The Once and Future King (25 page)

Sir Kay had heard stories about the Queen of Orkney, and he was inquisitive about her.

‘Who is Queen Morgause?’ he asked one day. ‘I was told that she is beautiful. What did these Old Ones want to fight us about? And what is her husband like, King Lot? What is his proper name? I heard somebody calling him the King of the Out Isles, and then there are others who call him the King of Lothian and Orkney. Where is Lothian? Is it near Hy Brazil? I can’t understand what the revolt was about. Everybody knows that the King of England is their feudal overlord. I heard that she has four sons. Is it true that she doesn’t get on with her husband?’

They were riding back from a day on the mountain, where they had been hunting grouse with the peregrines, and Merlyn had gone with them for the sake of the ride. He had become a vegetarian lately – an opponent of blood—sports on principle – although he had gone through most of them during his thoughtless youth – and even now he secretly adored to watch the falcons for themselves. Their masterly circles, as they waited on – mere specks in the sky – and the bur—r—r with which they scythed on the grouse, and the way in which the wretched quarry, killed instantaneously, went end—over tip into the heather – these were a temptation to which he yielded in the uncomfortable knowledge that it was sin. He consoled himself by saying that the grouse were for the pot. But it was a shallow excuse, for he did not believe in eating meat either.

Arthur, who was riding watchfully like a sensible young monarch, withdrew his eye from a clump of whins which might have held an ambush in those early days of anarchy, and cocked one eyebrow at his tutor. He was wondering with half his mind which of Kay’s questions the magician would choose to answer,
but the other half was still upon the martial possibilities of the landscape. He knew how far the falconers were behind them – the cadger carrying the hooded hawks on a square framework slung from his shoulders, with a man—at—arms on either side – and how far in front was the next likely place for a William Rufus arrow.

Merlyn chose the second question.

‘Wars are never fought for one reason,’ he said. ‘They are fought for dozens of reasons, in a muddle. It is the same with revolts.’

‘But there must have been a main reason,’ said Kay.

‘Not necessarily.’

Arthur observed: ‘We might have a trot now. It is clear going for two miles since those whins, and we can have a canter back again, to keep with the men. It would breathe the horses.’

Merlyn’s hat blew off. They had to stop to pick it up. Afterwards they walked their horses sedately in a row.

‘One reason,’ said the magician, ‘is the immortal feud of Gael and Gall. The Gaelic Confederation are representatives of an ancient race which has been harried out of England by several races which are represented by you. Naturally they want to be as nasty as possible to you when they can.’

‘Racial history is beyond me,’ said Kay. ‘Nobody knows which race is which. They are all serfs, in any case.’

The old man looked at him with something like amusement.

‘One of the startling things about the Norman,’ he said, ‘is that he really does not know a single things about anybody except himself. And you, Kay, as a Norman gentleman, carry the peculiarity to its limit. I wonder if you even know what a Gael is? Some people call them Celts.’

‘A celt is a kind of battle—axe,’ said Arthur, surprising the magician with this piece of information more than he had been surprised for several generations. For it was true, in one of the meanings of the word, although Arthur ought not to have known it.

‘Not that kind of celt. I am talking about the people. Let’s
stick to calling them Gaels. I mean the Old Ones who live in Brittany and Cornwall and Wales and Ireland and Scotland. Picts and that.’

‘Picts?’ asked Kay. ‘I think I have heard about Picts. Pictures. They were painted blue.’

‘And I am supposed to have managed your education!’

The King said thoughtfully: ‘Would you mind telling me about the races, Merlyn? I supposed I ought to understand the situation, if there has to be a second war.’

This time it was Kay who looked surprised.

‘Is there to be a war?’ he asked. ‘This is the first I’ve heard of it. I thought the revolt was crushed last year?’

‘They have made a new confederation since they went home, with five new kings, which makes them eleven altogether. The new ones belong to the old blood too. They are Clariance of North Humberland, Idres of Cornwall, Cradelmas of North Wales, Brandegoris of Stranggore and Anguish of Ireland. It will be a proper war, I’m afraid.’

‘And all about races,’ said his foster—brother in disgust. ‘Still, it may be fun.’

The King ignored him.

‘Go on,’ he said to Merlyn. ‘I want you to explain.

‘Only,’ he added quickly, as the magician opened his mouth, ‘not too many details.’

