The Once and Future King (9 page)

‘Do you want Pax?’ asked Sir Grummore.

King Pellinore made no answer.

Sir Grummore favoured him with another whack and said, ‘If you don’t say Pax, I shall cut your head off.’

‘I won’t,’ said the King.

Whang! went the sword on top of his head.

Whang! it went again.

Whang! for the third time.

‘Pax,’ said King Pellinore, mumbling rather.

Then, just as Sir Grummore was relaxing with the fruits of victory, he swung round upon him, shouted, ‘Non!’ at the top of his voice, and gave him a good push in the middle of the chest.

Sir Grummore fell over backwards.

‘Well!’ exclaimed the Wart. ‘What a cheat! I would not have thought it of him.’

King Pellinore hurriedly sat on his victim’s chest, thus increasing the weight upon him to a quarter of a ton and making
it quite impossible for him to move, and began to undo Sir Grummore’s helm.

‘You said Pax!’

‘I said Pax Non under my breath.’

‘It’s a swindle.’

‘It’s not.’

‘You’re a cad.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘I said Pax Non.’

‘You said Pax.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Yes, you did.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Yes, you did.’

By this time Sir Grummore’s helm was unlaced and they could see his bare head glaring at King Pellinore, quite purple in the face.

‘Yield thee, recreant,’ said the King.

‘Shan’t,’ said Sir Grummore.

‘You have got to yield, or I shall cut off your head.’

‘Cut it off then.’

‘Oh, come on,’ said the King. ‘You know you have to yield when your helm is off.’

‘Feign I,’ said Sir Grummore.

‘Well, I shall just cut your head off.’

‘I don’t care.’

The King waved his sword menacingly in the air.

‘Go on,’ said Sir Grummore. ‘I dare you to.’

The King lowered his sword and said, ‘Oh, I say, do yield, please.’

‘You yield,’ said Sir Grummore.

‘But I can’t yield. I am on top of you after all, am I not, what?’

‘Well, I have feigned yieldin’.’

‘Oh, come on, Grummore. I do think you are a cad not to yield. You know very well I can’t cut your head off.’

‘I would not yield to a cheat who started fightin’ after he said Pax.’

‘I am not a cheat.’

‘You are a cheat.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘Very well,’ said King Pellinore. ‘You can jolly well get up and put on your helm and we will have a fight. I won’t be called a cheat for anybody.’

‘Cheat!’ said Sir Grummore.

They stood up and fumbled together with the helm, hissing, ‘No, I’m not’ – ‘Yes, you are,’ until it was safely on. Then they retreated to opposite ends of the clearing, got their weight upon their toes, and came rumbling and thundering together like two runaway trams.

Unfortunately they were now so cross that they had both ceased to be vigilant, and in the fury of the moment they missed each other altogether. The momentum of their armour was too great for them to stop till they had passed each other handsomely, and then they manœuvred about in such a manner that neither happened to come within the other’s range of vision. It was funny watching them because King Pellinore, having already been caught from behind once, was continually spinning round to look behind him, and Sir Grummore, having used the stratagem himself, was doing the same thing. Thus they wandered for some five minutes, standing still, listening, clanking, crouching, creeping, peering, walking on tiptoe, and occasionally making a chance swipe behind their backs. Once they were standing within a few feet of each other, back to back, only to stalk off in opposite directions with infinite precaution, and once King Pellinore did hit Sir Grummore with one of his back strokes, but they both immediately spun round so often that they became giddy and mislaid each other afresh.

After five minutes Sir Grummore said, ‘All right, Pellinore. It is no use hidin’. I can see where you are.’

‘I am not hiding,’ exclaimed King Pellinore indignantly. ‘Where am I?’

They discovered each other and went up close together, face to face.

‘Cad,’ said Sir Grummore.

‘Yah,’ said King Pellinore.

They turned round and marched off to their corners, seething with indignation.

‘Swindler,’ shouted Sir Grummore.

‘Beastly bully,’ shouted King Pellinore.

With this they summoned all their energies together for one decisive encounter, leaned forward, lowered their heads like two billy—goats, and positively sprinted together for the final blow. Alas, their aim was poor. They missed each other by about five yards, passed at full steam doing at least eight knots, like ships that pass in the night but speak not to each other in passing, and hurtled onward to their doom. Both knights began waving their arms like windmills, anti—clockwise, in the vain effort to slow up. Both continued with undiminished speed. Then Sir Grummore rammed his head against the beech in which the Wart was sitting, and King Pellinore collided with a chestnut at the other side of the clearing. The trees shook, the forest rang. Blackbirds and squirrels cursed and woodpigeons flew out of their leafy perches half a mile away. The two knights stood to attention while one could count three. Then, with a last unanimous melodious clang, they both fell prostrate on the fatal sward.

