The Sword in the Stone

At this the roach rushed up like a hen, burst into tears and began stammering its message.

“If you p-p-p-please, Doctor,” stammered the poor creature, gabbling so that they could scarcely understand what it said, “we have such a d-dretful case of s-s-s-something or other in our family, and we w-w-w-wondered if you could s-s-s-spare the time? It’s our d-d-d-dear Mamma, who w-w-w-will swim a-a-a-all the time upside d-d-d-down, and she d-d-d-does look so horrible and s-s-s-speaks so strange, that we r-r-r-really thought she ought to have a d-d-d-doctor, if it w-w-w-wouldn’t be too much? C-C-C-Clara says to say so sir, if you s-s-s-see w-w-w-what I m-m-m-mean?”

Here the little roach began fizzing so much, what with its stammer and its tearful disposition, that it became perfectly inarticulate and could only stare at Merlyn with big mournful eyes.

“Never mind, my little man,” said Merlyn. “There, there, lead me to your poor Mamma, and we shall see what we can do.”

They all three swam off into the murk under the draw-bridge upon their errand of mercy.

“Very Russian, these roach,” whispered Merlyn to the Wart, behind his fin. “It’s probably only a case of nervous hysteria, a matter for the psychologist rather than the physician.”

The roach’s Mamma was lying on her back as he had described. She was squinting horribly, had folded her fins upon her chest, and every now and then she blew a bubble. All her children were gathered round her in a circle, and every time she blew a bubble they all nudged each other and gasped. She had a seraphic smile upon her face.

“Well, well, well,” said Merlyn, putting on his best bedside manner, “and how is Mrs Roach today?”

He patted all the young roaches on the head and advanced with stately motions towards his patient. It should perhaps be mentioned that Merlyn was a ponderous, deep-beamed fish of about five pounds, red-leather coloured, with small scales, adipose in his fins, rather slimy, and having a bright marigold eye – a respectable figure.

Mrs Roach held out a languid fin, sighed emphatically and said, “Ah, Doctor, so you’ve come at last?”

“Hum,” said Merlyn, in his deepest tones.

Then he told everybody to close their eyes – the Wart peeped – and began to swim round the invalid in a slow and stately dance. As he danced he sang. His song was this:

Therapeutic,

Elephantic,

Diagnosis,

Boom!

Pancreatic,

Microstatic,

Anti-toxic,

Doom!

With normal catabolism,

Gabbleism and babbleism,

Snip, Snap, Snorum

Cut out his abdonorum.

Dyspepsia,

Anaemia,

Toxaemia,

One, two, three,

And out goes He,

With a fol-de-rol-derido for the Five Guinea Fee.

At the end of his song he was swimming round his patient so close that he actually touched her, stroking his brown smooth-scaled flanks against her more rattly pale ones. Perhaps he was healing her with slime – for all fishes are said to go to the Tench for medicine – or perhaps it was by touch or massage or hypnotism. In any case, Mrs Roach suddenly stopped squinting, turned the right way up, and said, “Oh, Doctor, dear Doctor, I feel I could eat a little lob-worm now.”

“No lob-worm,” said Merlyn, “not for two days. I shall give you a prescription for a strong broth of algae every two hours, Mrs Roach. We must build up your strength you know. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

Then he patted all the little roaches once more, told them to grow up into brave little fish, and swam off with an air of great importance into the gloom. As he swam, he puffed his mouth in and out.

“What did you mean by that about Rome?” asked the Wart, when they were out of earshot.

“Heaven knows,” said the tench.

They swam along, Merlyn occasionally advising him to put his back into it when he forgot, and all the strange under-water world began to dawn about them, deliciously cool after the heat of the upper air. The great forests of the weed were delicately traced, and in them there hung motionless many schools of sticklebacks learning to do their physical exercises in strict unison. On the word One they all lay still: at Two they faced about: at Three they all shot together into a cone, whose apex was a bit of something to eat. Water snails slowly ambled about on the stems of the lilies or under their leaves, while fresh-water mussels lay on the bottom doing nothing in particular. Their flesh was salmon pink, like a very good strawberry cream ice. The small congregations of perch – it was a strange thing, but all the bigger fish seemed to have hidden themselves – had delicate circulations, so that they blushed or grew pale as easily as a lady in a Victorian novel. Only their blush was a deep olive colour, and it was the blush of rage. Whenever Merlyn and his companion swam past them, they raised their spiky dorsal fins in menace, and only lowered them when they saw that Merlyn was a tench. The black bars on their sides made them look as if they had been grilled; and these also could become darker or lighter. Once the two travellers passed under a swan. The white creature floated above like a zeppelin, all indistinct except what was under the water. The latter part was quite clear and showed that the swan was floating slightly on one side with one leg cocked up over its back.