Merlyn opened his mouth and shut it twice, before he was able to comply with this restriction.

‘About three thousand years ago,’ he said, ‘the country you are riding through belonged to a Gaelic race who fought with copper hatchets. Two thousand years ago they were hunted west by another Gaelic race with bronze swords. A thousand years ago there was a Teuton invasion by people who had iron weapons, but it didn’t reach the whole of the Pictish Isles because the Romans arrived in the middle and got mixed up with it. The Romans went away about eight hundred years ago, and then another Teuton invasion – of people mainly called Saxons – drove the whole rag—bag west as usual. The Saxons were just beginning to settle down when your father the Conqueror
arrived with his pack of Normans, and that is where we are today. Robin Wood was a Saxon partisan.’

‘I thought we were called the British Isles.’

‘So we are. People have got the B’s and P’s muddled up. Nothing like the Teuton race for confusing its consonants. In Ireland they are still chattering away about some people called Fomorians, who were really Pomeranians, while…’

Arthur interrupted him at the critical moment.

‘So it comes to this,’ he said, ‘that we Normans have the Saxons for serfs while the Saxons once had a sort of under serfs, who were called the Gaels – the Old Ones. In that case I don’t see why the Gaelic Confederation should want to fight against me – as a Norman king – when it was really the Saxons who hunted them, and when it was hundreds of years ago in any case.’

‘You are under—rating the Gaelic memory, dear boy. They don’t distinguish between you. The Normans are a Teuton race, like the Saxons whom your father conquered. So far as the ancient Gaels are concerned, they just regard both your races as branches of the same alien people, who have driven them north and west.’

Kay said definitely: ‘I can’t stand any more history. After all, we are supposed to be grown up. If we go on, we shall be doing dictation.’

Arthur grinned and began in the well—remembered sing—song voice: Barabara Celarent Darii Ferioque Prioris, while Kay sang the next four lines with him antiphonically.

Merlyn said: ‘You asked for it.’

‘And now we have it.’

‘The main thing is that the war is going to happen because the Teutons or the Galls or whatever you them upset the Gaels long ago.’

‘Certainly not,’ exclaimed the magician. ‘I never said anything of the sort.’

They gaped.

‘I said the war will happen for dozens of reasons, not for one. Another of the reasons for this particular war is because Queen
Morgause wears the trousers. Perhaps I ought to say the trews.’

Arthur asked painstakingly: ‘Let me get this clear. First I was given to understand that Lot and the rest had rebelled because they were Gaels and we were Galls, but now I am told that it deals with the Queen of Orkney’s trousers. Could you be more definite?’

‘There is the feud of Gael and Gall which we have been talking about, but there are other feuds too. Surely you have not forgotten that your father killed the Earl of Cornwall before you were born? Queen Morgause was one of the daughters of that Earl.’

‘The lovely Cornwall Sisters,’ observed Kay.

‘Exactly. You met one of them yourselves – Queen Morgan le Fay. That was when you were friends with Robin Wood, and you found her on a bed of lard. The third sister was Elaine. All three of them are witches of one sort or another, though Morgan is the only one who takes it seriously.’

‘If my father,’ said the King, ‘killed the Queen of Orkney’s father, then I think she has a good reason for wanting her husband to rebel against me.’

‘It is only a personal reason. Personal reasons are no excuse for war.’

‘And furthermore,’ the King continued, ‘if my race has driven out the Gaelic race, then I think the Queen of Orkney’s subjects have a good reason too.’

Merlyn scratched his chin in the middle of the beard, with the hand which held the reins, and pondered.

‘Uther,’ he said at length, ‘your lamented father, was an aggressor. So were his predecessors the Saxons, who drove the Old Ones away. But if we go on living backward like that, we shall never come to the end of it. The Old Ones themselves were aggressors, against the earlier race of the copper hatchets, and even the hatchet fellows were aggressors, against some earlier crew of Esquimaux who lived on shells. You simply go on and on, until you get to Cain and Abel. But the point is that the Saxon Conquest did succeed, and so did the Norman Conquest of the Saxons. Your father settled the unfortunate
Saxons long ago, however brutally he did it, and when a great many years have passed one ought to be ready to accept a
status quo.
Also I would like to point out that the Norman Conquest was a process of welding small units into bigger ones – while the present revolt of the Gaelic Confederation is a process of disintegration. They want to smash up what we may call the United Kingdom into a lot of piffling little kingdoms of their own. That is why their reason is not what you might call a good one.’