‘Stunned,’ said Merlyn, ‘I should think.’

‘Oh, dear,’ said the Wart. ‘Ought we to get down and help them?’

‘We could pour water on their heads,’ said Merlyn reflectively, ‘if there was any water. But I don’t suppose they would thank us for making their armour rusty. They will be all right. Besides, it is time that we were home.’

‘But they might be dead!’

‘They are not dead, I know. In a minute or two they will come round and go off home to dinner.’

‘Poor King Pellinore has not got a home.’

‘Then Sir Grummore will invite him to stay the night. They will be the best of friends when they come to. They always are.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘My dear boy, I know so. Shut your eyes and we will be off.’

The Wart gave in to Merlyn’s superior knowledge. ‘Do you think,’ he asked with his eyes shut, ‘that Sir Grummore has a feather bed?’

‘Probably.’

‘Good,’ said the Wart. ‘That will be nice for King Pellinore, even if he was stunned.’

The Latin words were spoken and the secret passes made. The funnel of whistling noise and space received them. In two seconds they were lying under the grandstand, and the sergeant’s voice was calling from the opposite side of the tilting ground, ‘Nah then, Master Art, nah then. You’ve been a—snoozing there long enough. Come aht into the sunlight ‘ere with Master Kay, one—two, one—two, and see some real tilting.’

It was a cold wet evening, such as may happen even toward the end of August, and the Wart did not know how to bear himself indoors. He spent some time in the kennels talking to Cavall, then wandered off to help them turn the spit in the kitchen. But there it was too hot. He was forced to stay indoors because of the rain, by his female supervisors, as happens too frequently to the unhappy children of our generation, but the mere wetness and dreariness in the open discouraged him from going out. He hated everybody.

‘Confound the boy,’ said Sir Ector. ‘For goodness’ sake stop
mopin’ by that window there, and go and find your tutor. When I was a boy we always used to study on wet days, yes, and eddicate our minds.’

‘Wart is stupid,’ said Kay.

‘Ah, run along, my duck,’ said their old nurse. ‘I han’t got time to attend to thy mopseys now, what with all this sorbent washing.’

‘Now then, my young master,’ said Hob. ‘Let thee run off to thy quarters, and stop confusing they fowls.’

‘Nah, nah,’ said the sergeant. ‘You ’op orf art of ’ere. I got enough to do a—polishing of this ber—lady harmour.’

Even the Dog Boy barked at him when he went back to the kennels.

Wart draggled off to the tower room, where Merlyn was busy knitting himself a woollen night—cap for the winter.

‘I cast off now together at every other line,’ said the magician, ‘but for some reason it seems to end too sharply. Like an onion. It is the turning of the heel that does one, every time.’

‘I think I ought to have some eddication,’ said the Wart. ‘I can’t think of anything to do.’

‘You think that education is something which ought to be done when all else fails?’ inquired Merlyn nastily, for he was in a bad mood too.

‘Well,’ said the Wart, ‘some sorts of education.’

‘Mine?’ asked the magician with flashing eyes.

‘Oh, Merlyn,’ exclaimed the Wart without answering, ‘please give me something to do, because I feel so miserable. Nobody wants me for anything today, and I just don’t know how to be sensible. It rains so.’

‘You should learn to knit.’

‘Could I go out and be something, a fish or anything like that?’

‘You have been a fish,’ said Merlyn. ‘Nobody with any go needs to do their education twice.’

‘Well, could I be a bird?’

‘If you knew anything at all,’ said Merlyn, ‘which you do not, you would know that a bird does not like to fly in the rain
because it wets its feathers and makes them stick together. They get bedraggled.’

‘I could be a hawk in Hob’s mews,’ said the Wart stoutly. ‘Then I should be indoors and not get wet.’

‘That is pretty ambitious,’ said the old man, ‘to want to be a hawk.’

‘You know you will turn me into a hawk when you want to,’ shouted the Wart, ‘but you like to plague me because it is wet. I won’t have it.’

‘Hoity—toity!’

‘Please,’ said the Wart, ‘dear Merlyn, turn me into a hawk. If you don’t do that I shall do something. I don’t know what.’

Merlyn put down his knitting and looked at his pupil over the top of his spectacles. ‘My boy,’ he said, ‘you shall be everything in the world, animal, vegetable, mineral, protista or virus, for all I care – before I have done with you – but you will have to trust to my superior backsight. The time is not yet ripe for you to be a hawk – for one thing Hob is still in the mews feeding them – so you may as well sit down for the moment and learn to be a human being.’

‘Very well,’ said the Wart, ‘if that’s a go.’ And he sat down.

