The Sword in the Stone

“Merlyn caught him,” said the Wart. “He sent Archimedes to look for him on the way home. Then Archimedes told us that he had been and killed a pigeon and was eating it. We went and frightened him off. After that, Merlyn stuck six of the tail feathers round the pigeon in a circle, and made a loop in a long piece of string to go round the feathers. He tied one end to a stick in the ground, and he went away behind a bush with the other end. He said he wouldn’t use magic. He said you couldn’t use magic in Great Arts, like it would be unfair to make a great statue by magic. You have to cut it out with a chisel, you see. Then Cully came down to finish the pigeon, and we pulled the string, and the loop slipped over the feathers and caught him round the legs. He was angry. But we gave him the pigeon.”

Hob made a duty to Merlyn, who returned it courteously. They looked upon one another with grave affection and eagerness, knowing each other to be masters of the same trade. When they could be alone together they could talk and talk, although each was naturally a silent man. Meanwhile they must wait their time.

“Oh, Kay,” cried the Wart, as the latter appeared with their nurse and other delighted welcomers. “Look I have got a magician for our tutor. He has a mustard-pot that walks.”

“I am glad you are back,” said Kay.

“Alas, where did you sleep, Master Art?” exclaimed the nurse. “Look at your clean jerkin all muddied and torn. Such a turn as you gave us, I really don’t know. But look at your poor hair with all them twigs in it. Oh, my own random, wicked little lamb.”

Sir Ector came bustling out with his greaves on back to front, and kissed the Wart on both cheeks. “Well, well, well,” he exclaimed moistly. “Here we are again, hey? What the devil have you been doin’, hey? Settin’ the whole household upside down.”

But inside him he was proud of the Wart for staying out after a hawk, and prouder still to see that he had got it, for all the while Hob held the bird in the air for everybody to see.

“Oh, sir,” said the Wart. “I have been on that Quest you said for a tutor, and I have found him. Please, he is this gentleman here, and he is called Merlyn. He has got some badgers and hedgehogs and mice and things on this white donkey here, because we couldn’t leave them behind to starve. He is a great musician, and can make things come out of the air.”

“Ah, a magician,” said Sir Ector, putting on his glasses and looked closely at Merlyn. “White magic, I hope?”

“Assuredly,” said Merlyn, who stood patiently among all this throng with his arms folded in his necromantic gown, and Archimedes sitting very stiff and elongated on the top of his head.

“Ought to have some testimonials, you know,” said Sir Ector doubtfully. “It’s usual.”

“Testimonials,” said Merlyn, holding out his hand.

Instantly there were some heavy tablets in it, signed by Aristotle, a parchment signed by Hecate, and some typewritten duplicates signed by the Master of Trinity, who could not remember having met him. All these gave Merlyn an excellent character.

“He had ’em up his sleeve,” said Sir Ector wisely. “Can you do anything else?”

“Tree,” said Merlyn. At once there was an enormous mulberry growing in the middle of the courtyard, with its luscious blue fruits ready to patter down.

“They do it with mirrors,” said Sir Ector.

“Snow,” said Merlyn. “And an umbrella,” he added hastily.

Before they could turn round the copper sky of summer had assumed a cold and lowering bronze, while the biggest white flakes that were ever seen were floating about them and settling on the battlements. An inch of snow had fallen before they could speak, and all were trembling with the wintry blast. Sir Ector’s nose was blue, and had an icicle hanging from the end of it, while all except Merlyn had a ledge of snow upon their shoulders. Merlyn stood in the middle, holding his umbrella high because of the owl.

“It’s done by hypnotism,” said Sir Ector, with chattering teeth. “Like those wallahs from the Indies.

“But that’ll do, you know,” he added hastily, “that’ll do very well. I’m sure you’ll make an excellent tutor for teachin’ these boys.”

The snow stopped immediately and the sun came out – “Enough to give a body a pewmonia,” said the nurse, “or to frighten the elastic commissioners” – while Merlyn folded up his umbrella and handed it back to the air, which received it.