“Look,” said the Wart, “it’s the poor swan with the deformed leg. It can only paddle with one leg, and the other side of it is all hunched.”

“Nonsense,” said the swan snappily, putting its head into the water and giving them a frown with its black nares. “Swans like to rest in this position, and you can keep your fishy sympathy to yourself, so there.” It continued to glare at them from up above, like a white snake suddenly let down through the ceiling, until they were out of sight.

“You swim along,” said the tench in gloomy tones, “as if there was nothing to be afraid of in the world. Don’t you see that this place is exactly like the forest you had to come through to find me?”

“Is it?”

“Look over there.”

The Wart looked, and at first saw nothing. Then he saw a little translucent shape hanging motionless near the surface. It was just outside the shadow of a water-lily and was evidently enjoying the sun. It was a baby pike, absolutely rigid and probably asleep, and it looked like a pipe stem or a sea horse stretched out flat. It would be a brigand when it grew up.

“I am taking you to see one of those,” said the tench, “the Emperor of all these purlieus. As a doctor I have immunity, and I daresay he will respect you as my companion as well. But you had better keep your tail bent in case he is feeling tyrannical.”

“Is he the King of the Moat?”

“He is the King of the Moat. Old Jack they call him, and some Black Peter, but for the most part they don’t mention him by name at all. They just call him Mr M. You will see what it is to be a king.”

The Wart began to hang behind his conductor a little, and perhaps it was as well that he did, for they were almost on top of their destination before he noticed it. When he did see the old despot he started back in horror, for Mr M. was four feet long, his weight incalculable. The great body, shadowy and almost invisible among the stems, ended in a face which had been ravaged by all the passions of an absolute monarch, by cruelty, sorrow, age, pride, selfishness, loneliness and thought too strong for individual brains. There he hung or hoved, his vast ironic mouth permanently drawn downwards in a kind of melancholy, his lean clean-shaven chops giving him an American expression, like that of Uncle Sam. He was remorseless, disillusioned, logical, predatory, fierce, pitiless: but his great jewel of an eye was that of a stricken deer, large, fearful, sensitive and full of griefs. He made no movement whatever, but looked upon them with this bitter eye.

The Wart thought to himself that he did not care for Mr M.

“Lord,” said Merlyn, not paying any attention to his nervousness. “I have brought a young professor who would learn to profess.”

“To profess what?” inquired the King of the Moat slowly, hardly opening his jaws and speaking through his nose.

“Power,” said the tench.

“Let him speak for himself.”

“Please,” said the Wart, “I don’t know what I ought to ask.”

“There is nothing,” said the monarch, “except the power that you profess to seek: power to grind and power to digest, power to seek and power to find, power to await and power to claim, all power and pitilessness springing from the nape of the neck.”

“Thank you,” said the Wart.

“Love is a trick played on us by the forces of evolution,” continued the monster monotonously. “Pleasure is the bait laid down by the same. There is only power. Power is of the individual mind, but the mind’s power alone is not enough. The power of strength decides everything in the end, and only Might is right.

“Now I think it is time that you should go away, young master, for I find this conversation excessively exhausting. I think you ought to go away really almost at once, in case my great disillusioned mouth should suddenly determine to introduce you to my great gills, which have teeth in them also. Yes, I really think you ought to go away this moment. Indeed, I think you ought to put your very back into it. And so, a long farewell to all my greatness.”

The Wart had found himself quite hypnotized by all these long words, and hardly noticed that the thin-lipped tight mouth was coming closer and closer to him all the time. It came imperceptibly, as the cold suave words distracted his attention, and suddenly it was looming within an inch of his nose. On the last sentence it opened, horrible and vast, the thin skin stretching ravenously from bone to bone and tooth to tooth. Inside there seemed to be nothing but teeth, sharp teeth like thorns in rows and ridges everywhere, like the nails in labourers’ boots, and it was only at the very last second that he was able to regain his own will, to pull himself together, recollect his instructions and to escape. All those teeth clashed behind him at the tip of his tail, as he gave the heartiest jack-knife he had ever given.

In a second he was on dry land once more, standing beside Merlyn on the piping drawbridge, panting in all his clothes.

CHAPTER SIX

One Thursday afternoon the boys were doing their archery as usual. There were two straw targets fifty yards apart, and when they had shot their arrows at the one, they had only to go to it, collect them, and fire back at the other after facing about. It was still the loveliest summer weather, and there had been chickens for dinner, so that Merlyn had gone off to the edge of the shooting-ground and sat down under a tree. What with the warmth and the chickens and the cream he had poured over his pudding and the continual repassing of the boys and the tock of the arrows in the targets – which was as sleepy to listen to as the noise of a lawn-mower – and the dance of the egg-shaped sunspots between the leaves of his tree, the aged magician was soon fast asleep.