After several minutes he said, ‘Is one allowed to speak as a human being, or does the thing about being seen and not heard have to apply?’

‘Everybody can speak.’

‘That’s good, because I wanted to mention that you have been knitting your beard into the night—cap for three rows now.’

‘Well, I’ll be…’

‘I should think the best thing would be to cut off the end of your beard. Shall I fetch some scissors?’

‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’

‘I wanted to see what would happen.’

‘You run a grave risk, my boy,’ said the magician, ‘of being turned into a piece of bread, and toasted.’

With this he slowly began to unpick his beard, muttering to himself meanwhile and taking the greatest precaution not to drop a stitch.

‘Will it be as difficult to fly,’ asked the Wart when he thought his tutor had calmed down, ‘as it was to swim?’

‘You will not need to fly. I don’t mean to turn you into a loose hawk, but only to set you in the mews for the night, so that you can talk to the others. That is the way to learn, by listening to the experts.’

‘Will they talk?’

‘They talk every night, deep into the darkness. They say about how they were taken, about what they can remember of their homes: about their lineage and the great deeds of their ancestors, about their training and what they have learned and will learn. It is military conversation really, like you might have in the mess of a crack cavalry regiment: tactics, small arms, maintenance, betting, famous hunts, wine, women and song.

‘Another subject they have,’ he continued, ‘is food. It is a depressing thought, but of course they are mainly trained by hunger. They are a hungry lot, poor chaps, thinking of the best restaurants where they used to go, and how they had champagne and caviare and gypsy music. Of course, they all come of noble blood.’

‘What a shame that they should be kept prisoners and be hungry.’

‘Well, they do not really understand that they are prisoners, any more than the cavalry officers do. They look on themselves as being dedicated to their profession, like an order of knighthood or something of that sort. You see, the membership of the mews is, after all, restricted to the raptors – and that does help a lot. They know that none of the lower classes can get in. Their screen perches don’t carry blackbirds or such trash as that. And then, as to the hungry part, they are far from starving or that kind of hunger. They are in training, you know, and like everybody in strict training, they think about food.’

‘How soon can I begin?’

‘You can begin now, if you want to. My insight tells me that Hob has this minute finished for the night. But first of all you must choose what kind of hawk you would prefer to be.’

‘I should like to be a merlin,’ said the Wart politely.

This answer flattered the magician. ‘A very good choice,’ be said, ‘and if you please we will proceed at once.’

The Wart got up from his stool and stood in front of his tutor. Merlyn put down his knitting.

‘First you go small,’ said he, pressing him on the top of his head, until he was a bit smaller than a pigeon. ‘Then you stand on the ball of your toes, bend at the knees, hold your elbows to your sides, lift your hands to the level of your shoulders, and press your first and second fingers together, as also your third and fourth. Look, it is like this.’

With these words the ancient nigromant stood upon tiptoe and did as he had explained.

The Wart copied him carefully and wondered what would happen next. What did happen was that Merlyn, who had been saying the final spells under his breath, suddenly turned himself into a condor, leaving the Wart standing on tiptoe unchanged. He stood there as if he were drying himself in the sun, with a wingspread of about eleven feet, a bright orange head and a magenta carbuncle. He looked very surprised and rather funny.

‘Come back,’ said the Wart. ‘You have changed the wrong one.’

‘It is this by—our—lady spring cleaning,’ exclaimed Merlyn, turning back into himself. ‘Once you let a woman into your study for half an hour, you do not know where to lay your hands on the right spell, not if it was ever so. Stand up and we will try again.’

This time the now tiny Wart felt his toes shooting out and scratching on the floor. He felt his heels rise and stick out behind and his knees draw into his stomach. His thighs became quite short. A web of skin grew from his wrists to his shoulders, while his primary feathers burst out in soft quills from the end of his fingers and quickly grew. His secondaries sprouted along his forearm, and a charming little false primary sprang from the end of each thumb.

The dozen feathers of his tail, with the double deck—feathers in the middle, grew out in the twinkling of an eye, and all the covert feathers of his back and breast and shoulders slipped out
of the skin to hide the roots of the more important plumes. Wart looked quickly at Merlyn, ducked his head between his legs and had a look through there, rattled his feathers into place, and began to scratch his chin with the sharp talon of one toe.

