Lady Day in Lent

Lady Day in Lent is the date appointed for Alisander’s knighting. In this account, the feast marks a passage into knighthood that is also a disclosure of dynastic violence: as Alisander receives the order, his mother gives him his father’s bloodstained clothes and charges him to seek vengeance against King Mark.

The Date and the Knighthood

The constable Bellangere tells Anglides that it is time for her son Alisander to be made a knight, describing him as exceptionally strong. Anglides agrees, but warns that she must give him a grave charge. She chooses Lady Day in Lent for the ceremony, and Bellangere announces the date to Alisander, who receives the news with joy.

Bellangere arranges for twenty sons of the country’s leading families to be knighted alongside Alisander. The date thus sets a public ceremony in motion, bringing the young man’s personal transition into the established company of newly made knights.

The Revelation at the Mass

On the appointed day, during the offering at mass, Anglides approaches Alisander and invokes both her blessing and the high order of chivalry he is receiving. She produces a bloodstained doublet and shirt, which makes him recoil and turn pale. She identifies them as the clothes his father wore on the day he was killed.

Anglides then explains that King Mark killed Alisander’s father with a dagger before her eyes. The revelation transforms the meaning of the ceremony: the clothes make the concealed family history tangible, and the day of Alisander’s admission to knighthood becomes the moment when he learns the cause for which his mother expects him to act.

The Charge and Its Immediate Consequence

Anglides commands Alisander, in the name of her blessing and his new knightly order, to avenge his father’s death upon King Mark. She collapses after delivering the charge. Alisander takes her into his arms and promises that he will pursue vengeance when he can, binding his promise both to his mother and to God.

After the feast, Bellangere, acting on Anglides’s advice, provides Alisander with a horse and armour. He then jousts against the twenty companions knighted with him and overthrows all of them. The episode closes by joining his demonstrated martial strength to the obligation laid upon him at the ceremony, while leaving the promised revenge as a future objective rather than showing its completion.