The sword in the stone (24 page)

"One day he decided that he would have to rely on evidence. He persuaded a crow that was a friend of his to go off to a village of the Karens — this was the name of the men in that district — and to watch and see if the man did die while he was biting the footprint.

"Now the Karens had a curious habit of celebrating a death or a funeral, not by tears and lamentations, but by laughing, singing, dancing, jumping and beating on drums. When the crow arrived to watch events from a tree, and after the man had died, the Karens began to perform their usual rites in front of the hut in which he lay stricken. So the crow, after looking on for some time, returned to the python, and reported that, so far from slaying by the venom of his bite, it had only the effect of causing extreme joy to the human beings and of transporting them into the seventh heaven. The python was so furious that he climbed up to the very top of a tree and sicked up every ounce of his useless poison.

"Of course the poison had to fall on something. Although the python had lost his power to sting, the tree itself became venomous — and its juice is used to this day to poison arrows — while several creatures which happened to be underneath it received a due share. The Cobra, the Water Snake and the Frog were among them.

"Now Aunt Eu naturally had a soft spot for her fellow mortals, and, when it was discovered that the poison was venomous after all, she upbraided P. reticulatus for spreading the power to slay among so many beings. P. reticulatus, who was grateful for his woven coat, felt remorse for what he had done, and hurried off to see how he could improve matters. He explained the nature of poison to all the creatures which had received it, and asked them to promise that their use of it should not be tyrannical.

"The Cobra agreed to the remarks of the python, and said, 'If there be transgression so as to dazzle my eyes, to make my tears fall seven times in one day, I will bite; but only then.' So said most of the kindlier creatures. But the Water Snake and the silly Frog said that they did not see what all this had to do with the python, and that they intended, for their part, to bite whenever they felt like it. The python immediately set upon them, chased them into the water, and there, of course, the poison was dissolved and washed away."

The Wart waited to see if there was any more of this story, but there was not. The voice of T. natrix had been getting slower and sleepier towards the end of it, for the afternoon was advancing and the wind was beginning to fall cold. The sing-song had seemed to get more and more wrapped up in its subject, if you can follow the idea, until it seemed that the story was telling itself while the serpent only drowsed — though it was not possible to tell whether he was really asleep, because snakes have no eyelids to close.

"Thank you," said the Wart, "I think that was a good story."

"Dream about it," whispered T. natrix sleepily, "while you hibernate."

"I will."

"Good night," said the snake.

"Good night."

The funny thing was that the Wart really did feel sleepy. Whether it was the voice of the snake, or the cold, or the influence of the story, in two minutes he was dreaming himself, in a reptilian dream. He was old, as old as the veins of the earth, which were serpents like him, and Aesculapius with a beard as white as glaciers was lulling him to sleep. He was teaching him wisdom, the ancient wisdom, by which the old snakes can walk with three hundred feet at once upon the same world in which their grandchildren the birds have learned to fly; he was singing to him the song of all the Waters:

In the great sea the stars swing over

The eternal whirlpool flows.

Rest, rest, wild head, in the old bosom

Which neither feels nor knows.

She only rocks us, cradled in heaven,

The reptile and the rose.

Her waters which bore us will receive us.

Good night and sweet repose.

In the end it took Merlyn twenty shouts, in his high human voice, to wake the sleeping serpent up in time for tea.

IN THE autumn everybody was preparing for the winter. At night they spent most of the time rescuing Daddy-long-legs from their candles and rushlights. In the daytime the cows were turned into the high stubble and weeds which had been left by the harvest sickles, while the pigs were driven into the purlieus of the forest where boys beat the trees to supply them with acorns. Everybody was at a different job. From the granary there proceeded an invariable thumping of flails; in the strip fields the slow and enormously heavy wooden plows sailed up and down all day for the rye and the wheat, while the sowers swung rhythmically along, with their hoffers round their necks, casting right hand for left foot and vice versa. Foraging parties came lumbering in with their spike-wheeled carts full of bracken, remarking wisely that they must:

Get whome with ee breakes ere all summer be gone

For tethered up cattle to sit down upon,

while others dragged in timber for the castle fires. The forest rang in the sharp air with the sound of beetle and wedge.

Everybody was happy. The villeins were slaves if you chose to look at it in one way, but, if you chose to look at it in another, they were just the same farm laborers as starve on thirty shillings a week today. Only neither the villein nor the farm laborer did starve. It has never been an economic proposition for an owner of cattle to starve his cows, so why should an owner of slaves starve them? The truth is that nowadays the farm laborer is ready to accept so little money because he does not have to throw his soul in with the bargain, as he would have to do in a town, and just the same freedom of spirit has obtained in the country since Sir Ector. The villeins were laborers; they lived in the same one-roomed hut with their families, few chickens, litter of pigs, or cow possibly called Crumbocke; most dreadful and insanitary! But they liked it. They were healthy, quite free of an air with no factory smoke in it, and, which was most of all, their heart's interest was bound up with their skill in labor. They knew that Sir Ector loved and was proud of them. They were more valuable to him even than his cattle, and, as he valued his cattle more than anything else except his children, this was saying a good deal. He walked and worked among them, thought of their welfare, and could tell the good workmen from the bad. He was the eternal farmer, in fact; one of those people who seem to be employing labor at thirty shillings a week, but are actually paying half as much again in voluntary overtime, providing a cottage free or at nominal rent, and possibly making an extra present of their milk and eggs and home-brewed beer.

