The sword in the stone (15 page)

"Your what?" called the peregrine sharply.

"He said his damned wings," said Colonel Cully from his private enclosure. "And damned be he who first cries Hold, enough!"

"But even a thrush has wings!" cried the humble kestrel, speaking for the first time in his sharp-beaked alarm.

"Think!" whispered Balan, under his breath.

The Wart thought feverishly.

A thrush had wings, tail, eyes, legs — apparently everything.

"My talons"

"It will do," said the peregrine kindly, after one of her dreadful pauses. "The answer ought to be Feet just as it is to all the other questions, but Talons will do."

All the hawks, and of course we are using the term loosely, for some were hawks and some were falcons, raised their belled feet again and sat at ease.

"What is the first law of the foot?"

("Think," said friendly little Balan, behind his false primary.) The Wart thought, and thought right.

"Never to let go," he said.

"Last question," said the peregrine. "How would you, as a Merlin, kill a pigeon bigger than yourself?"

Wart was lucky in this one, for he had heard Hob giving description of how Balan did it one afternoon, and he answered warily, "I should strangle her with my foot."

"Good!" said the peregrine.

"Bravo!" cried all the others, raising their feathers.

"Ninety per cent," said the spar-hawk after a quick sum. That is, if you give him a half for the talons."

"This devil damn me black!"

"Colonel, please!"

Little Balan whispered to the Wart, "Colonel Cully is not quite right in his wits. It is his liver, we believe, but the kestrel says it is the constant strain of living up to her ladyship's standard. He says that her ladyship spoke to him from full rank once, cavalry to infantry, you know, and that he just closed his eyes and got the vertigo. He has never been the same since."

"Captain Balan," said the peregrine, "it is rude to whisper. We will proceed to swear the new officer in. Now, padre, if you please." The poor spar-hawk, who had been getting more and more nervous for some time, blushed deeply and began faltering out a complicated oath about varvels, jesses and hoods. "With this varvel," the Wart heard, "I thee endow. . . love, honor and obey . . . till jess us do part." But before the padre had got to the end of it, he broke down altogether and sobbed out, "Oh, please your ladyship. beg your pardon, but I've forgotten to keep any tirings."

("Tirings are bones and things," explained Balan, "and of course you have to swear on bones.")

"Forgotten to keep any tirings? But it is your duty to keep tirings."

"I-I know."

"What have you done with them?"

The spar-hawk's voice broke at the enormity of his confession. "I-I ate 'em," wept the unfortunate priest.

Nobody said anything. The dereliction of duty was too terrible for mere words. All stood on two feet and turned their blind heads towards the culprit. Not a word of reproach was spoken. Only, during an utter silence of five minutes, they could hear the incontinent priest sniveling and hiccoughing to himself.

"Well," said the peregrine at last, "the initiation will be put off till tomorrow."

"If you'll excuse me, Madam," said Balin, "perhaps we could manage the ordeal part of it tonight? I believe the candidate is loose, for I did not hear him being tied up."

At the mention of an ordeal the Wart trembled within himself and privately determined that Balin should have not one feather of Balan's sparrow next day.

"Thank you, Captain Balin. I was reflecting upon that subject myself."

Balin shut up.

"Are you loose, candidate?"

"Oh, Madam, yes, I am, if you please: but I don't think I want an ordeal."

"The ordeal is customary."

"Let me see," continued the honorary colonel reflectively. "What was the last ordeal we had? Can you remember, Captain Balan?"

"My ordeal, Mam," said the friendly merlin, "was to hang by my jesses during the third watch."

"If he's loose he can't do that."

"You could strike him yourself, Mam," said the kestrel. "Judiciously, you know."

"Send him over to stand by Colonel Cully while we ring thrice," said the other merlin.

"Oh, no!" cried the crazy colonel in an agony out of his remoter darkness. "Oh, no, your ladyship. I beg of you not to do that. I am such a damned villain, your ladyship, that I don't answer for the consequences. Spare the poor boy, your ladyship, and lead us not into temptation."

"Colonel, control yourself. That ordeal will do very well."