He scratched his chin again, and became wrathful.

‘I never could stomach these nationalists,’ he exclaimed. ‘The destiny of Man is to unite, not to divide. If you keep on dividing you end up as a collection of monkeys throwing nuts at each other out of separate trees.’

‘All the same,’ said the King, ‘there seems to have been a good deal of provocation. Perhaps I ought not to fight?’

‘And give in?’ asked Kay, more in amusement than dismay.

‘I could abdicate.’

They looked at Merlyn, who refused to meet their eyes. He rode on, staring straight in front of him, munching his beard.

‘Ought I to give in?’

‘You are the King,’ said the old man stubbornly. ‘Nobody can say anything if you do.’

Later on, he began to speak in a gentler tone.

‘Did you know,’ he asked rather wistfully, ‘that I was one of the Old Ones myself? My father was a demon, they say, but my mother was a Gael. The only human blood I have comes from the Old Ones. Yet here I am denouncing their ideas of nationalism, being what their politicians would call a traitor – because, by calling names, they can score the cheap debating points. And do you know another thing, Arthur? Life is too bitter already, without territories and wars and noble feuds.’

The hay was safe and the corn would be ripe in a week. They sat in the shade at the edge of a cornfield, watching the dark brown people with their white teeth who were aimlessly busy in the sunlight, firehanging their scythes, sharpening their sickles and generally getting ready for the end of the farm year. It was peaceful in the fields which were close to the castle, and no arrows needed to be apprehended. While they watched the harvesters, they stripped the half—ripe heads of corn with their fingers and bit the grain daintily, tasting the furry milkiness of the wheat, and the husky, less generous flesh of the oats. The pearly taste of barley would have been strange to them, for it had not yet come to Gramarye.

Merlyn was still explaining.

‘When I was a young man,’ he said, ‘there was a general idea that it was wrong to fight in wars of any sort. Quite a lot of people in those days declared that they would never fight for anything whatever.’

‘Perhaps they were right,’ said the King.

‘No. There is one fairly good reason for fighting – and that is, if the other man starts it. You see, wars are a wickedness of a wicked species. They are so wicked that they must not be allowed. When you can be perfectly certain that the other man started them, then is the time when you might have a sort of duty to stop him.’

‘But both sides always say that the other side started them.’

‘Of course they do, and it is a good thing that it should be so. At least, it shows that both sides are conscious, inside themselves, that the wicked thing about a war is its beginning.’

‘But the reasons,’ protested Arthur. ‘If one side was starving the other by some means or other – some peaceful, economic means which were not actually warlike – then the starving side might have to fight its way out – if you see what I mean?’

‘I see what you think you mean,’ said the magician, ‘but you are wrong. There is no excuse for war, none whatever, and whatever the wrong which your nation might be doing to mine – short of war – my nation would be in the wrong if it
started
a war so as to redress it. A murderer, for instance, is not allowed to plead that his victim was rich and oppressing him – so why should a nation be allowed to? Wrongs have to be redressed by reason, not by force.’

Kay said: ‘Suppose King Lot of Orkney was to draw up his army all along the northern border, what could our King here do except send his own army to stand on the same line? Then supposing all Lot’s men drew their swords, what could we do except draw ours? The situation could be more complicated than that. It seems to me that aggression is a difficult thing to be sure about.’

Merlyn was annoyed.

‘Only because you want it to seem so,’ he said. ‘Obviously Lot would be the aggressor, for making the threat of force. You can always spot the villain, if you keep a fair mind. In the last resort, it is ultimately the man who strikes the first blow.’

Kay persisted with his argument.

‘Let it be two men,’ he said, ‘instead of two armies. They stand opposite each other – they draw their swords, pretending it is for some reason – they move about, so as to get to the weak side of one another – they even make feints with their swords, pretending to strike, but not doing so. Do you mean to tell me that the aggressor is the one who actually hits first?’

‘Yes, if there is nothing else to decide by. But in your case it is obviously the man who first took his army to the frontier.’

‘This first blow business brings it down to a matter of nothing. Suppose they both struck at once, or suppose you could not see which one gave the first blow, because there were so many facing each other?’

