gown, watch out! According to Malory, Launcelot was the seemliest man in all the court, and none so well made.  Guy looks good in a gown, is what he’s saying.

Launcelot, now all a-gown’d, wanders outside and takes a nap by a well.  He’s a champion napper, remember?  And then Elaine, the mother of Launcelot’s son, happens to wander by with a friend, and she sees him lying there and recognizes him!  It’s Launcelot!

Naturally Elaine collapses into tears, because that’s the girly thing to do I guess, and then rather than wake Launcelot up, she runs and finds her father.

“Daddy!  Daddy!  I need something from you!”

“Yes, princess?”

“I was walking in your garden and I saw Sir Launcelot sleeping by the well!”

“That sounds unlikely.”

“It’s true!  It’s true!  He’s probably crazy!”

“All right, all right, I’ll handle this.”

Pellam summons his brain trust — Dame Brisen, plus three guys who don’t matter — and they, Pellam, and Elaine all make their way to the garden.  There, they take a gander at the sleeping knight.

“Yep, that’s definitely Launcelot,” says Brisen.  “We need to handle this real delicate-like, see?  Otherwise he’ll probably freak out and try to kill us.”

“Well, we don’t want that.”

“No, we don’t.  So here’s what we do.  I’ll cast deeper slumber on him, so we can transport him into one of the towers without his waking up.  It directly parallels an encounter between Launcelot and Morgan le Fey back in Book VI!”

“Sounds good!”

So Brisen does her magic, and then they haul Launcelot off to one of the towers.  This particular tower has the Grail in it, and they dump him next to the Grail, and take off its little Grail-cover.  Then they leave him there overnight, letting him bask in the radiance of the Grail, and then, boom, he’s healed.

“Dang I’m sore,” he says when he wakes up.  “I feel like I haven’t slept in a bed in four, maybe five years.”