The Once and Future King (27 page)

The people came from everywhere, silently, vaguely. When they were near the knights, they walked slowly, but in the remoter distance they were running. Men, women and children were scuttling over the dunes or down from the castle cliff, only to break into a crawling pace as soon as they were near.
At a distance of twenty yards, they halted altogether. They made a ring, staring at the newcomers mutely, like people staring at pictures in the Uffizi. They studied them. There was no hurry now, no need to dash off to the next picture. Indeed, there were no other pictures – had been no others, except for the accustomed scenes of Lothian, since they were born. Their stare was not exactly an offensive one, nor was it friendly. Pictures exist to be absorbed. It began at the feet, especially as the strangers were dressed in outlandish clothes like knights—in—armour, and it mastered the texture, the construction, the articulation and the probable price of their sabathons. Then it went on to the greaves, the cuisses, and so up. It might take half an hour to reach the face, which was to be examined last of all.

The Gaels stood round the Galls with their mouths open, while the village children shouted the news in the distance and Mother Morlan came jogging with her skirts tucked up and the currachs at sea came rowing madly home. The young princelings of Lothian got off their donkeys as if in a trance, and joined the circle. The circle itself began to press inward on its focus, moving as slowly and as silently as the minute hand of a clock, except for the suppressed shouts from the late arrivals who fell silent themselves as soon as they were within the influence. The circle was contracting because it wanted to touch the knights – not now, not for half an hour or so, not until the examination was over, perhaps never. But it would have liked to touch them in the end, partly to be sure that they were real, partly to sum up the price of their clothes. And, as the pricing was continued, three things began to happen. Mother Morlan and the auld wives started to say the rosary, while the young women pinched each other and giggled – the men, having doffed their caps in deference to the praying, began to exchange in Gaelic such remarks as ‘Look at the black man, God between us and harm,’ or ‘Do they be naked at bed—time, or how do they get the iron pots off them whatever?’ – and, in the minds of both women and men, irrespective of age or circumstance, there began to grow, almost visibly, almost tangibly, the enormous,
the incalculable miasma which is the leading feature of the Gaelic brain.

These were Knights of the Sassenachs, they were thinking – for they could tell by the armour – and, if so, knights of that very King Arthur against whom their own king had for the second time revolted. Had they come, with typical Sassenach cunning, so as to take King Lot in the rear? Had they come, as representatives of the feudal overlord – the Landlord – so as to make an assessment for the next scutage? Were they Fifth Columnists? More complicated even than this – for surely no Sassenach could be so simple as to come in the garb of the Sassenach – were they perhaps not representatives of King Arthur at all? Were they, for some purpose almost too cunning for belief, only disguised as themselves? Where was the catch? There always was one in everything.

The people of the circle closed in, their jaws dropping even further, their crooked bodies hunching into the shapes of sacks and scarecrows, their small eyes glinting in every direction with unfathomable subtlety, their faces assuming an expression of dogged stupidity even more vacant than they actually were.

The knights drew closer for protection. In point of fact, they did not know that England was at war with Orkney. They had been involved in a Quest, which had kept them away from the latest news. Nobody in Orkney was likely to tell them.

‘Don’t look just now,’ said King Pellinore, ‘but there are some people. Do you think they are all right?’

In Carlion everything was at sixes and sevens in preparation for the second campaign. Merlyn had made suggestions about the way to win it, but, as these involved an ambush with secret aid from abroad, they had had to be kept dark. Lot’s slowly approaching army was so much more numerous than the King’s forces that it had been necessary to resort to stratagems. The
way in which the battle was to be fought was a secret only known to four people.