‘But there nearly always is something else to decide by,’ exclaimed the old man. ‘Use your common sense. Look at this Gaelic revolt, for example. What reason has the King here for
being an aggressor? He is their feudal overlord already. It isn’t sensible to pretend that he is making the attack. People don’t attack their own possessions.’

‘I certainly don’t feel,’ said Arthur, ‘as if I had started it. Indeed, I didn’t know it was going to start, until it had. I suppose that was due to my having been brought up in the country.’

‘Any reasoning man,’ continued his tutor, ignoring the interruption, ‘who keeps a steady mind, can tell which side is the aggressor in ninety wars out of a hundred. He can see which side is likely to benefit by going to war in the first place, and that is a strong reason for suspicion. He can see which side began to make the threat of force or was the first to arm itself. And finally he can often put his finger on the one who struck the first blow.’

‘But supposing,’ said Kay, ‘that one side was the one to make the threat, while the other side was the one to strike the first blow?’

‘Oh, go and put your head in a bucket. I’m not suggesting that all of them can be decided. I was saying, from the start of the argument, that there are many wars in which the aggression is as plain as a pike—staff, and in those wars at any rate it might be the duty of decent men to fight the criminal. If you aren’t sure that he is the criminal – and you must sum it up for yourself with every ounce of fairness you can muster – then go and be a pacifist by all means. I recollect that I was a fervent pacifist myself once, in the Boer War, when my country was the aggressor, and a young woman blew a squeaker at me on Mafeking Night.’

‘Tell us about Mafeking Night,’ said Kay. ‘One gets sick of these discussions about right and wrong.’

‘Mafeking Night…’ began the magician, who was prepared to tell anybody about anything. But the King prevented him.

‘Tell us about Lot,’ he said. ‘I want to know about him, if I have to fight him. Personally I am beginning to be interested in right and wrong.’

‘King Lot…’ began Merlyn in the same tone of voice, only to be interrupted by Kay.

‘No,’ said Kay. ‘Talk about the Queen. She sounds more interesting.’

‘Queen Morgause…’

Arthur assumed the right of veto for the first time in his life. Merlyn, catching the lifted eyebrow, reverted to the King of Orkney with unexpected humility.

‘King Lot,’ said he, ‘is simply a member of your peerage and landed royalty. He’s a cipher. You don’t have to think about him at all.’

‘Why not?’

‘In the first place, he is what we used to call in my young days a Gentleman of the Ascendancy. His subjects are Gaels and so is his wife, but he himself is an import from Norway. He is a Gall like yourself, a member of the ruling class who conquered the Islands long ago. This means that his attitude to the war is the same as your father’s would have been. He doesn’t care a fig about Gaels or Galls, but he goes in for wars in the same way as my Victorian friends used to go in for foxhunting or else for profit in ransoms. Besides, his wife makes him.’

‘Sometimes,’ said the King. ‘I wish you had been born forwards like other people. What with Victorians and Mafeking Night…’

Merlyn was indignant.

‘The link between Norman warfare and Victorian foxhunting is perfect. Leave your father and King Lot outside the question for the moment, and look at literature. Look at the Norman myths about legendary figures like the Angevin kings. From William the Conqueror to Henry the Third, they indulged in warfare seasonally. The season came round, and off they went to the meet in splendid armour which reduced the risk of injury to a foxhunter’s minimum. Look at the decisive battle of Brenneville in which a field of nine hundred knights took part, and only three were killed. Look at Henry the Second borrowing money from Stephen, to pay his own troops in fighting Stephen. Look at the sporting etiquette, according to which Henry had to withdraw from a siege as soon as his enemy Louis joined the
defenders inside the town, because Louis was his feudal overlord. Look at the siege of Mont St Michel, at which it was considered unsporting to win through the defenders’ lack of water. Look at the battle of Malmesbury, which was given up on account of bad weather. That is the inheritance to which you have succeeded, Arthur. You have become the king of a domain in which the popular agitators hate each other for racial reasons, while the nobility fight each other for fun, and neither the racial maniac nor the overlord stops to consider the lot of the common soldier, who is the one person that gets hurt. Unless you can make the world wag better than it does at present, King, your reign will be an endless series of petty battles, in which the aggressions will either be from spiteful reasons or from sporting ones, and in which the poor man will be the only one who dies. That is why I have been asking you to think. That is why…’

‘I think,’ said Kay, ‘that Dinadan is waving to us, to say that dinner is ready.’