“Imagine the boy doin’ a quest like that all by himself,” exclaimed Sir Ector. “Well, well, well. Wonders never cease.”

“I don’t think much of it as a quest,” said Kay. “He only went after the hawk, after all.”

“And got the hawk, Master Kay,” said Hob reprovingly.

“Oh well,” said Kay, “I bet the old man caught it for him.”

“Kay,” said Merlyn, suddenly terrible, “thou wast ever a proud and ill-tongued speaker, and a misfortunate one. Thy sorrow will come from thine own mouth.”

At this everybody felt uncomfortable, and Kay, instead of flying into his usual passion, hung his head. He was not at all an unpleasant person really, but clever, quick, proud, passionate and ambitious. He was one of those people who would be neither a follower or a leader, but only an aspiring heart, impatient in the failing body which imprisoned it. Merlyn repented of his rudeness at once. He made a little silver hunting-knife come out of the air, which he gave him to put things right. The knob of the handle was made of the skull of a stoat, oiled and polished like ivory, and Kay loved it.

CHAPTER FIVE

Sir Ector’s home was called The Castle of the Forest Sauvage. It was more like a town or a village than any one man’s home, and indeed it was the village during all times of danger. Whenever there was a raid or an invasion, everybody on the estate hurried into the castle, driving all the beasts before them into the courts, and there they remained until the danger was over. The little wattle and daub cottages nearly always got burnt, and had to be built again afterwards with much profanity. For this reason it was not worth while troubling to have a village church, as it would constantly be having to be replaced. The villagers went to church in the chapel of the castle. They wore their best clothes and trooped up the street with their most respectable gait on Sundays, looking with vague and dignified looks in all directions, as if reluctant to disclose their destination, and on weekdays they came to mass and vespers in their ordinary clothes, walking much more cheerfully. Everybody went to church in those days, and liked it.

The Castle of the Forest Sauvage is still standing, and you can see its lovely ruined walls with ivy on them, standing broached to the sun and wind. Some lizards live there now, and the starving sparrows keep warm on winter nights in the ivy, and a barn owl drives it methodically, hovering outside the little frightened congregations and beating the ivy with its wings, to make them fly out. Most of the curtain wall is down, though you can trace the foundations of the twelve round towers which guarded it. They are round, and stuck out from the wall into the moat, so that the archers could fire in all directions and command every part of the wall. Inside the towers there are circular stairs. These go round and round a central column, and this column is pierced with holes for shooting arrows. Even if the enemy had got inside the curtain wall and fought its way into the bottom of the towers, the defenders could retreat up the bends of the stairs and shoot at those who followed them up, inside, through the slits.

The stone part of the drawbridge with its barbican and the bartizans of the gatehouse are in good repair. These have many ingenious arrangements. Even if you got over the wooden bridge, which was pulled up so that you couldn’t, there was a portcullis weighed with an enormous log which would squash you flat and pin you down as well. There was a large hidden trapdoor in the floor of the barbican, which would let you into the moat after all. At the other end of the barbican there was another portcullis, so that you could be trapped between the two and annihilated from above, while the bartizans, or hanging turrets, had holes in their floors through which the defenders could drop things on your head. Finally, inside the gatehouse, there was a neat little hole in the middle of the vaulted ceiling, which had painted tracery and bosses. This hole led to the room above, where there was a big cauldron, for boiling lead and oil in.

So much for the outer defences. Once you were inside the curtain wall, you found yourself in a kind of wide alleyway, probably full of frightened sheep, with another complete castle in front of you. This was the inner shell-keep, with its eight enormous round towers which still stand. It is lovely to climb the highest of them and to lie there looking out towards the Marches, from which all these old dangers came, with nothing but the sun above you and the little tourists trotting about below, quite regardless of arrows and boiling oil. Think of how many centuries that unconquerable tower has withstood. It has changed hands by secession often, by siege once, by treachery twice, but never by assault. On this tower the look-out moved. From here he kept the guard over the blue woods towards Wales. His clean old bones lie beneath the floor of the chapel now, so you must keep it for him.