The common citizens, who were in ignorance of the higher policy, had a great deal to do. There were pikes to be ground to a fine edge, so that the grindstones in the town were roaring day and night – there were thousands of arrows to be dressed, so that there were lights in the fletchers’ houses at all hours – and the unfortunate geese on the commons were continually being chased by excited yeomen who wanted feathers. The royal peacocks were as bare as an old broom – most of the crack shots liked to have what Chaucer calls pecock arwes, because they were more classy – and the smell of boiling glue rose to high heaven. The armourers, accomplishing the knights, hammered away with musical clinks, working double shifts at it, and the blacksmiths shod the chargers, and the nuns never stopped knitting comforters for the soldiers or making the kind of bandages which were called tents. King Lot had already named a rendezvous for the battle, at Bedegraine.

The King of England painfully climbed the two hundred and eight steps which led to Merlyn’s tower room, and knocked on the door. The magician was inside, with Archimedes sitting on the back of his chair, busily trying to find the square root of minus one. He had forgotten how to do it.

‘Merlyn,’ said the King panting, ‘I want to talk to you.’

He closed his book with a bang, leaped to his feet, seizing his wand of lignum vitae, and rushed at Arthur as if he were trying to shoo away a stray chicken.

‘Go away!’ he shouted. ‘What are you doing here? What do you mean by it? Aren’t you the King of England? Go away and send for me! Get out of my room! I never heard of such a thing! Go away at once and send for me!’

‘But I’m here.’

‘No, you’re not,’ retorted the old man resourcefully. And he pushed the King out of the door, slamming it in his face.

‘Well!’ said Arthur, and he went off sadly down the two hundred and eight stairs.

An hour later, Merlyn presented himself in the Royal
Chamber, in answer to a summons which had been delivered by a page.

‘That’s better,’ he said, and sat down comfortably on a carpet chest.

‘Stand up,’ said Arthur, and he clapped his hands for a page to take away the seat.

Merlyn stood up, boiling with indignation. The whites of his knuckles blanched as he clenched them.

‘About our conversation on the subject of chivalry,’ began the King in an airy tone…

‘I don’t recollect such a conversation.’

‘No?’

‘I have never been so insulted in my life!’

‘But I am the King,’ said Arthur. ‘You can’t sit down in front of a King.’

‘Rubbish!’

Arthur began to laugh more than was seemly, and his foster—brother, Sir Kay, and his old guardian, Sir Ector, came out from behind the throne, where they had been hiding. Kay took off Merlyn’s hat and put it on Sir Ector, and Sir Ector said, ‘Well, bless my soul, now I am a nigromancer. Hocus—Pocus.’ Then everybody began laughing, including Merlyn eventually, and seats were sent for so that they could sit down and bottles of wine were opened so that it should not be a dry meeting.

‘You see,’ he said proudly, ‘I have summoned a council.’

There was a pause, for it was the first time that Arthur had made a speech, and he wanted to collect his wits for it.

‘Well,’ said the King. ‘It is about chivalry. I want to talk about that.’

Merlyn was immediately watching him with a sharp eye. His knobbed fingers fluttered among the stars and secret signs of his gown, but he would not help the speaker. You might say that this moment was the critical one in his career – the moment towards which he had been living backward for heaven knows how many centuries, and now he was to see for certain whether he had lived in vain.

‘I have been thinking,’ said Arthur, ‘about Might and Right.
I don’t think things ought to be done because you are
able
to do them. I think they should be done because you
ought
to do them. After all, a penny is a penny in any case, however much Might is exerted on either side, to prove that it is or is not. Is that plain?’

Nobody answered.

‘Well, I was talking to Merlyn on the battlements one day, and he mentioned that the last battle we had – in which seven hundred kerns were killed – was not so much fun as I had thought it was. Of course, battles are not fun when you come to think about them. I mean, people ought not to be killed, ought they? It is better to be alive.

‘Very well. But the funny thing is that Merlyn was helping me to win battles. He is still helping me, for that matter, and we hope to win the battle of Bedegraine together, when it comes off.’

‘We will,’ said Sir Ector, who was in the secret.

‘That seems to me to be inconsistent. Why does he help me to fight wars, if they are bad things?’

