The Once and Future King (12 page)

‘Can you shoot?’

‘Trust me,’ said the Wart.

‘I can try,’ said Kay, more reserved, as they laughed at the Wart’s assurance.

‘Come, Marian, let them have one of your bows.’

She handed hum a bow and half a dozen arrows twenty—eight inches long.

‘Shoot the popinjay,’ said Robin, giving them to the Wart.

He looked and saw a popinjay five—score paces away. He guessed that he had been a fool and said cheerfully, ‘I am sorry, Robin Wood, but I am afraid it is much too far for me.’

‘Never mind,’ said the outlaw. ‘Have a shot at it. I can tell by the way you shoot.’

The Wart fitted his arrow as quickly and neatly as he was able, set his feet wide in the same line that he wished his arrow to go, squared his shoulders, drew the bow to his chin, sighted on the mark, raised his point through an angle of about twenty degrees, aimed two yards to the right because he always pulled to the left in his loose, and sped his arrow. It missed, but not so badly.

‘Now, Kay,’ said Robin.

Kay went through the same motions and also made a good shot. Each of them had held the bow the right way up, had quickly found the cock feather and set it outward, each had taken hold of the string to draw the bow – most boys who have not been taught are inclined to catch hold of the nock of the arrow when they draw, between their finger and thumb, but a proper archer pulls back the string with his first two or three fingers and lets the arrow follow it – neither of them had allowed the point to fall away to the left as they drew, nor struck their left forearm with the bow—string – two common faults with people who do not know – and each had loosed evenly without a pluck.

‘Good,’ said the outlaw. ‘No lute—players here.’

‘Robin,’ said Marian, sharply, ‘you can’t take children into danger. Send them home to their father.’

‘That I won’t,’ he said, ‘unless they wish to go. It is their quarrel as much as mine.’

‘What is the quarrel?’ asked Kay.

The outlaw threw down his bow and sat cross—legged on the ground, drawing Maid Marian to sit beside him. His face was puzzled.

‘It is Morgan le Fay,’ he said. ‘It is difficult to explain her.’

‘I should not try.’

Robin turned on his mistress angrily. ‘Marian,’ he said. ‘Either we must have their help, or else we have to leave the other three without help. I don’t want to ask the boys to go there, but it is either that or leaving Tuck to her.’

The Wart thought it was time to ask a tactful question, so he made a polite cough and said: ‘Please, who is Morgan the Fay?’

All three answered at once.

‘She’m a bad ‘un,’ said Little John.

‘She is a fairy,’ said Robin.

‘No, she is not,’ said Marian. ‘She is an enchantress.’

‘The fact of the matter is,’ said Robin, ‘that nobody knows exactly what she is. In my opinion, she is a fairy.

‘And that opinion,’ he added, staring at his wife, ‘I still hold.’

Kay asked: ‘Do you mean she is one of those people with bluebells for hats, who spend the time sitting on toadstools?’

There was a shout of laughter.

‘Certainly not. There are no such creatures. The Queen is a real one, and one of the worst of them.’

‘If the boys have got to be in it,’ said Marian, ‘you had better explain from the beginning.’

The outlaw took a deep breath, uncrossed his legs, and the puzzled look came back to his face.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘suppose that Morgan is the queen of the fairies, or at any rate has to do with them, and that fairies are not the kind of creatures your nurse has told you about. Some
people say that they are the Oldest Ones of All, who lived in England before the Romans came here – before us Saxons, before the Old Ones themselves – and that they have been driven underground. Some say they look like humans, like dwarfs, and others that they look ordinary, and others that they don’t look like anything at all, but put on various shapes as the fancy takes them. Whatever they look like, they have the knowledge of the ancient Gaels. They know things down there in their burrows which the human race has forgotten about, and quite a lot of these things are not good to hear.’

‘Whisper,’ said the golden lady, with a strange look, and the boys noticed that the little circle had drawn closer together.

