The chapter shifts back in time to Great Standing, a royal hunting lodge where King Arthur has retreated eight months into the failing Grail Quest. Queen Guinevere observes him buried in piles of color-coded scrolls on currency reform, surveys, judicial corruption, and forest law—Arthur's attempt to channel his anxiety into orderly governance. He has not slept since Wednesday, has lost weight, and is unraveling. He throws a knife through a window in a forced attempt at theatrics, embarrassed by his own gesture.

Guinevere has come to deliver news from Camelot, where fifty-eight knights of the Round Table have died on the Grail Quest. A wall of ninety-nine slates tracks each knight's deeds and deaths, the dead being shuffled rightward like advancing tombstones. Mordred, Arthur's bastard son with Morgause, now serves as scribe—a constant source of friction with Guinevere, who resents his presence and Arthur's overcompensating fatherly indulgence. Guinevere reports that Lancelot has returned, defeated, refusing to speak or eat, having failed the quest.

Walking outside in the slush, Arthur and Guinevere debate the meaning of the catastrophe. Guinevere predicts only Galahad and perhaps Percival will achieve the Grail, and that God considers the venture a failure—He is washing His hands of Britain. Arthur considers joining the quest himself or offering himself as sacrifice; Guinevere refuses. She reflects on Arthur's hunger for divine perfection, rooted in his abandonment by Uther and Ector, and his inability to accept that he will never be good enough for God.

At the archery butts, Arthur recounts an atrocity: Sir Lavaine, Hellaine le Blank, and Bellangere le Beuse murdered Umfrey, a peaceful sleeping giant whom local shepherds worshipped as a god of the hills. The shepherds ambushed and killed the three knights in revenge. King Erec hanged only the ringleader, fearing revolt. Arthur is shaken—the common people do not care about the Grail and see the knights as foreign Christian killers trampling their land.

Arthur finally breaks. He renounces God as Uther's God, not his own, declaring he will no longer beg. Guinevere holds him and confesses that her grail was the child they never had, and vows that if forced to choose between Arthur and God, she chooses Arthur. They acknowledge that without God's grace, Britain will become a waste land. Arthur ends with a fragile resolution: either they learn to live in the waste land, or they find a way to bring it back to life.