"Oh, Madam, I was warned not to stand by Colonel Cully."

"Warned? And by whom?"

The poor Wart realized that now he must choose between confessing himself a human, and learning no more of their secrets, or going through with his ordeal in order to earn his education. He did not want to be a coward.

"I will stand by the Colonel, Madam," he said, immediately noticing that his voice sounded insulting.

The peregrine falcon paid no attention to the tone.

"It is well," she said. "But first we must have the hymn. Now, padre, if you haven't eaten your hymns as well as your tirings, will you be so kind as to lead us in Ancient but not Modern No. 23? The Ordeal Hymn."

"And you, Mr. Kee," she added to the kestrel, "you had better keep quiet, for you are always too high."

The hawks stood still in the moonlight, while the spar-hawk counted

"One, Two, Three." Then all those curved or toothed beaks opened in their hoods to a brazen unison, and this is what they fiercely chanted: Life is blood, shed and offered.

The eagle's eye can face this dree.

To beasts of chase the lie is proffered

Timor Mortis Conturbat me.

The beast of foot sings Holdfast only,

For flesh is bruckle and foot is slee.

Strength to the strong and the lordly and lonely.

Timor Mortis Exultat me.

Shame to the slothful and woe to the weak one,

Death to the dreadful who turn to flee.

Blood to the tearing, the talon'd, the beaked one.

Timor Mortis is me.

"Very nice," said the peregrine. "Captain Balan, I think you were a little off on the top C. And now, candidate, you will go over and stand next to Colonel Cully's enclosure, while we ring our bells thrice. On the third ring you may move as quickly as you like."

"Very good, Madam," said the Wart, quite fearless with resentment. He flipped his wings and was sitting on the extreme end of the screen perch, next to Cully's enclosure of string netting.

"Boy, boy!" cried the Colonel in an unearthly voice, "don't come near me, don't come near. Ah, tempt not the foul fiend to his damnation."

"I don't fear you, sir," said the Wart. "Don't vex yourself, for no harm will come to either of us."

"No harm, quotha! Ah, go, before it is too late. I feel eternal longings in me."

"Never fear, sir. They have only got to ring three times." At this all the knights lowered their raised legs and gave them a solemn shake. The first sweet persuasive tinkling filled the room.

"Madam, Madam!" cried the Colonel in torture. "Have pity, have pity on a damned man of blood. Ring out the old, ring in the new. I can't hold off much longer."

"Be brave, sir," said the Wart softly.

"Be brave, sir! Why, but two nights since, one met the duke 'bout midnight in a lane behind Saint Mark's Church with the leg of a man upon his shoulder: and he howled fearfully."

"It's nothing," said the Wart.

"Nothing! Said he was a wolf, only the difference was a wolf's skin was hairy on the outside, his on the inside. Rip up my flesh and try. Ah, for quietus, with a bare bodkin!"

The bells rang for the second time.

The Wart's heart was thumping heavily and pleading for the third release, but now the Colonel was sidling towards him along the perch. Stamp, stamp, he went, striking the wood he trod on with a convulsive grip at every pace. His poor, mad, brooding eyes glared in the moonlight, shone against the persecuted darkness of his scowling brow. There was nothing cruel about him, no ignoble passion. He was terrified of the Wart, not triumphing, and he must slay.

"If it were done when 'tis done," whispered the Colonel, "then 'twere well it were done quickly. Who would have thought the young man had so much blood in him?"

"Colonel!" said the Wart, but held himself there.

"Boy!" cried the Colonel. "Speak, stop me, mercy!"

"There is a cat behind you," said the Wart calmly, "or a pine-marten. Look."

The Colonel turned, swift as a wasp's sting, and menaced into the gloom. There was nothing. He swung his wild eyes again upon the Wart, guessing at the trick. Then, in the cold voice of an adder, "The bell invites me," he hissed for the last time. "Hear it not, Merlin, for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell."

