The Once and Future King. T. White H.
Art,’ said the nurse sternly. She had been breathless up to now on account of Sir Ector’s rebuke. ‘Master Art, thy room and thy bed is where thou art tending to, and that this instant. Wold fools may be wold fools, whether by yea or by nay, but I ha’n’t served the Family for fifty year without a-learning of my duty. A flibberty-gibbeting about wi’ a lot of want-wits, when thy own arm may be dropping to the floor!
‘Yes, thou wold turkey-cock,’ she added, turning fiercely upon Sir Ector, ‘and thou canst keep thy magician away from the poor mite’s room till he be rested, that thou canst!
‘A wantoning wi’ monsters and lunaticals,’ continued the victor as she led her helpless captive from the stricken field. ‘I never heard the like.’
‘Please, someone tell Merlyn to look after Wat,’ cried the victim over his shoulder, in diminishing tones.
He woke up in his cool bed, feeling better. The old fire-eater who looked after him had covered the windows with a curtain, so that the room was dark and comfortable, and he could tell by the one ray of golden sunlight which shot across the floor that it was late afternoon. He not only felt better. He felt very well, so well that it was not possible to stay in bed. He moved quickly to throw back the sheet, but stopped with a hiss at the creak or scratch of his shoulder, which he had forgotten in his sleep. Then he got out more carefully by sliding down the bed and pushing himself upright with one hand, shoved his bare feet into a pair of slippers, and managed to wrap a dressing-gown round him more or less. He padded off through the stone passages up the worn circular stairs to find Merlyn.
When he reached the schoolroom, he found that Kay was continuing his First Rate Eddication. He was doing dictation, for as Wart opened the door he heard Merlyn pronouncing in measured tones the famous medieval mnemonic: ‘Barabara Celarent Darii Ferioque Prioris,’ and Kay saying, ‘Wait a bit. My pen has gone all squee-gee.’
‘You will catch it,’ remarked Kay, when they saw him. ‘You are supposed to be in bed, dying of gangrene or something.’
‘Merlyn,’ said the Wart. ‘What have you done with Wat?’
‘You should try to speak without assonances,’ said the wizard. ‘For instance. “The beer is never clear near here, dear,” is unfortunate, even as an assonance. And then again, your sentence is ambiguous to say the least of it. “What what?” I might reply, taking it to be a conundrum, or if I were King Pellinore, “What what, what?” Nobody can be too careful about their habits of speech.’
Kay had evidently been doing his dictation well and the old gentleman was in a good humour.
‘You know what I mean,’ said the Wart. ‘What have you done with the old man with no nose?’
‘He has cured him,’ said Kay.
‘Well,’ said Merlyn, ‘you might call it that, and then again you might not. Of course, when one has lived in the world as long as I have, and backwards at that, one does learn to know a thing or two about pathology. The wonders of analytical psychology and plastic surgery are, I am afraid, to this generation but a closed book.’
‘What did you do to him?’
‘Oh, I just psycho-analysed him,’ replied the magician grandly. ‘That, and of course I sewed on a new nose on both of them.’
‘What kind of nose?’ asked the Wart.
‘It is too funny,’ said Kay. ‘He wanted to have the griffin’s nose for one, but I would not let him. So then he took the noses off the young pigs which we are going to have for supper, and used those. Personally I think they will grunt.’
‘A ticklish operation,’ said Merlyn, ‘but a successful one.’
‘Well,’ said the Wart, doubtfully. ‘I hope it will be all right. What did they do then?’
‘They went off to the kennels. Old Wat is very sorry for what he did to the Dog Boy, but he says he can’t remember having done it. He says that suddenly everything went black, when they were throwing stones once, and he can’t remember anything since. The Dog Boy forgave him and said he did not mind a bit. They are going to work together in the kennels in future, and not think of what is past any more. The Dog Boy says that the old man was good to him while they were prisoners of the Fairy Queen, and that he knows he ought not to have thrown stones at him in the first place. He says he often thought about that when other boys were throwing stones at him.’
‘Well,’ said the Wart, ‘I am glad it has all turned out for the best. Do you think I could go and visit them?’
‘For heaven’s sake, don’t do anything to annoy your nurse,’ exclaimed Merlyn, looking about him anxiously. ‘That old woman hit me with a broom when I came to see you this forenoon, and broke my spectacles. Could you not wait until tomorrow?’
On the morrow Wat and the Dog Boy were the firmest of friends. Their common experiences of being stoned by the mob and then tied to columns of pork by Morgan le Fay served as a bond and a topic of reminiscence, as they lay among the dogs at night, for the rest of their lives. Also, by the morning, they had both pulled off the noses Merlyn had kindly given them. They explained that they had got used to having no noses, now, and anyway they preferred to live with the dogs.
In spite of his protest, the unhappy invalid was confined to his chamber for three mortal days. He was alone except at bedtime, when Kay came, and Merlyn was reduced to shouting his eddication through the key-hole, at times when the nurse was known to be busy with her washing.
The boy’s only amusement was the ant-nests – the ones between glass plates which had been brought when he first came from Merlyn’s cottage in the forest.
‘Can’t you,’ he howled miserably under the door, ‘turn me into something while I’m locked up like this?’
‘I can’t get the spells through the key-hole.’
‘Through the what?’
‘The KEY-HOLE.’
‘Oh!’
‘Are you there?’
‘Yes.’
‘What?’
‘What?’
‘Confusion take this shouting!’ exclaimed the magician, stamping on his hat. ‘May Castor and Pollux … No, not again. God bless my blood pressure …’
‘Could you turn me into an ant?’
‘A what?’
‘An ANT! It would be a small spell for ants, wouldn’t it? It would go through the key-hole?’
‘I don’t think we ought to.’
‘Why?’
‘They are dangerous.’
‘You could watch with your insight, and turn me back again if it got too bad. Please turn me into something, or I shall go weak in the head.’
‘The ants are not our Norman ones, dear boy. They come from the Afric shore. They are belligerent.’
‘I don’t know what belligerent is.’
There was a long silence behind the door.
‘Well,’ said Merlyn eventually. ‘It is far too soon in your education. But you would have had to do it some time. Let me see. Are there two nests in that contraption?’
‘There are two pairs of plates.’
‘Take a rush from the floor and lean it between the two nests, like a bridge. Have you done that?’
‘Yes.’
The place where he was seemed like a great field of boulders, with a flattened