The Once and Future King (21 page)

He went ambling down the corridors of the enchanted sett, rolling from leg to leg with the queer badger paddle, his white mask with its black stripes looking ghostly in the gloom.

‘It’s along that passage,’ he said, ‘if you want to wash your hands.’

Badgers are not like foxes. They have a special midden where they put out their used bones and rubbish, proper earth closets, and bedrooms whose bedding they turn out frequently, to keep it clean. The Wart was charmed with what he saw. He admired the Great Hall most, for this was the central room of the tumulus – it was difficult to know whether to think of it as a college or as a castle – and the various suites and bolt holes radiated outward from it. It was a bit cobwebby, owing to being a sort of a common—room instead of being looked after by one particular family, but it was decidedly solemn. Badger called it the Combination Room. All round the panelled walls there were ancient paintings of departed badgers, famous in their day for scholarship or godliness, lit from above by shaded glowworms. There were stately chairs with the badger arms stamped in gold on their Spanish leather seats – the leather was coming off – and a portrait of the Founder over the fireplace. The chairs were arranged in a semi—circle round the fire, and there were
mahogany fans with which everybody could shield their faces from the flames, and a kind of tilting board by means of which the decanters could be slid back from the bottom of the semi—circle to the top. Some black gowns hung in the passage outside, and all was extreme ancient.

‘I am a bachelor at the moment,’ said the badger apologetically, when they got back to his own snug room with the flowered wallpaper, ‘so I am afraid there is only one chair. You will have to sit on the bed. Make yourself at home, my dear, while I brew some punch, and tell me how things are going in the wide world.’

‘Oh, they go on much the same. Merlyn is well, and Kay is to be made a knight next week.’

‘An interesting ceremony.’

‘What enormous arms you have,’ remarked the Wart, watching him stir the spirits with a spoon. ‘So have I, for that matter.’ And he looked down at his own bandy—legged muscles. He was mainly a tight chest holding together a pair of forearms, mighty as thighs.

‘It is to dig with,’ said the learned creature complacently. ‘Mole and I, I suppose you would have to dig pretty quick to match with us.’

‘I met a hedgehog outside.’

‘Did you now? They say nowadays that hedgehogs can carry swine fever and foot—and—mouth disease.’

‘I thought he was rather nice.’

‘They do have a sort of pathetic appeal,’ said the badger sadly, ‘but I’m afraid I generally just munch them up. There is something irresistible about pork crackling.

‘The Egyptians,’ he added, and by this he meant the gypsies, ‘are fond of them for eating, too.’

‘Mine would not uncurl.’

‘You should have pushed him into some water, and then he’d have shown you his poor legs quick enough. Come, the punch is ready. Sit down by the fire and take your ease.’

‘It is nice to sit here with the snow and wind outside.’

‘It is nice. Let us drink good luck to Kay in his knighthood.’

‘Good luck to Kay, then.’

‘Good luck.’

‘Well,’ said the badger, setting down his glass again with a sigh. ‘Now what could have possessed Merlyn to send you to me?’

‘He was talking about learning,’ said the Wart.

‘Ah, well, if it is learning you are after, you have come to the right shop. But don’t you find it rather dull?’

‘Sometimes I do,’ said the Wart, ‘and sometimes I don’t. On the whole I can bear a good deal of learning if it is about natural history.’

‘I am writing a treatise just now,’ said the badger, coughing diffidently to show that he was absolutely set on explaining it, ‘which is to point out why Man has become the master of the animals. Perhaps you would like to hear it?

‘It’s for my doctor’s degree, you know,’ he added hastily, before the Wart could protest. He got few chances of reading his treatises to anybody, so he could not bear to let the opportunity slip by.

‘Thank you very much,’ said the Wart.

‘It will be good for you, dear boy. It is just the thing to top off an education. Study birds and fish and animals: then finish off with Man. How fortunate that you came! Now where the devil did I put that manuscript?’

The old gentleman scratched about with his great claws until he had turned up a dirty bundle of papers, one corner of which had been used for lighting something. Then he sat down in his leather armchair, which had a deep depression in the middle of it; put on his velvet smoking—cap with the tassel; and produced a pair of tarantula spectacles, which balanced on the end of his nose.

‘Hem,’ said the badger.

He immediately became paralysed with shyness, and sat blushing at his papers, unable to begin.

‘Go on,’ said the Wart.

‘It is not very good,’ he explained coyly. ‘It is just a rough draft, you know. I shall alter a lot before I send it in.’

