We stripped Lancelot’s body naked. I threw his sword and his fine scale armour into the river, burned his clothes, then used a big Saxon war axe to dismember his corpse. We did not burn him, but tossed him to the fishes so that his dark soul would not sour the Otherworld with its presence. We obliterated him from the earth, and I kept only his enamelled sword belt that had been a gift from Arthur.