There was no answer from anybody, and the King began to speak with agitation.

‘I could only think,’ said he, beginning to blush, ‘I could only think that I – that we – that he – that he wanted me to win them for a reason.’

He paused and looked at Merlyn, who turned his head away.

‘The reason was – was it? – the reason was that if I could be the master of my kingdom by winning these two battles, I could stop them afterwards and then do something about the business of Might. Have I guessed? Was I right?’

The magician did not turn his head, and his hands lay still in his lap.

‘I was!’ exclaimed Arthur.

And he began talking so quickly that he could hardly keep up with himself.

‘You see,’ he said, ‘Might is not Right. But there is a lot of Might knocking about in this world, and something has to be done about it. It is as if people were half horrible and half nice.
Perhaps they are even more than half horrible, and when they are left to themselves they run wild. You get the average baron that we see nowadays, people like Sir Bruce Sans Pitié, who simply go clod—hopping round the country dressed in steel, and doing exactly what they please, for sport. It is our Norman idea about the upper classes having a monopoly of power, without reference to justice. Then the horrible side gets uppermost, and there is thieving and rape and plunder and torture. The people become beasts.

‘But, you see, Merlyn is helping me to win my two battles so that I can stop this. He wants me to put things right.

‘Lot and Uriens and Anguish and those – they are the old world, the old—fashioned order who want to have their private will. I have got to vanquish them with their own weapons – they force it upon me, because they live by force – and then the real work will begin. This battle at Bedegraine is the preliminary, you see. It is
after
the battle that Merlyn is wanting me to think about.’

Arthur paused again for comment or encouragement, but the magician’s face was turned away. It was only Sir Ector, sitting next to him, who could see his eyes.

‘Now what I have thought,’ said Arthur, ‘is this. Why can’t you harness Might so that it works for Right? I know it sounds nonsense, but, I mean, you can’t just say there is no such thing. The Might is there, in the bad half of people, and you can’t neglect it. You can’t cut it out, but you might be able to direct it, if you see what I mean, so that it was useful instead of bad.’

The audience was interested. They leaned forward to listen, except Merlyn.

‘My idea is that if we can win this battle in front of us, and get a firm hold of the country, then I will institute a sort of order of chivalry. I will not punish the bad knights, or hang Lot, but I will try to get them into our Order. We shall have to make it a great honour, you see, and make it fashionable and all that. Everybody must want to be in. And then I shall make the oath of the order that Might is only to be used for Right. Do you follow? The knights in my order will ride all
over the world, still dressed in steel and whacking away with their swords – that will give an outlet for wanting to whack, you understand, an outlet for what Merlyn calls the foxhunting spirit – but they will be bound to strike only on behalf of what is good, to defend virgins against Sir Bruce and to restore what has been done wrong in the past and to help the oppressed and so forth. Do you see the idea? It will be using the Might instead of fighting against it, and turning a bad thing into a good. There, Merlyn, that is all I can think of. I have thought as hard as I could, and I suppose I am wrong, as usual. But I did think. I can’t do any better. Please say something!’

The magician stood up as straight as a pillar, stretched out his arms in both directions, looked at the ceiling, and said the first few words of the Nunc Dimittis.

The situation at Dunlothian was complicated. Nearly every situation tended to be when it was connected with King Pellinore, even in the wildest North. In the first place, he was in love – that was why he had been weeping in the boat. He explained it to Queen Morgause on the first opportunity – because he was lovesick, not seasick.