‘Well now,’ said Robin, lowering his voice, ‘the thing about these creatures that I am speaking of, and if you will excuse me I won’t name them again, is that they have no hearts. It is not so much that they wish to do evil, but that if you were to catch one and cut it open, you would find no heart inside. They are cold—blooded like fishes.’

‘They are everywhere, even while people are talking.’

The boys looked about them.

‘Be quiet,’ Robin said. ‘I need not tell you any more. It is unlucky to talk about them. The point is that I believe this Morgan is the queen of the – well – of the Good Folk, and I know she sometimes lives in a castle to the north of our forest called the Castle Chariot. Marian says that the queen is not a fairy herself, but only a necromancer who is friendly with them. Other people say that she is a daughter of the Earl of Cornwall. Never mind about that. The thing is that this morning, by her enchantments, the Oldest People of All have taken prisoner one of my servants and one of yours.’

‘Not Tuck?’ cried Little John, who knew nothing of recent developments because he had been on sentry duty.

Robin nodded. ‘The news came from the northern trees, before your message arrived about the boys.’

‘Alas, poor Friar!’

‘Tell how it happened,’ said Marian. ‘But perhaps you had better explain about the names.’

‘One of the few things we know,’ said Robin, ‘about the Blessed Ones, is that they go by the names of animals. For instance, they may be called Cow, or Goat, or Pig, and so forth. So, if you happen to be calling one of your own cows, you must always point to it when you call. Otherwise you may summon a fairy – a Little Person I ought to have said – who goes by the same name, and, once you have summoned it, it comes, and it can take you away.’

‘What seems to have happened,’ said Marian, taking up the story, ‘is that your Dog Boy from the castle took his hounds to the edge of the forest when they were going to scombre, and he happened to catch sight of Friar Tuck, who was chatting with an old man called Wat that lives hereabouts –’

‘Excuse us,’ cried the two boys, ‘is that the old man who lived in our village before he lost his wits? He bit off the Dog Boy’s nose, as a matter of fact, and now he lives in the forest, a sort of ogre?’

‘It is the same person,’ replied Robin, ‘but – poor thing – he is not much of an ogre. He lives on grass and roots and acorns, and would not hurt a fly. I am afraid you have got your story muddled.’

‘Fancy Wat living on acorns!’

‘What happened,’ said Marian patiently, ‘was this. The three of them came together to pass the time of day, and one of the hounds (I think it was the one called Cavall) began jumping up at poor Wat, to lick his face. This frightened the old man, and your Dog Boy called out, “Come here, Dog!” to make him stop. He did not point with his finger. You see, he ought to have pointed.’

‘What happened?’

‘Well, my man Scathelocke, or Scarlett, as they call him in the ballads, happened to be woodcutting a little way off, and he says that they vanished, just vanished, including the dog.’

‘My poor Cavall!’

‘So the fairies have got them.’

‘You mean the People of Peace.’

‘I am sorry.

‘But the point is, if Morgan is really the Queen of these creatures, and if we want to get them away before they are enchanted – one of their ancient Queens called Circe used to turn the ones she captured into hogs – we shall have to look for them in her castle.’

‘Then we must go there.’

Robin smiled at the elder boy and patted him on the back, while the Wart thought despairingly about his dog. Then the outlaw cleared his throat and began to speak again.

‘You are right about going there,’ he said, ‘but I ought to tell you the unpleasant part. Nobody can get into the Castle Chariot, except a boy or girl.’

‘Do you mean you can’t get in?’

‘You could get in.’

‘I suppose,’ explained the Wart, when he had thought this over, ‘it is like the thing about unicorns.’

‘Right. A unicorn is a magic animal, and only a maiden can catch it. Fairies are magic too, and only innocent people can enter their castles. That is why they take away people’s children out of cradles.’

Kay and Wart sat in silence for a moment. Then Kay said. ‘Well, I am game. It is my adventure after all.’

