Chapel of the Demon
After leaving the hermit who had expounded his visions at the Chapel of the Stony Cross, Sir Lancelot, apparently after less than an afternoon’s travel, came to a chapel where an old man was laid out dead in a shirt of fine white cloth.
The old religious man of the place feared that the dead man was damned because, after being a man of religion for more than a hundred years, he had put off the habit of his order. The living old man, who was probably a priest, put about his own neck a stole (a priestly garment, still required in the twentieth century before a priest may administer the sacraments) and, taking up a book, conjured up a fiend to tell him how the dead man had died and where his soul had gone.
The priest and Lancelot learned from the fiend that the dead man had left his hermitage by permission, to help his nephew Aguarus (Argustus) win a war against the Earl of Vale. The earl had then sent two of his nephews to the hermitage for revenge.
They had to burn Augarus’ uncle all night in a fire before they could manage to kill him; even then, though he died, his body was left whole. The same fiend, coming in the morning, had found the naked body in the fire, removed it, and laid it out in the white shirt. The dead man’s soul was in Heaven.
See also
Argustus | The Legend of King Arthur
Helyes’ Book | The Legend of King Arthur