‘I am sure it must be interesting.’

‘Oh no, it is not a bit interesting. It is just an odd thing I threw off in an odd half—hour, just to pass the time. But still, this is how it begins.

‘Hem!’ said the badger. Then he put on an impossibly high falsetto voice and began to read as fast as possible.

‘People often ask, as an idle question, whether the process of evolution began with the chicken or the egg. Was there an egg out of which the first chicken came, or did a chicken lay the first egg? I am in a position to say that the first thing created was the egg.

‘When God had manufactured all the eggs out of which the fishes and the serpents and the birds and the mammals and even the duck—billed platypus would eventually emerge, He called the embryos before Him, and saw that they were good.

‘Perhaps I ought to explain,’ added the badger, lowering his papers nervously and looking at the Wart over the top of them, ‘
that all embryos look very much the same.
They are what you are before you are born – and, whether you are going to be a tadpole or a peacock or a cameleopard or a man, when you are an embryo you just look like a peculiarly repulsive and helpless human being. I continue as follows:

‘The embryos stood in front of God, with their feeble hands clasped politely over their stomachs and their heavy heads hanging down respectfully, and God addressed them.

‘He said: “Now, you embryos, here you are, all looking exactly the same, and We are going to give you the choice of what you want to be. When you grow up you will get bigger anyway, but We are pleased to grant you another gift as well. You may alter any parts of yourselves into anything which you think would be useful to you in later life. For instance, at the moment you cannot dig. Anybody who would like to turn his hands into a pair of spades or garden forks is allowed to do so. Or, to put it another way, at present you can only use your mouths for eating. Anybody who would like to use his mouth as an offensive weapon, can change it by asking and be a corkindrill or a sabre—toothed tiger. Now then, step up and choose your
tools, but remember that what you choose you will grow into, and will have to stick to.”

‘All the embryos thought the matter over politely, and then, one by one, they stepped up before the eternal throne. They were allowed two or three specializations, so that some chose to use their arms as flying machines and their mouths as weapons, or crackers, or drillers, or spoons, while others selected to use their bodies as boats and their hands as oars. We badgers thought very hard and decided to ask three boons. We wanted to change our skins for shields, our mouths for weapons, and our arms for garden forks. These boons were granted. Everybody specialized in one way or another, and some of us in very queer ones. For instance, one of the desert lizards decided to swap his whole body for blotting—paper, and one of the toads who lived in the drouthy antipodes decided simply to be a water—bottle.

‘The asking and granting took up two long days – they were the fifth and sixth, so far as I remember – and at the very end of the sixth day, just before it was time to knock off for Sunday, they had got through all the little embryos except one. This embryo was Man.

‘“Well, Our little man,” said God. “You have waited till the last, and slept on your decision, and We are sure you have been thinking hard all the time. What can We do for you?”

‘“Please, God,” said the embryo, “I think that You made me in the shape which I now have for reasons best known to Yourself, and that it would be rude to change. If I am to have my choice I will stay as I am. I will not alter any of the parts which You gave me, for other and doubtless inferior tools, and I will stay a defenceless embryo all of my life, doing my best to make myself a few feeble implements out of the wood, iron and the other materials which You have seen fit to put before me. If I want a boat I will try to construct it out of trees, and if I want to fly, I will put together a chariot to do it for me. Probably I have been very silly in refusing to take advantage of Your kind offer, but I have done my very best to think it over carefully, and
now hope that the feeble decisions of this small innocent will find favour with Yourself.”

‘“Well done,” exclaimed the Creator in delighted tones. “Here, all you embryos, come here with your beaks and what—nots to look upon Our first Man. He is the only one who has guessed Our riddle, out of all of you, and We have great pleasure in conferring upon him the Order of Dominion over the Fowls of the Air, and the Beasts of the Earth, and the Fishes of the Sea. Now let the rest of you get along, and love and multiply, for it is time to knock off for the week—end. As for you, Man, you will be a naked tool all your life, though a user of tools. You will look like an embryo till they bury you, but all the others will be embryos before your might. Eternally undeveloped, you will always remain potential in Our image, able to see some of Our sorrows and to feel some of Our joys. We are partly sorry for you, Man, but partly hopeful. Run along then, and do your best. And listen, Man, before you go…”

‘“Well?” asked Adam, turning back from his dismissal.

‘“We were only going to say,” said God shyly, twisting His hands together. “Well, We were just going to say, God bless you.”’