What had happened was this. The King had been hunting the Questing Beast a few months earlier, on the south coast of Gramarye, when the animal had taken to the sea. She had swum away, her serpentine head undulating on the surface like a swimming grass—snake, and the King had hailed a passing ship which looked as if it were off to the Crusades. Sir Grummore and Sir Palomides had been in the ship, and they had kindly turned it round to pursue the Beast. The three of them had arrived on the coast of Flanders, where the Beast had disappeared in a forest, and there, while they were staying at a hospitable castle, Pellinore had fallen in love with the Queen of Flanders’ daughter. This was fine so far as it went – for the
lady of his choice was a managing, middle—aged, stout—hearted creature, who could cook, ride a straight line, and make beds – but the hopes of all parties had been dashed at the start by the arrival of the magic barge. The three knights had got into it, and sat down to see what would happen, because knights were never supposed to refuse adventure. But the barge had promptly sailed away of its own accord, leaving the Queen of Flanders’ daughter anxiously waving her pocket handkerchief. The Questing Beast had thrust her head out of the forest before they lost sight of land, looking, so far as they could see at the distance, even more surprised than the lady. After that, they had gone on sailing till they arrived in the Out Isles, and the further they went the more lovesick the King had become, which made his company intolerable. He spent the time writing poems and letters, which could never be posted, or telling his companions about the princess, whose nickname in her family circle was Piggy.

A state of affairs like this might have been bearable in England, where people like the Pellinores did sometimes turn up, and even won a sort of tolerance from their fellow men. But in Lothian and Orkney, where Englishmen were tyrants, it achieved an almost supernatural impossibility. None of the islanders could understand what King Pellinore was trying to cheat them out of – by pretending to be himself – and it was thought wiser and safer not to acquaint any of the visiting knights with the facts about the war against Arthur. It was better to wait until their plots had been penetrated.

On top of this, there was a trouble which distressed the children in particular. Queen Morgause had set her cap at the visitors.

‘What was our mother at doing,’ asked Gawaine, as they made their way toward St Toirdealbhach’s cell one morning, ‘with the knights on the mountain?’

Gaheris answered with some difficulty, after a long pause: ‘They were at hunting a unicorn.’

‘How do you do that?’

‘There must be a virgin to attract it.’

‘Our mother,’ said Agravaine, who also knew the details, ‘went on a unicorn hunt, and she was the virgin for them.’

His voice sounded strange as he made this announcement.

Gareth protested: ‘I did not know she was wanting a unicorn. She has never said so.’

Agravaine looked at him sideways, cleared his throat and quoted: ‘Half a word is sufficient to the wise man.’

‘How do you know this?’ asked Gawaine.

‘We listened.’

They had a way of listening on the spiral stairs, during the times when they were excluded from their mother’s interest.

Gaheris explained, with unusual freedom since he was a taciturn boy:

‘She told Sir Grummore that this King’s lovesick melancholy could be dispelled by interesting him in his old pursuits. They were at saying that this King is in the habit of hunting a Beast which has become lost. So she said that they were to hunt a unicorn instead, and she would be the virgin for them. They were surprised, I think.’

They walked in silence, until Gawaine suggested, almost as if it were a question: ‘I was hearing it told that the King is in love with a woman out of Flanders, and that Sir Grummore is married already? Also the Saracen is black in his skin?’

No answer.

‘It was a long hunt,’ said Gareth. ‘I heard they did not catch one.’

‘Do these knights enjoy to be playing this game with our mother?’

Gaheris explained for the second time. Even if he were silent, he was not unobservant.

‘I do not think they would be understanding at all.’

They plodded on, reluctant to disclose their thoughts.

St Toirdealbhach’s cell was like an old—fashioned straw beehive, except that it was bigger and made of stone. It had no windows and only one door, through which you had to crawl.

‘Your Holiness,’ they shouted when they got there, kicking the heavy unmortared stones. ‘Your Holiness, we have come to hear a story.’

He was a source of mental nourishment to them – a sort of guru, as Merlyn had been to Arthur, who gave them what little culture they were ever to get. They resorted to him like hungry puppies anxious for any kind of eatable, when their mother had cast them out. He had taught them to read and write.

‘Ah, now,’ said the saint, sticking his head out of the door. ‘The prosperity of God on you this morning.’

‘The selfsame prosperity on you.’

‘Is there any news at you?’