If you look down and are not frightened of heights (the society for the Preservation of This and That have put up some excellent railings to preserve you from tumbling over), you can see the whole anatomy of the inner court laid out beneath you like a map. You can see the chapel, now quite open to its god, and the windows of the great hall with the solar over it. You can see the shafts of the huge chimneys and how cunningly the side flues were contrived to enter them, and the little private closets now public, and the enormous kitchen. If you are a sensible person, you will spend days there, possibly weeks, working out for yourself by detection which were the stables, which the mews, where were the cow byres, the armoury, the lofts, the well, the smithy, the kennel, the soldiers’ quarters, the priest’s room, and my lord’s and lady’s chambers. Then it will all grow about you again. The little people – they were much smaller than we are, and it would be a job for most of us to get inside the few bits of their armour and old gloves that remain – will hurry about in the sunshine, the sheep will baa as they always did, and perhaps from Wales there will come the ffff-putt of the triple-feathered arrow which looks as if it had never moved.

This place was of course, a complete paradise for a boy to be in. The Wart ran about it like a rabbit in its own complicated labyrinth. He knew everything, everywhere, all the special smells, good climbs, soft lairs, secret hiding-places, jumps, slides, nooks, larders and blisses. For every season he had the best place like a cat, and he yelled and ran and fought and upset people and snoozed and daydreamed and pretended he was a Knight, without ever stopping. Just now he was in the kennel.

People in those days had rather different ideas about the training of dogs to what we have today. They did it more by love than strictness. Imagine a modern M. F. H. going to bed with his hounds, and yet Flavius Arrianus says that it is “Best of all if they can sleep with a person because it makes them more human and because they rejoice in the company of human beings: also if they have had a restless night or been internally upset, you will know of it and will not use them to hunt next day.” In Sir Ector’s kennel there was a special boy, called the Dog Boy, who lived with the hounds day and night. He was a sort of head hound, and it was his business to take them out every day for walks, to pull thorns out of their feet, keep cankers out of their ears, bind the smaller bones that got dislocated, dose them for worms, isolate and nurse them in distemper, arbitrate in their quarrels and sleep curled up among them at night. If one more learned quotation may be excused, this is how the Duke of York who was killed at Agincourt described such a boy in his Master of Game: “Also I will teach the child to lead out the hounds to scombre twice in the day in the morning and in the evening, so that the sun be up, especially in winter. Then should he let them run and play long in a meadow in the sun, and then comb every hound after the other, and wipe them with a great wisp of straw, and this he shall do every morning. And then he shall lead them into some fair place where tender grass grows as corn and other things, that therewith they may feed themselves as if it is medicine for them.” Thus, since the boy’s “heart and his business be with the hounds,” the hounds themselves become “Goodly and kindly and clean, glad and joyful and playful, and goodly to all manner of folks save to the wild beasts to whom they should be fierce, eager and spiteful.”

Sir Ector’s dog-boy was none other than the one who had had his nose bitten off by the terrible Wat. Not having a nose like a human, and being, moreover, subjected to stone-throwing by the other village children, he had become more comfortable with animals. He talked to them, not in baby-talk like a maiden lady, but correctly in their own growls and barks. They all loved him very much, and revered him for taking thorns out of their toes, and came to him with their little troubles at once. He always understood immediately what was wrong, and generally he could put it right. It was nice for the dogs to have their god with them, in visible form.

The Wart was fond of the Dog Boy, and thought him very clever to be able to do all these things with animals – for he could make them do almost anything just by moving his hands – while the Dog Boy loved the Wart in much the same way as his dogs loved him, and thought the Wart was almost holy because he could read and write. They spent much of their time together, rolling about with the dogs in the kennel.