‘It’s a good story,’ said the Wart doubtfully. ‘I like it better than Merlyn’s one about the Rabbi. And it is interesting, too.’

The badger was covered with confusion.

‘No, no, dear boy. You exaggerate. A minor parable at most. Besides, I fear it is a trifle optimistic.’

‘How?’

‘Well, it is true that man has the Order of Dominion and is the mightiest of the animals – if you mean the most terrible one – but I have sometimes doubted lately whether he is the most blessed.’

‘I don’t think Sir Ector is very terrible.’

‘All the same, if even Sir Ector was to go for a walk beside a river, not only would the birds fly from him and the beasts run away from him, but the very fish would dart to the other side. They don’t do this for each other.’

‘Man is the king of the animals.’

‘Perhaps. Or ought one to say the tyrant? And then again we do have to admit that he has a quantity of vices.’

‘King Pellinore has not got many.’

‘He would go to war, if King Uther declared one. Do you know that
Homo sapiens
is almost the only animal which wages war?’

‘Ants do.’

‘Don’t say “Ants do” in that sweeping way, dear boy. There are more than four thousand different sorts of them, and from all those kinds I can only think of five which are belligerent. There are the five ants, one termite that I know of, and Man.’

‘But the packs of wolves from the Forest Sauvage attack our flocks of sheep every winter.’

‘Wolves and sheep belong to different species, my friend. True warfare is what happens between bands of the same species. Out of the hundreds of thousands of species, I can only think of seven which are belligerent. Even Man has a few varieties like the Esquimaux and the Gypsies and the Lapps and certain Nomads in Arabia, who do not do it, because they do not claim boundaries. True warfare is rarer in Nature than cannibalism. Don’t you think that is a little unfortunate?’

‘Personally,’ said the Wart. ‘I should have liked to go to war, if I could have been made a knight. I should have liked the banners and the trumpets, the flashing armour and the glorious charges. And oh, I should have liked to do great deeds, and be brave, and conquer my own fears. Don’t you have courage in warfare, Badger, and endurance, and comrades whom you love?’

The learned animal thought for a long time, gazing into the fire.

In the end, he seemed to change the subject.

‘Which did you like best,’ he asked, ‘the ants or the wild geese?’

King Pellinore arrived for the important week—end in a high state of flurry.

‘I say,’ he exclaimed, ‘do you know? Have you heard? Is it a secret, what?’

‘Is what a secret, what?’ they asked him.

‘Why, the King,’ cried his majesty. ‘You know, about the King?’

‘What’s the matter with the King?’ inquired Sir Ector. ‘You don’t say he’s comin’ down to hunt with those demned hounds of his or anythin’ like that?’

‘He’s dead,’ cried King Pellinore tragically. ‘He’s dead, poor fellah, and can’t hunt any more.’

Sir Grummore stood up respectfully and took off his cap of maintenance.

‘The King is dead,’ he said. ‘Long live the King.’

Everybody else felt they ought to stand up too, and the boys’ nurse burst into tears.

‘There, there,’ she sobbed. ‘His loyal highness dead and gone, and him such a respectful gentleman. Many’s the illuminated picture I’ve cut out of him, from the Illustrated Missals, aye and stuck up over the mantel. From the time when he was in swaddling bands, right through them world towers till he was a—visiting the dispersed areas as the world’s Prince Charming there wasn’t a picture of ‘im but I had it out, aye, and give ‘im a last thought o’ nights.’

‘Compose yourself, Nannie,’ said Sir Ector.

‘It is solemn, isn’t it?’ said King Pellinore, ‘what? Uther the Conqueror, 1066 to 1216.’

‘A solemn moment,’ said Sir Grummore. ‘The King is dead. Long live the King.’

‘We ought to pull down the curtains,’ said Kay, who was always a stickler for good form,’ or half—mast the banners.’

‘That’s right,’ said Sir Ector. ‘Somebody go and tell the sergeant—at—arms.’

It was obviously the Wart’s duty to execute this command, for he was now the junior nobleman present, so he ran out cheerfully to find the sergeant. Soon those who were left in the solar could hear a voice crying out, ‘Nah then, one—two, special mourning fer ‘is lite majesty, lower awai on the command Two!’ and then the flapping of all the standards, banners, pennons, pennoncells, banderolls, guidons, streamers and cognizances which made gay the snowy turrets of the Forest Sauvage.

‘How did you hear?’ asked Sir Ector.