‘There is not,’ said Gawaine, suppressing the unicorn.

St Toirdealbhach heaved a deep sigh.

‘There is none at me either,’ he said.

‘Could you tell us a story?’

‘Thim stories, now. There doesn’t be any good in them. What would I be wanting to tell you a story for, and me in my heresies? ‘Tis forty years since I fought a natural battle, and not a one of me looking upon a white colleen all the time – so how would I be telling stories?’

‘You could tell us a story without any colleens or battles in it.’

‘And what would be the good of that, now?’ he exclaimed indignantly, coming out into the sunlight.

‘If you were to fight a battle,’ said Gawaine, but he left out about the colleens, ‘you might feel better.’

‘My sorrow!’ cried Toirdealbhach. ‘What do I want to be a saint for at all, is my puzzle! If I could fetch one crack at somebody with me ould shillelagh’ – here he produced a frightful—looking weapon from under his gown – ‘wouldn’t it be better than all the saints in Ireland?’

‘Tell us about the shillelagh.’

They examined the club carefully, while his holiness told them how a good one should be made. He told them that only a root growth was any good, as common branches were apt to break, especially if they were of crab—tree, and how to smear
the club with lard, and wrap it up, and bury it in a dunghill while it was being straightened, and polish it with blacklead and grease. He showed the hole where the lead was poured in, and the nails through the end, and the notches near the handle which stood for ancient scalps. Then he kissed it reverently and replaced it under his gown with a heartfelt sigh. He was play—acting, and putting on the accent.

‘Tell us the story about the black arm which came down the chimney.’

‘Ah, the heart isn’t in me,’ said the saint. ‘I haven’t the heart of a hare. It’s bewitched I am entirely.’

‘I think we are bewitched too,’ said Gareth. ‘Everything seems to go wrong.’

‘There was this one in it,’ began Toirdealbhach, ‘and she was a woman. There was a husband living in Malainn Vig with this woman. There was only one little girl that they had between them. One day the man went out to cut in the bog, and when it was the time for his dinner, this woman sent the little girl out with his bit of dinner. When the father was sitting to his dinner, the little girl suddenly made a cry, “Look now, father, do you see the large ship out yonder under the horizon? I could make it come in to the shore beneath the coast.” “You could not do that,” said the father. “I am bigger than you are, and I could not do it myself.” ‘‘Well, look at me now,’ said the little girl. And she went to the well that was near there, and made a stirring in the water. The ship came in at the coast.’

‘She was a witch,’ explained Gaheris.

‘It was the mother was the witch,’ said the saint, and continued with his story.

‘“Now,” says she, “I could make the ship be struck against the coast.” “You could not do that,” says the father. “Well, look at me now,” says the little girl, and she jumped into the well. The ship was dashed against the coast and broken into a thousand pieces. “Who has taught you to do these things?” asked the father. “My mother. And when you do be at working she teaches me to do things with the Tub at home.”’

‘Why did she jump into the well?’ asked Agravaine. ‘Was she wet?’

‘Hush.’

‘When this man got home to his wife, he set down his turf—cutter and put himself in his sitting. Then he said, “What have you been teaching to the little girl? I do not like to have this piseog in my house, and I will not stay with you any longer.” So he went away, and they never saw a one of him again. I do not know how they went on after that.’

‘It must be dreadful to have a witch for a mother,’ said Gareth when he had finished.

‘Or for a wife,’ said Gawaine.

‘It’s worse not to be having a wife at all,’ said the saint, and he vanished into his beehive with startling suddenness, like the man in the Swiss weather clock who retires into a hole when it is going to be fine.

The boys sat round the door without surprise, waiting for something else to happen. They considered in their minds the questions of wells, witches, unicorns and the practices of mothers.

‘I make this proposition,’ said Gareth unexpectedly, ‘my heroes, that we have a unicorn hunt of our own!’

They looked at him.