The third bells were indeed ringing as he spoke, and honor was allowed to move. The ordeal was over and the Wart might fly. But as he moved, but as he flew, quicker than any movement or flight in the world, the terrible sickles had shot out from the Colonel's plated legs — not flashed out, for they moved too quick for sight — and with a thump, with a clutch, with an apprehension, like being arrested by a big policeman, the great scimitars had fixed themselves in his retreating thumb. They fixed themselves, and fixed irrevocably. Gripe, gripe, the enormous thigh muscles tautened in two convulsions. Then the Wart was four yards further down the screen, and Colonel Cully was standing on one foot with a few meshes of string netting and the Wart's false primary, with its covert-feathers, vice-fisted in the other. Two or three minor feathers drifted softly in a moonbeam towards the floor.

"Well stood!" cried Balan, delighted.

"A very gentlemanly exhibition," said the peregrine, not minding that Captain Balan had spoken before her.

"Amen, Amen!" said the spar-hawk.

"Brave heart!" cried the kestrel.

"Might we give him the Triumph Song?" asked Balin, now relenting.

"Certainly," said the peregrine.

And they all sang together, led by Colonel Cully at the top of his voice, all belling triumphantly in the terrible moonlight.

The mountain birds are sweeter

But the valley birds are fatter,

And so we deemed it meeter

To carry off the latter.

We met a cowering coney

And struck him through the vitals.

The coney was like honey

And squealed our requitals.

Some struck the lark in feathers

Whose puffing clouds were shed off.

Some plucked the partridge's nethers,

While others pulled his head off.

But Wart the King of Merlins

Struck foot most far before us.

His birds and beasts

Supply our feasts.

And his feats our roarious chorus.

"Mark my words," cried the beautiful Balan, forgetful of all etiquette.

"We shall have a regular king in that young candidate. Now then, boys, chorus altogether for the last time:

But Wart the King of Merlins

Struck foot most far before us.

His birds and beasts

Supply our feasts

And his — " ("Damn fine show," cried Colonel Cully, with most lamentable infantry manners, at the top of his crazy voice, quite out of tune) "our Roarious Chorus!"

"WELL!" said the Wart, as he woke up in his own bed next morning.

"What a horrible, grand crew!"

Kay sat up in bed and began scolding like a squirrel. "Where were you all last night?" he cried. "I believe you climbed out. I shall tell my father and get you tanned. You know we aren't allowed out after curfew. What have you been doing? I looked for you everywhere. I know you climbed out."

The boys had a way of sliding down a rain-water pipe into the moat, which they could swim on secret occasions when it was necessary to be out at night — to wait for a badger, for instance, or to catch tench, which can only be taken just before dawn.

"Oh, shut up," said the Wart. "I'm sleepy." Kay said, "Wake up, wake up, you beast. Where have you been?"

"I shan't tell you."

He was sure that Kay would not believe the story, but only call him a liar and get angrier than ever.

"If you don't tell me I shall kill you."

"You won't, then."

"I will."

The Wart turned over on his other side.

"Beast," said Kay. He took a fold of the Wart's arm between the nails of first finger and thumb, and pinched for all he was worth. Wart kicked like a salmon which has been suddenly hooked, and hit Kay wildly in the eye. In a trice they were out of bed, pale and indignant, and looking rather like skinned rabbits — for in those days nobody wore clothes in bed

— and whirling their arms like windmills in the effort to do each other a mischief.

Kay was older and bigger than the Wart, so that he was bound to win in the end, but he was more nervous and imaginative. He could imagine the effect of each blow that was aimed at him, and this weakened his defense. Wart was only an infuriated hurricane.

"Leave me alone," shouted the Wart again and again. "Leave me alone, can't you?" And all the while he did not leave Kay alone, but with head down and swinging arms made it impossible for Kay to do as he was bid. They punched entirely at each other's faces, as boys will. Kay had a longer reach and a heavier fist. He straightened his arm out, more in self-defense than in anything else, and the Wart smacked his own eye upon the end of it. The sky became a noisy and shocking black, streaked outwards with a blaze of meteors. The Wart began to sob and pant. He managed to get in a blow upon his opponent's nose, and this began to bleed. Kay lowered his defense, turned his back upon the Wart, and said in a cold, snuffling, reproachful voice, "Now it's bleeding." The battle was over.