‘I was pricking through the purlieus of the forest after that Beast, you know, when I met with a solemn friar of orders grey, and he told me. It’s the very latest news.’

‘Poor old Pendragon,’ said Sir Ector.

‘The King is dead,’ said Sir Grummore solemnly. ‘Long live the King.’

‘It is all very well for you to keep on mentioning that, my dear Grummore,’ exclaimed King Pellinore petulantly, ‘but who is this King, what, that is to live so long, what, accordin’ to you?’

‘Well, his heir,’ said Sir Grummore, rather taken aback.

‘Our blessed monarch,’ said the Nurse tearfully, ‘never had no hair. Anybody that studied the loyal family knowed that.’

‘Good gracious!’ exclaimed Sir Ector. ‘But he must have had a next—of—kin?’

‘That’s just it,’ cried King Pellimore in high excitement. ‘That’s the excitin’ part of it, what? No hair and no next of kin, and who’s to succeed to the throne? That’s what my friar was so excited about, what, and why he was asking who could succeed to what, what? What?’

‘Do you mean to tell me,’ exclaimed Sir Grummore indignantly, ‘that there ain’t no King of Gramarye?’

‘Not a scrap of one,’ cried King Pellinore, feeling important. ‘And there have been signs and wonders of no mean might.’

‘I think it’s a scandal,’ said Sir Grummore. ‘God knows what
the dear old country is comin’ to. Due to these lollards and communists, no doubt.’

‘What sort of signs and wonders?’ asked Sir Ector.

‘Well, there has appeared a sort of sword in a stone, what, in a sort of church. Not in the church, if you see what I mean, and not in the stone, but that sort of thing, what, like you might say.’

‘I don’t know what the Church is coming to,’ said Sir Grummore.

‘It’s in an anvil,’ explained the King.

‘The Church?’

‘No, the sword.’

‘But I thought you said the sword was in the stone?’

‘No,’ said King Pellinore. ‘The stone is outside the church.’

‘Look here, Pellinore,’ said Sir Ector. ‘You have a bit of a rest, old boy, and start again. Here, drink up this horn of mead and take it easy.’

‘The sword,’ said King Pellinore, ‘is stuck through an anvil which stands on a stone. It goes right through the anvil and into the stone. The anvil is stuck to the stone. The stone stands outside a church. Give me some more mead.’

‘I don’t think that’s much of a wonder,’ remarked Sir Grummore. ‘What I wonder at is that they should allow such things to happen. But, you can’t tell nowadays, what with all these Saxton agitators.’

‘My dear fellah,’ cried Pellinore, getting excited again, ‘it’s not where the stone is, what, that I’m trying to tell you, but what is written on it, what, where it is.’

‘What?’

‘Why, on its pommel.’

‘Come on, Pellinore,’ said Sir Ector. ‘You just sit quite still with your face to the wall for a minute, and then tell us what you are talkin’ about. Take it easy, old boy. No need for hurryin’. You sit still and look at the wall, there’s a good chap, and talk as slow as you can.’

‘There are words written on this sword in this stone outside this church,’ cried King Pellinore piteously, ‘and these words
are as follows. Oh, do try to listen to me, you two, instead of interruptin’ all the time about nothin’, for it makes a man’s head go ever so.’

‘What are these words?’ asked Kay.

‘These words say this,’ said King Pellinore, ‘so far as I can understand from that old friar of orders grey.’

‘Go on, do,’ said Kay, for the King had come to a halt.

‘Go on,’ said Sir Ector, ‘what do these words on this sword in this anvil in this stone outside this church, say?’

‘Some red propaganda, no doubt,’ remarked Sir Grummore.

King Pellinore closed his eyes tight, extended his arms in both directions, and announced in capital letters, ‘Whoso Pulleth Out This Sword of this Stone and Anvil, is Rightwise King Born of All England.’

‘Who said that?’ asked Sir Grummore.

‘But the sword said it, like I tell you.’

‘Talkative weapon,’ remarked Sir Grummore sceptically.

‘It was written on it,’ cried the King angrily. ‘Written on it in letters of gold.’

‘Why didn’t you pull it out then?’ asked Sir Grummore.

‘But I tell you that I wasn’t there. All this that I am telling you was told to me by that friar I was telling you of, like I tell you.’

‘Has this sword with this inscription been pulled out?’ inquired Sir Ector.