The kennel was on the ground floor, near the mews, with a loft above it, so that it should be cool in summer and warm in winter. The hounds were alaunts, gaze-hounds, lymers and braches. They were called Clumsy, Trowneer, Phoebe, Colle, Gerland, Talbot, Luath, Luffra, Apollon, Orthros, Bran, Gelert, Bounce, Boy, Lion, Bungey, Toby and Diamond. The Wart’s own special one was called Cavall, and he happened to be licking Cavall’s nose – not the other way about – when Merlyn came in and found him.

“That will come to be regarded as an insanitary habit,” said Merlyn, “though I can’t see it myself. After all, God made the creature’s nose just as well as he made your tongue.

“If not better,” added the philosopher pensively.

The Wart did not know what Merlyn was talking about, but he liked him to talk. He did not like the grown-ups who talked down to him like a baby, but the ones who just went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned. He had the glee of the porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas.

“Shall we go out?” asked Merlyn. “I think it is about time we began our lessons.”

The Wart’s heart sank at this. His tutor had been there a month, and it was now August, but they had done no lessons so far. Now he suddenly remembered that this was what Merlyn was for, and he thought with dread of Summulae Logicales and the filthy astrolabe. He knew that it had to be borne, however, and got up obediently enough, after giving Cavall a last reluctant pat. He thought that it might not be so bad with Merlyn, who might be able to make even the old Organon interesting, particularly if he would do some magic.

They went out into the courtyard, into a sun so burning that the heat of haymaking seemed to have been nothing. It was baking. The thunder-clouds which usually go with hot weather were there, high columns of cumulus with glaring edges, but there was not going to be any thunder. It was too hot even for that. “If only,” thought the Wart, “I did not have to go into a stuffy classroom, but could take off my clothes and swim in the moat.”

They crossed the courtyard, having almost to take deep breaths before they darted across it, as if they were going quickly through an oven. The shade of the gatehouse was cool, but the barbican, with its close walls, was hottest of all. In one last dash across the desert they had achieved the draw-bridge – could Merlyn have guessed what he was thinking about? – and were staring down into the moat.

It was the season of water-lilies. If Sir Ector had not kept one section free of them for the boys’ bathing, all the water would have been covered. As it was, about twenty yards on each side of the bridge were cut each year, and you could dive in from the bridge itself. The moat was quite deep. It was used as a stew, so that the inhabitants of the castle could have fish on Fridays, and for this reason the architects had been careful not to let the drains and sewers run into it. It was stocked with fish every year.

“I wish I was a fish,’” said the Wart.

“What sort of fish?”

It was almost too hot to think about this, but the Wart stared down into the cool amber depths where a school of small perch were aimlessly hanging about.

“I think I should like to be a perch,” he said. “They are braver than the silly roach, and not quite so slaughterous as the pike.”

Merlyn took off his hat, raised his staff of lignum vitae politely in the air, and said slowly, “Snylrem stnemilpmoc ot enutpen dna lliw eh yldnik tpecca siht yob sa a hsif?”

Immediately there was a loud blowing of sea-shells, conches and so forth, and a stout, jolly-looking gentleman appeared seated on a well-blown-up cloud above the battlements. He had an anchor tattooed on his tummy and a handsome mermaid with Mabel written under her on his chest. He ejected a quid of tobacco, nodded affably to Merlyn and pointed his trident at the Wart. The Wart found he had no clothes on. He found that he had tumbled off the draw-bridge, landing with a smack on his side in the water. He found that the moat and the bridge had grown hundreds of times bigger. He knew that he was turning into a fish.

“Oh, Merlyn,” cried the Wart. “Please come too.”

“Just for this once,” said the large and solemn tench beside his ear, “I will come. But in future you will have to go by yourself. Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.”

The Wart found it difficult to be a fish. It was no good trying to swim like a human being, for it made him go corkscrew and much too slowly. He did not know how to swim like a fish.

“Not like that,” said the tench in ponderous tones. “Put your chin on your left shoulder and do jack-knives. Never mind about the fins to begin with.”