‘Good,’ said Merlyn. ‘Now hop on my hand – ah, be careful and don’t gripe – and listen to what I have to tell you. I shall take you into the mews now that Hob has locked up for the night, and I shall put you loose and unhooded beside Balin and Balan. Now pay attention. Don’t go close to anybody without speaking first. You must remember that most of them are hooded and might be startled into doing something rash. You can trust Balin and Balan, also the kestrel and the spar—hawk. Don’t go within reach of the falcon unless she invites you to. On no account must you stand beside Cully’s special enclosure, for he is unhooded and will go for you through the mesh if he gets half a chance. He is not quite right in his brains, poor chap, and if he once grips you, you will never leave his grip alive. Remember that you are visiting a kind of Spartan military mess. These fellows are regulars. As the junior subaltern your only business is to keep your mouth shut, speak when you are spoken to, and not interrupt.’

‘I bet I am more than a subaltern,’ said the Wart, ‘if I am a merlin.’

‘Well, as a matter of fact, you are. You will find that both the kestrel and the spar—hawk will be polite to you, but for all sake’s sake don’t interrupt the senior merlins or the falcon. She is the honorary colonel of the regiment. And as for Cully, well, he is a colonel too, even if he is infantry, so you must mind your p’s and q’s.’

‘I will be careful,’ said the Wart, who was beginning to feel rather scared.

‘Good. I shall come for you in the morning, before Hob is up.’

All the hawks were silent as Merlyn carried their new companion into the mews, and silent for some time afterwards when they had been left in the dark. The rain had given place to a
full August moonlight, so clear that you could see a woolly bear caterpillar fifteen yards away out of doors, as it climbed up and up the knobbly sandstone of the great keep, and it took the Wart only a few moments for his eyes to become accustomed to the diffused brightness inside the mews. The darkness became watered with light, with silver radiance, and then it was an eerie sight which dawned upon his vision. Each hawk or falcon stood in the silver upon one leg, the other tucked up inside the apron of its panel, and each was a motionless statue of a knight in armour. They stood gravely in their plumed helmets, spurred and armed. The canvas or sacking screens of their perches moved heavily in a breath of wind, like banners in a chapel, and the rapt nobility of the air kept their knight’s vigil in knightly patience. In those days they used to hood everything they could, even the goshawk and the merlin, which are no longer hooded according to modern practice.

Wart drew his breath at the sight of all these stately figures, standing so still that they might have been cut of stone. He was overwhelmed by their magnificence, and felt no need of Merlyn’s warning that he was to be humble and behave himself.

Presently there was a gentle ringing of a bell. The great peregrine falcon had bestirred herself and now said, in a high nasal voice which came from her aristocratic nose, ‘Gentlemen, you may converse.’

There was dead silence.

Only in the far corner of the room, which had been netted off for Cully – loose there, unhooded and deep in moult – they could hear a faint muttering from the choleric infantry colonel. ‘Damned niggers,’ he was mumbling. ‘Damned administration. Damned politicians. Damned bolsheviks. Is this a damned dagger that I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Damned spot. Now, Cully, hast thou but one brief hour to live, and then thou must be damned perpetually.’

‘Colonel,’ said the peregrine coldly, ‘not before the younger officers.’

‘I beg your pardon, Ma’am,’ said the poor Colonel at once.
‘It is something that gets into my head, you know. Some deep demnation.’

There was silence again formal, terrible and calm.

‘Who is the new officer?’ inquired the first fierce and beautiful voice.

Nobody answered.

‘Speak for yourself, sir,’ commanded the peregrine, looking straight before her as if she were talking in her sleep.

They could not see him through their hoods.

‘Please,’ began the Wart, ‘I am a merlin…’

And he stopped, scared in the stillness.

Balan, who was one of the real merlins standing beside him, leaned over and whispered quite kindly in his ear, ‘Don’t be afraid. Call her Madam.’

‘I am a merlin, Madam, an it please you.’

‘A Merlin. That is good. And what branch of the Merlins do you stoop from?’

The Wart did not know in the least what branch he stooped from, but he dared not be found out now in his lie.

‘Madame,’ he said, ‘I am one of the Merlins of the Forest Sauvage.’

There was silence at this again, the silver silence which he had begun to fear.

‘There are the Yorkshire Merlins,’ said the honorary colonel in her slow voice at last, ‘and the Welsh Merlins, and the McMerlins of the North. Then there are the Salisbury ones, and several from the neighbourhood of Exmoor, and the O’Merlins of Connaught. I do not think I have heard of any family in the Forest Sauvage.’

‘It could be a cadet branch, Madam,’ said Balan, ‘I dare say.’

‘Bless him,’ thought the Wart. ‘I shall catch him a special sparrow tomorrow and give it to him behind Hob’s back.’

‘That will be the solution, Captain Balan, no doubt.’

The silence fell again.

At last the peregrine rang her bell. She said, ‘We will proceed with the catechism, prior to swearing him in.’

The Wart heard the spar—hawk on his left giving nervous coughs at this, but the peregrine paid no attention.