The Wart said: ‘I want to go too. I am fond of Cavall.’

Robin looked at Marian.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We won’t make a fuss about it, but we will talk about plans. I think it is good of you two to go, without really knowing what you are in for, but it will not be so bad as you think.’

‘We shall come with you,’ said Marian. ‘Our band will come with you to the castle. You will only have to do the going—in part at the end.’

‘Yes, and the band will probably be attacked by that griffin of hers afterwards.’

‘Is there a griffin?’

‘Indeed there is. The Castle Chariot is guarded by a fierce one, like a watch dog. We shall have to get past it on the way there, or it will give the alarm and you won’t be able to get in. It will be a terrific stalk.’

‘We shall have to wait till night.’

The boys passed the morning pleasantly, getting accustomed to two of Maid Marian’s bows. Robin had insisted on this. He said that no man could shoot with another’s bow any more than he could cut with another’s scythe. For their midday meal they had cold venison patty, with mead, as did everybody else. The outlaws drifted in for the meal like a conjuring trick. At one moment there would be nobody at the edge of the clearing, at the next half a dozen right inside it – green or sunburned men who had silently appeared out of the bracken or the trees. In the end there were about a hundred of them, eating merrily and laughing. They were not outlaws because they were murderers, or for any reason like that. They were Saxons who had revolted against Uther Pendragon’s conquest, and who refused to accept a foreign king. The fens and wild woods of England were alive with them. They were like soldiers of the resistance in later occupations. Their food was dished out from a leafy bower, where Marian and her attendants cooked.

The partisans usually posted a sentry to take the tree messages, and slept during the afternoon, partly because so much of their hunting had to be done in the times when most workmen sleep, and partly because the wild beasts take a nap in the afternoon and so should their hunters. This afternoon, however, Robin called the boys to a council.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘you had better know what we are going to do. My band of a hundred will march with you toward Queen Morgan’s castle, in four parties. You two will be in Marian’s party. When we get to an oak which was struck by lightning in the year of the great storm, we shall be within a mile of the griffin guard. We shall meet at a rendezvous there, and
afterwards we shall have to move like shadows. We must get past the griffin without an alarm. If we do get past it and if all goes well, we shall halt at the castle at a distance of about four hundred yards. We can’t come nearer, because of the iron in our arrow—heads, and from that moment you will have to go alone.

‘Now, Kay and Wart, I must explain about iron. If our friends have really been captured by – by the Good People – and if Queen Morgan the Fay is really the queen of them, we have one advantage on our side. None of the Good People can bear the closeness of iron. The reason is that the Oldest Ones of All began in the days of flint, before iron was ever invented, and all their troubles have come from the new metal. The people who conquered them had steel swords (which is even better than iron) and that is how they succeeded in driving the Old Ones underground.

‘This is the reason why we must keep away tonight, for fear of giving them the uncomfortable feeling. But you two, with an iron knife—blade hidden close in your hands, will be safe from the Queen, so long as you do not let go of it. A couple of small knives will not give them the feeling without being shown. All you will have to do is to walk the last distance, keeping a good grip of your iron: enter the castle in safety: and make your way to the cell where the prisoners are. As soon as the prisoners are protected by your metal they will be able to walk out with you. Do you understand this, Kay and Wart?’

‘Yes, please,’ they said. ‘We understand this perfectly.’

‘There is one more thing. The most important is to hold your iron, but the next most important is not to eat. Anybody who eats in a you—know—what stronghold has to stay there for ever, so, for all sake’s sake, don’t eat anything whatever inside the castle, however tempting it may look. Will you remember?’

‘We will.’

After the staff lecture, Robin went to give his orders to the men. He made them a long speech, explaining about the griffin and the stalk and what the boys were going to do.