The Wart’s legs had fused together into his backbone and his feet and toes had become a tail fin. His arms had become two more fins – also of a delicate pinkish colour – and he had sprouted some more somewhere about his tummy. His head faced over his shoulder, so that when he bent in the middle his toes were moving towards his ear instead of towards his forehead. He was a beautiful olive-green colour with rather scratchy plate-armour all over him, and dark bands down his sides. He was not sure which were his sides and which were his back and front, but what now appeared to be his tummy had an attractive whitish colour, while his back was armed with a splendid great fin that could be erected for war and had spikes in it. He did jack-knives as the tench directed and found that he was swimming vertically downwards into the mud.

“Use your feet to turn to left or right with,” said the tench, “and spread those fins on your tummy to keep level. You are living in two planes now, not one.”

The Wart found that he could keep more or less level by altering the inclination of his arm fins and the ones on his stomach. He swam feebly off, enjoying himself very much.

“Come back,” said the tench solemnly. “You must learn to swim before you can dart.”

The Wart turned to his tutor in a series of zig-zags and remarked, “I don’t seem to keep quite straight.”

“The trouble with you is that you don’t swim from the shoulder. You swim as if you were a boy just bending at the hips. Try doing your jack-knives right from the neck downwards, and move your body exactly the same amount to the right as you are going to move it to the left. Put your back into it.”

Wart gave two terrific kicks and vanished altogether in a clump of mare’s tail several yards away.

“That’s better,” said the tench, now quite out of sight in the murky olive water, and the Wart backed himself out of his tangle with infinite trouble, by wriggling his arm fins. He undulated back towards the voice in one terrific shove, to show off.

“Good,” said the tench, as they collided end to end, “but discretion is the better part of valour.

“Try if you can do this one,” said the tench.

Without apparent exertion of any kind he swam off backwards under a water-lily. Without apparent exertion; but the Wart, who was an enterprising learner, had been watching the slightest movement of his fins. He moved his own fins anti-clockwise, gave the very tip of his own tail a cunning flick, and was lying alongside the tench.

“Splendid,” said Merlyn. “Let’s go for a little swim.”

The Wart was on an even keel now, and reasonably able to move about. He had leisure to observe the extraordinary universe into which the tattooed gentleman’s trident had plunged him. It was very different from the universe to which he had hitherto been accustomed. For one thing, the heaven or sky above him was now a perfect circle poised a few inches above his head. The horizon had closed in to this. In order to imagine yourself into the Wart’s position, you will have to picture a round horizon, a few inches above your head, instead of the flat horizon which you have usually seen. Under this horizon of air you will have to imagine another horizon under water, spherical and practically upside down – for the surface of the water acted partly as a mirror to what was below it. It is difficult to imagine. What makes it a great deal more difficult to imagine is that everything which human beings would consider to be above the water level was fringed with all the colours of the spectrum. For instance, if you had happened to be fishing for the Wart, he would have seen you, at the rim of the tea saucer which was the upper air to him, not as one person waving a fishing-rod, but as seven people, whose outlines were red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, all waving the same rod whose colours were as varied. In fact, you would have been a rainbow man to him, a beacon of flashing and radiating colours, which ran into one another and had rays all about. You would have been burnt upon the water like Cleopatra in the poem by Herédia. The reference may possibly be to Shakespeare.

The next most lovely thing was that the Wart had no weight. He was not earth-bound any more and did not have to plod along on a flat surface, pressed down by gravity and the weight of the atmosphere. He could do what men have always wanted to do, that is, fly. There is practically no difference between flying in the water and flying in the air. The best of it was that he did not have to fly in a machine, by pulling levers and sitting still, but could do it with his own body. It was like the dreams people have.

Just as they were going to swim off their tour of inspection, a timid young roach appeared from between two waving bottle brushes of mare’s tail and hung about, looking quite pale with agitation. It looked at them with big apprehensive eyes and evidently wanted something, but could not make up its mind.

“Approach,” said Merlyn gravely.