Arthur’s Departure by Boat for Avalon marks the boundary between the king’s final departure from the battlefield and the unresolved account of his death. As Arthur lies gravely wounded, Bedivere carries out his last command to return Excalibur to the water. An arm reaches from the waves to receive the sword, and three queens and other ladies bear Arthur away in a barge. He says he is going to Avalon to be healed; the narrative later reports his burial but refuses certainty about the body’s identity, leaving the king’s ending suspended between death and possible return.

Causes and Circumstances

The departure follows the battle in which Arthur has been mortally wounded. Sir Lucan, himself gravely wounded, reports that robbers are stripping the fallen knights of valuables and killing those who are still alive. He advises taking Arthur to a town. Arthur, however, says that he cannot stand and that his head is troubling him. He recalls that he had been against Sir Launcelot and regrets it, connecting his present death to a conflict that Sir Gawaine had warned of in a dream. His last movements therefore take place amid battlefield danger, personal loss, and the recognition that the remaining loyal companions cannot restore his former power.

When Sir Lucan and Sir Bedivere try to lift him, Lucan collapses and dies. Arthur sees the death of his companion as a grievous loss: Lucan had tried to help the king, who needed help even more than he did. Bedivere also mourns his brother. Arthur stops him, saying that mourning cannot change what is happening and that, had he himself lived, Lucan’s death would have grieved him evermore. With his remaining strength directed toward a final task, Arthur gives Bedivere Excalibur and orders him to throw it into the water, then return and report what he sees.

The Return of Excalibur

Bedivere first disobeys. Looking at the sword’s precious stones, he thinks that casting it away can bring no good and only loss. He hides it beneath a tree, returns to Arthur, and falsely reports that he has thrown it into the water and seen only waves and wind. Arthur recognizes that the account is untrue and sends him back, urging him not to spare the sword. The delay matters: Bedivere’s attachment to the valuable weapon initially competes with obedience to the dying king.

On his second attempt, Bedivere again hides Excalibur and returns with another false report, describing only the movement of the water and its waves. Arthur accuses him of betraying him for the sword’s riches. He warns that the delay has put his life in greater danger and sends Bedivere back once more. This time Bedivere throws Excalibur as far into the water as he can. An arm and hand rise above the surface, catch the sword, brandish it three times, and disappear with it beneath the water. The final gesture makes the sword’s removal more than a simple loss of royal property: the narrative presents it as a mysterious reception beyond Bedivere’s control.

The Queens’ Barge and Arthur’s Farewell

After Bedivere reports what he has seen, Arthur asks to be helped to the water, fearing that he has waited too long. A small barge is waiting close to the bank. It carries many ladies, all wearing black hoods and weeping, with a queen among them. Three queens receive Arthur and lay him in one of their laps. One addresses him as her brother and asks why he has stayed away so long, while referring to the wound in his head. The scene shifts the king from the exposed battlefield into the care of the women who have come for him.

As the barge moves away, Bedivere cries out that Arthur is leaving him among his enemies. Arthur tells him to take comfort and do the best he can, but says that there is no trust to be placed in him. He identifies the destination as the vale of Avilion, where he will seek healing for his grievous wound; if Bedivere never hears from him again, Arthur asks him to pray for his soul. The farewell thus offers neither a clear promise of recovery nor an unambiguous announcement of death. Arthur departs under the stated purpose of healing, while leaving open the possibility that Bedivere will never know more.

Burial and the Limits of the Record

Bedivere watches until the barge disappears, then weeps, enters the forest, and travels through the night. In the morning he finds a chapel and hermitage. The hermit tells him that ladies arrived at midnight with a dead body, asked him to bury it, and offered a hundred tapers and a hundred besants. Bedivere identifies the body as Arthur’s, swoons, and asks to remain with the hermit for the rest of his life, fasting and praying for his lord. He puts on poor clothes and serves the hermit in a life of fasting and prayer. The departure therefore has consequences not only for the king but for the surviving knight, whose response is withdrawal into religious devotion.

The narrator carefully qualifies the burial account. Arthur is said to have been carried away in a ship by three queens: Morgan le Fay, the Queen of Northgalis, and the Queen of the Waste Lands. Nimue, identified as the chief Lady of the Lake, is also aboard. The narrator adds that Nimue had married Sir Pelleas and had protected him from danger, so he lived with her in great rest to the end of his days. Yet the account concludes that no authorized book supplies anything further about Arthur and that the certainty of his death has not been heard. Even the hermit, who buried the body, did not know for certain that it was Arthur’s. The narrative attributes the tale to Sir Bedivere, a knight of the Round Table, while preserving uncertainty within the account itself.

Narrative Significance

The scene gathers the story’s final uncertainties into a sequence of concrete acts: the king entrusts his sword to Bedivere, Bedivere fails twice to obey, the water claims Excalibur, and the ladies carry Arthur away. The weapon’s disappearance and the king’s departure are linked, but neither produces a fully explained resolution. The narrative gives Arthur a destination and a purpose—Avalon and healing—then places that claim beside Bedivere’s report of a burial and the narrator’s explicit reservation about whether the buried body was truly the king.

That tension makes the departure both an ending and a withholding of final certainty. Arthur leaves the world Bedivere knows, while the sword passes into the water and the surviving knight remains behind among enemies. The account does not establish that Arthur returns from Avalon, nor does it establish with certainty that he died in the body the hermit buried. Instead, it ends with a testimony attributed to Bedivere and with the limits of what the books can verify, sustaining the possibility of Arthur’s continued existence without turning it into a confirmed outcome.