When he had finished his speech, which was listened to in
perfect silence, an odd thing happened. He began it again at the beginning and spoke it from start to finish in the same words. On finishing it for the second time, he said, ‘Now, captains,’ and the hundred men split into groups of twenty which went to different parts of the clearing and stood round Marian, Little John, Much, Scarlett and Robin. From each of these groups a humming noise rose to the sky.

‘What on earth are they doing?’

‘Listen,’ said the Wart.

They were repeating the speech, word for word. Probably none of them could read or write, but they had learned to listen and remember. This was the way in which Robin kept touch with his night raiders, by knowing that each man knew by heart all that the leader himself knew, and why he was able to trust them, when necessary, each man to move by himself.

When the men had repeated their instructions, and everyone was word perfect in the speech, there was an issue of war arrows, a dozen to each. These arrows had bigger heads, ground to razor sharpness, and they were heavily feathered in a square cut. There was a bow inspection, and two or three men were issued with new strings. Then all fell silent.

‘Now then,’ cried Robin cheerfully.

He waved his arm, and the men, smiling, raised their bows in salute. Then there was a sigh, a rustle, a snap of one incautious twig, and the clearing of the giant lime tree was as empty as it had been before the days of man.

‘Come with me,’ said Marian, touching the boys on the shoulder. Behind them the bees hummed in the leaves.

It was a long march. The artificial glades which led to the lime tree in the form of a cross were no longer of use after the first half—hour. After that they had to make their way through the virgin forest as best they might. It would not have been so bad if they had been able to kick and slash their way, but they were supposed to move in silence. Marian showed them how to go sideways, one side after the other; how to stop at once when a bramble caught them, and take it patiently out; how to put their feet down sensitively and roll their weight to that
leg as soon as they were certain that no twig was under the foot; how to distinguish at a glance the places which gave most hope of an easy passage; and how a kind of rhythm in their movements would help them in spite of obstacles. Although there were a hundred invisible men on every side of them, moving towards the same goal, they heard no sounds but their own.

The boys had felt disgruntled at first, at being put in a woman’s band. They would have preferred to have gone with Robin, and thought that being put under Marian was like being trusted to a governess. They soon found their mistake. She had objected to their coming, but, now that their coming was ordered, she accepted them as companions. It was not easy to be a companion of hers. In the first place, it was impossible to keep up with her unless she waited for them – for she could move on all fours or even wriggle like a snake almost as quickly as they could walk – and in the second place she was an accomplished soldier, which they were not. She was a true Weyve – except for her long hair, which most of the female outlaws of those days used to clip. One of the bits of advice which she gave them before talking had to be stopped was this: Aim high when you shoot in battle, rather than low. A low arrow strikes the ground, a high one may kill in the second rank.

‘If I am made to get married,’ thought the Wart, who had doubts on the subject, ‘I will marry a girl like this: a kind of golden vixen.’

As a matter of fact, though the boys did not know it, Marian could hoot like an owl by blowing into her fists, or whistle a shrill blast between tongue and teeth with the fingers in the corner of the mouth; could bring all the birds to her by imitating their calls, and understand much of their small language – such as when the tits exclaim that a hawk is coming; and could turn cartwheels. But none of these accomplishments was necessary at the moment.

The twilight fell mistily – it was the first of the autumn mists – and in the dimness the undispersed families of the tawny owl called to each other, the young with keewick and the old with
the proper hooroo, hooroo. The noise called Tu—Whit, Tu—Whoo, which is wished by poets on the owl, is really a family noise, made by separate birds. Proportionally as the brambles and obstacles became harder to see, so did they become easier to feel. It was odd, but in the deepening silence the Wart found himself able to move more silently, instead of less. Being reduced to touch and sound, he found himself in better sympathy with these, and could go quietly and quickly.

It was about compline, or, as we should call it, at nine o’clock at night – and they had covered at least seven miles of the toilsome forest – when Marian touched Kay on the shoulder and pointed into the blue darkness. They could see in the dark now, as well as human beings can see in it and much better than townspeople will ever manage to, and there in front of them, struck through seven miles of trackless forest by Marian’s woodcraft, was the smitten oak. They decided with one accord, without even a whisper, to creep up to it so silently that even the members of their own army, who might already be waiting there, would not know of their arrival.