Sir Ector now moved through all these activities with a brow of thunder. When an old lady who was sitting in a hedge by one of the strips of wheat, in order to scare away the rooks and pigeons, suddenly rose up beside him with an unearthly screech, he jumped a foot in the air. He was in a nervous state.

"Dang it," said Sir Ector. Then, considering the subject more attentively, he added in a loud, indignant voice, "Hell's bells and buckets of blood!" He took the letter out of his pocket and read it again. The Overlord of the Castle of Forest Sauvage was not only a farmer. He was a military captain, of course, who was prepared to organize and lead the defense of his estate, and he was a sportsman who occasionally took a day's joustin' when he could spare the time; but he was more than these. Sir Ector was an M.F.H. — or rather a Master of stag and other hounds — and he hunted his own pack himself. Clumsy, Trowneer, Phoebe, Colle, Gerland, Talbot, Luath, Luffra, Apollon, Orthros, Bran, Gelert, Bounce, Boy, Lion, Bungey, Toby, Diamond and Cavall were not pet dogs: they were the Forest Sauvage Hounds, no subscription, two days a week, huntsman the master.

This is what the letter said, if we translate it out of Latin: THE, KING TO SIR ECTOR, ETC.

We send you William Twyti, our huntsman, and his fellows to hunt in the Forest Sauvage with our boarhounds (canibus nostris porkericus) in order that they may capture two or three boars. You are to cause the flesh they capture to be salted and kept in good condition, but the skins you are to cause to be bleached which they give you, as the said William shall tell you. And we command you to provide necessaries for them as long as they shall be with you by our command, and the cost, etc., shall be accounted, etc.

Witnessed at the Tower of London, 20 November, in the twelfth year of our reign.

UTHER PENDRAGON.

12 Uther.

Now the forest belonged to the King, and he had every right to send his hounds to hunt in it. Also he maintained a large number of hungry mouths, what with his court and his army, so that it was natural that he would want as many dead boars, bucks, roes, etc., to be salted down as possible.

He was perfectly in the right. All this did not take away from the fact that Sir Ector regarded the forest as his forest, however, and resented the intrusion of the royal hounds — as if his own would not do just as well; the King had only to send for a couple of boars and he would have been only too glad to supply them himself. He feared that his coverts would be disturbed by a lot of wild royal retainers — never know what these city chaps will be up to next — and that the King's huntsman, this fellow Twyti, would sneer at his humble hunting establishment, unsettle the hunt servants and perhaps even try to interfere with his own kennel management. In fact, Sir Ector was shy. Then there was another thing. Where the devil were the royal hounds to be kept? Was he, Sir Ector, to turn his own hounds into the street, in order to put the King's hounds in his kennels? "Hell's bells and buckets of blood!" repeated the unhappy master. It was as bad as paying tithes.

Sir Ector put the accursed letter in his pocket and stumped off up the plowing. The villeins, seeing him go, remarked cheerfully, "Our wold measter be on the gad again seemingly."

It was a confounded piece of tyranny, that's what it was. It happened every year, but it still was that. He always solved the kennel problem in the same way, but it still worried him. He would have to invite his neighbors to the meet specially, so as to look as impressive as possible under the royal huntsman's eye, and this would mean sendin' messengers through the forest to Sir Grummore, etc. Then he would have to show sport. The King had written early, so that evidently he intended to send the fellow at the very beginnin' of the season. The season did not begin till the 25th of December. Probably the chap would insist on one of those damned Boxin' Day meets, all show-off and no business, with hundreds of foot people all hollerin' and headin' the boar and trampin' down the seeds and spoilin' sport generally. How the devil was one to know in November where the best boars would be on Boxin' Day? What with sounders and gorgeaunts and hog-steers, you never knew where you were. And another thing. A hound that was going to be used next summer for the proper Hart huntin' was always entered at Christmas to the boar. It was the very beginnin' of his education, which led up through hares and what-nots to its real quarry, and this meant that the fellow Twyti would be bringin'

down a lot of raw puppies which would be nothin' but a plague to everybody. "Dang it!" said Sir Ector, and stamped upon a piece of mud. He stood gloomily for a moment, watching his two boys trying to catch the last leaves in the chase. They had not gone out with that intention, and did not really, even in those distant days, believe that every leaf you caught would mean a happy month next year. Only, as the west wind tore the golden rags away, they looked extremely fascinating and were difficult to catch. For the mere sport of catching them, of shouting and laughing and feeling giddy as they looked up, and of darting about to trap the creatures, which were certainly alive in the cunning with which they slipped away, the two boys were prancing about like young fawns in the ruin of the year.

The only chap, reflected Sir Ector, who could really be useful in showin' the King's huntsman proper sport was that fellow Robin Hood. Robin Wood, they seemed to be callin' him now; some new-fangled idea, no doubt. But Wood or Hood, he was the chap to know where a fine tush was to be found. Been feastin' on the creatures for months now, he wouldn't be surprised, even if they were out of season.

But you couldn't very well ask a fellow to hunt up a few beasts of venery for you, and then not invite him to the meet. While, if you did invite him to the meet, what would the King's huntsman and the neighbors say at havin' an outlaw for a fellow guest? Not that this Robin Wood wasn't a good fellow; he was a damn good fellow, and a good neighbor too. He had often tipped Sir Ector the wink when a raiding party was on its way from the marches, and never molested him or his farming in any way. What did it matter if he did chase himself a bit of venison now and then?