‘It would be better than not having anything. We have not seen our Mammy for one week.’

‘She has forgotten us,’ said Agravaine bitterly.

‘She has not so. You are not to speak in that way of our mother.’

‘It is true. We have not been to serve at dinner even.’

‘It is because she has a necessity to be hospitable to these knights.’

‘No, it is not.’

‘What is it, then?’

‘I will not say.’

‘If we could do a unicorn hunt,’ said Gareth, ‘and bring this unicorn which she requires, perhaps we would be allowed to serve?’

They considered the idea with a beginning of hope.

‘St Toirdealbhach,’ they shouted, ‘come out again! We want to catch a unicorn.’

The saint put his head out of the hole and examined them suspiciously.

‘What is a unicorn? What are they like? How do you catch them?’

He nodded the head solemnly and vanished for the second time, to return on all fours in a few moments with a learned volume, the only secular work in his possession. Like most saints, he made his living by copying manuscripts and drawing pictures for them.

‘You need a maid for bait,’ they told him.

‘We have goleor of maids,’ said Gareth. ‘We could take any of the maids, or cook.’

‘They would not come.’

‘We could take the kitchenmaid. We could make her come.’

‘And then, when we have caught the unicorn which is wanted, we will bring it home in triumph and give it to our mother! We will serve at supper every night!’

‘She will be pleased.’

‘Perhaps after supper, whatever the event.’

‘And Sir Grummore will knight us. He will say, “Never has such a doughty deed been done, by my halidome!”’

St Toirdealbhach laid the precious book on the grass outside his hole. The grass was sandy and had empty snail shells scattered over it, small yellowish shells with a purple spiral. He opened the book, which was a Bestiary called
Liber de Natura Quorundam Animalium,
and showed that it had pictures on every page.

They made him turn the vellum quickly, with its lovely Gothic manuscript, skipping the enchanting Griffins, Bonnacons, Cocodrills, Manticores, Chaladrii, Cinomulgi, Sirens, Peridexions, Dragons, and Aspidochelones. In vain for their eager glances did the Antalop rub its complicated horns against the tamarisk tree – thus, entangled, becoming a prey to its hunters – in vain did the Bonnacon emit its flatulence in order to baffle
the pursuers. The Peridexions, sitting on trees which made them immune to dragons, sat unnoticed. The Panther blew out his fragrant breath, which attracted his prey, without interest for them. The Tigris, who could be deceived by throwing down a glass ball at its feet, in which seeing its reflection, it thought to see its own cubs – the Lion, who spared prostrate men or captives, was afraid of white cocks, and brushed out his own tracks with a foliated tail – the Ibex, who could bound down from mountains unharmed because he bounced upon his curly horns – the Yale, who could move his horns like ears – the She—Bear who was accustomed to bear her young as lumps of matter and lick them into whatever shape she fancied afterwards – the Chaladrius bird who, if facing you when it sat on your bedrail, showed that you were going to die – the Hedgehogs who collected grapes for their progeny by rolling on them, and brought them back on the end of their prickles – even the Aspidochelone, who was a large whale—like creature with seven fins and a sheepish expression, to whom you were liable to moor your boat in mistake for an island if you were not careful: even the Aspidochelone scarcely detained them. At last he found them the place at the Unicorn, called by the Greek, Rhinoceros.

It seemed that the Unicorn was as swift and timid as the Antalop, and could only be captured in one way. You had to have a maid for bait, and, when the Unicorn perceived her alone, he would immediately come to lay his horn in her lap. There was a picture of an unreliable—looking virgin, holding the poor creature’s horn in one hand, while she beckoned to some spearmen with the other. Her expression of duplicity was balanced by the fatuous confidence with which the Unicorn regarded her.

Gawaine hurried off, as soon as the instructions had been read and the picture digested, to fetch the kitchenmaid without delay.

‘Now then,’ he said, ‘you have to come with us on the mountain, to catch a unicorn.’