‘No,’ whispered King Pellinore dramatically. ‘That’s where the whole excitement comes in. They can’t pull this sword out at all, although they have all been tryin’ like fun, and so they have had to proclaim a tournament all over England, for New Year’s Day, so that the man who comes to the tournament and pulls out the sword can be King of all England for ever, what, I say?’

‘Oh, father,’ cried Kay. ‘The man who pulls that sword out of the stone will be the King of England. Can’t we go to the tournament, father, and have a shot?’

‘Couldn’t think of it,’ said Sir Ector.

‘Long way to London,’ said Sir Grummore, shaking his head.

‘My father went there once,’ said King Pellinore.

Kay said, ‘Oh, surely we could go? When I am knighted I shall have to go to a tournament somewhere, and this one happens at just the right date. All the best people will be there, and we should see the famous knights and great kings. It does not matter about the sword, of course, but think of the tournament, probably the greatest there has ever been in Gramarye, and all the things we should see and do. Dear father, let me go to this tourney, if you love me, so that I may bear away the prize of all, in my maiden fight.’

‘But, Kay,’ said Sir Ector, ‘I have never been to London.’

‘All the more reason to go. I believe that anybody who does not go for a tournament like this will be proving that he has no noble blood in his veins. Think what people will say about us, if we do not go and have a shot at that sword. They will say that Sir Ector’s family was too vulgar and knew it had no chance.’

‘We all know the family has no chance,’ said Sir Ector, ‘that is, for the sword.’

‘Lot of people in London,’ remarked Sir Grummore, with a wild surmise. ‘So they say.’

He took a deep breath and goggled at his host with eyes like marbles.

‘And shops,’ added King Pellinore suddenly, also beginning to breathe heavily.

‘Dang it!’ cried Sir Ector, bumping his horn mug on the table so that it spilled. ‘Let’s all go to London, then, and see the new King!’

They rose up as one man.

‘Why shouldn’t I be as good a man as my father?’ exclaimed King Pellinore.

‘Dash it all,’ cried Sir Grummore. ‘After all, damn it all, it is the capital!’

‘Hurray!’ shouted Kay.

‘Lord have mercy,’ said the nurse.

At this moment the Wart came in with Merlyn, and everybody was too excited to notice that, if he had not been grown up now, he would have been on the verge of tears.

‘Oh, Wart,’ cried Kay, forgetting for the moment that he was only addressing his squire, and slipping back into the familiarity of their boyhood. ‘What do you think? We are all going to London for a great tournament on New Year’s Day!’

‘Are we?’

‘Yes, and you will carry my shield and spears for the jousts, and I shall win the palm of everybody and be a great knight!’

‘Well, I am glad we are going,’ said the Wart, ‘for Merlyn is leaving us too.’

‘Oh, we shan’t need Merlyn.’

‘He is leaving us,’ repeated the Wart.

‘Leavin’ us?’ asked Sir Ector. ‘I thought it was we that were leavin’?’

‘He is going away from the Forest Sauvage.’

Sir Ector said, ‘Come now, Merlyn, what’s all this about? I don’t understand all this a bit.’

‘I have come to say Good—bye, Sir Ector,’ said the old magician. ‘Tomorrow my pupil Kay will be knighted, and the next week my other pupil will go away as his squire. I have outlived my usefulness here, and it is time to go.’

‘Now, now, don’t say that,’ said Sir Ector. ‘I think you’re a jolly useful chap whatever happens. You just stay and teach me, or be the librarian or something. Don’t you leave an old man alone, after the children have flown.’

‘We shall all meet again,’ said Merlyn. ‘There is no cause to be sad.’

‘Don’t go,’ said Kay.

‘I must go,’ replied their tutor. ‘We have had a good time while we were young, but it is in the nature of Time to fly. There are many things in other parts of the kingdom which I ought to be attending to just now, and it is a specially busy time for me. Come, Archimedes, say Good—bye to the company.’

‘Good—bye,’ said Archimedes tenderly to the Wart.

‘Good—bye,’ said the Wart without looking up at all.

‘But you can’t go,’ cried Sir Ector, ‘not without a month’s notice.’

‘Can’t I?’ replied Merlyn, taking up the position always used
by philosophers who propose to dematerialize. He stood on his toes, while Archimedes held tight to his shoulder – began to spin on them slowly like a top – spun faster and faster till he was only a blur of greyish light – and in a few seconds there was no one there at all.

‘Good—bye, Wart,’ cried two faint voices outside the solar window.

‘Good—bye,’ said the Wart for the last time – and the poor fellow went quickly out of the room.