But a motionless man has the advantage of a man in motion, and they had hardly reached the outskirts of the roots when friendly hands took hold of them, patted their backs with pats as light as thistledown, and guided them to seats. The roots were crowded. It was like being a member of a band of starlings, or of roosting rooks. In the night mystery a hundred men breathed on every side of Wart, like the surge of our own blood which we can hear when we are writing or reading in the late and lonely hours. They were in the dark and stilly womb of night.

Presently the Wart noticed that the grasshoppers were creaking their shrill note, so tiny as to be almost extra—audible, like the creak of the bat. They creaked one after another. They creaked, when Marian had creaked three times to account for Kay and Wart as well as for herself, one hundred times. All the outlaws were present, and it was time to go.

There was a rustle, as if the wind had moved in the last few leaves of the nine—hundred—year—old oak. Then an owl hooted
softly, a field mouse screamed, a rabbit thumped, a dog—fox barked his deep, single lion’s cough, and a bat twittered above their heads. The leaves rustled again more lengthily while you could count a hundred, and then Maid Marian, who had done the rabbit’s thump, was surrounded by her band of twenty plus two. The Wart felt a man on either side of him take his hand, as they stood in a circle, and then he noticed that the stridulation of the grasshoppers had begun again. It was going round in a circle, towards him, and as the last grasshopper rubbed its legs together, the man on his right squeezed his hand. Wart stridulated. Instantly the man on his left did the same, and pressed his hand also. There were twenty—two grasshoppers before Maid Marian’s band was ready for its last stalk through the silence.

The last stalk might have been a nightmare, but to the Wart it was heavenly. Suddenly he found himself with an exaltation of night, and felt that he was bodiless, silent, transported. He felt that he could have walked upon a feeding rabbit and caught her up by the ears, furry and kicking, before she knew of his presence. He felt that he could have run between the legs of the men on either side of him, or taken their bright daggers from their sheaths, while they still moved on undreaming. The passion of nocturnal secrecy was a wine in his blood. He really was small and young enough to move as secretly as the warriors. Their age and weight made them lumber, in spite of all their woodcraft, and his youth and lightness made him mobile, in spite of his lack of it.

It was an easy stalk, except for its danger. The bushes thinned and the sounding bracken grew rarely in the swampy earth, so that they could move three times as fast. They went in a dream, unguided by owl’s hoot or bat’s squeak, but only kept together by the necessary pace which the sleeping forest imposed upon them. Some of them were fearful, some revengeful for their comrade, some, as it were, disbodied in the sleep—walk of their stealth.

They had hardly crept for twenty minutes when Maid Marian paused in her tracks. She pointed to the left.

Neither of the boys had read the book of Sir John de Mandeville, so they did not know that a griffin was eight times larger than a lion. Now, looking to the left in the silent gloom of night, they saw cut out against the sky and against the stars something which they never would have believed possible. It was a young male griffin in its first plumage.

The front end, and down to the forelegs and shoulders, was like a huge falcon. The Persian beak, the long wings in which the first primary was the longest, and the mighty talons: all were the same, but, as Mandeville observed, the whole eight times bigger than a lion. Behind the shoulders, a change began to take place. Where an ordinary falcon or eagle would content itself with the twelve feathers of its tail, Falco leonis serpentis began to grow the leonine body and the hind legs of the beast of Africa, and after that a snake’s tail. The boys saw, twenty—four feet high in the mysterious night—light of the moon, and with its sleeping head bowed upon its breast so that the wicked beak lay on the breast feathers, an authentic griffin that was better worth seeing than a hundred condors. They drew their breath through their teeth and for the moment hurried secretly on, storing the majestic vision of terror in the chambers of remembrance.