Archery was a serious occupation in those days. It had not yet been relegated to Red Indians and small boys, so that when you were shooting badly you got into a bad temper, just as the wealthy pheasant shooters do today. Kay was shooting badly. He was trying too hard and plucking on his loose, instead of leaving it to the bow.

“Oh, come on,” said Kay. “I’m sick of these beastly targets. Let’s have a shot at the popinjay.”

They left the targets and had several shots at the popinjay – which was a large, bright-coloured artificial bird stuck on the top of a stick, like a parrot – and Kay missed these also. First he had a feeling of “Well, I will hit the filthy thing, even if I have to go without my tea until I do it.” Then he merely became bored.

The Wart said, “Let’s play Rovers then. We can come back in half an hour and wake Merlyn up.”

What they called Rovers consisted of going for a walk with their bows and shooting one arrow each at any agreed mark which they came across. Sometimes it would be a mole hill, sometimes a clump of rushes, sometimes a big thistle almost at their feet. They varied the distance at which they chose these objects, sometimes picking a target as much as 120 yards away – which was about as far as these boys’ bows could carry – and sometimes having to aim actually below a close thistle because the arrow always leaps up a foot or two as it leaves the bow. They counted five for a hit, and one if the arrow was within a bow’s length, and added up their scores at the end.

On this Thursday they chose their targets wisely, and, besides, the grass of the big field had been lately cut. So they never had to search for their arrows for long, which nearly always happens, as in golf, if you shoot ill-advisedly near the hedges or in rough places. The result was that they strayed further than usual and found themselves near the edge of the savage forest where Cully had been lost.

“I vote,” said Kay, “that we go to those buries in the chase, and see if we can get a rabbit. It would be more fun than shooting at these hummocks.”

They did this. They chose two trees about a hundred yards apart, and each boy stood under one of them, waiting for the conies to come out again. They stood very still, with their bows already raised and arrows fitted, so that they would make the least possible movement to disturb the creatures when they did appear. It was not difficult for either of them to stand thus, for the very first test which they had had to pass in archery was standing with the bow at arm’s length for half an hour. They had six arrows each and would be able to fire and mark them all, before they needed to frighten the rabbits back by walking about to collect. An arrow does not make enough noise to upset more than the particular rabbit that it is shot at.

At the fifth shot Kay was lucky. He allowed just the right amount for wind and distance, and his point took a young coney square in the head. It had been standing up on end to look at him, wondering what he was.

“Oh, well shot!” cried the Wart, as they ran to pick it up. It was the first rabbit they had ever hit, and luckily they had killed it dead.

When they had carefully gutted it with the little hunting knife which Merlyn had given – in order to keep it fresh – and passed one of its hind legs through the other at the hock, for convenience in carrying, the two boys prepared to go home with their prize. But before they unstrung their bows they used to observe a ceremony. Every Thursday afternoon, after the last serious arrow had been fired, they were allowed to fit one more nock to their strings and to discharge the arrow straight up in the air. It was partly a gesture of farewell, partly of triumph, and it was beautiful. They did it now as a salute to their first prey.

The Wart watched his arrow go up. The sun was already westing towards evening, and the trees where they were had plunged them into a partial shade. So, as the arrow topped the trees and climbed into sunlight, it began to burn against the evening like the sun itself. Up and up it went, not weaving as it would have done with a snatching loose, but soaring, swimming, aspiring towards heaven, steady, golden and superb. Just as it had spent its force, just as its ambition had been dimmed by destiny and it was preparing to faint, to turn over, to pour back into the bosom of its mother earth, a terrible portent happened. A gore-crow came flapping wearily before the approaching night. It came, it did not waver, it took the arrow. It flew away, heavy and hoisting, with the arrow in its beak.

Kay was frightened by this, but the Wart was furious. He had loved his arrow’s movement, its burning ambition in the sunlight, and besides it was his best arrow. It was the only one which was perfectly balanced, sharp, tight-feathered, clean-nocked, and neither warped nor scraped.

“It was a witch,” said Kay.

“I don’t care if it was ten witches,” said the Wart. “I am going to get it back.”

“But it went towards the Forest.”

“I shall go after it.”

“You can go alone, then,” said Kay. “I’m not going into the Forest Sauvage, just for a putrid arrow.”

“I shall go alone.”

“Oh, well,” said Kay. “I suppose I shall have to come too, if you’re so set on it. And I bet we shall get nobbled by Wat.”

“Let him nobble,” said the Wart, “I want my arrow.”

They went in the Forest at the place where they had last seen the bird of carrion.

In less than five minutes they were in a clearing with a well and a cottage just like Merlyn’s.

“Goodness,” said Kay, “I never knew there were any cottages so close. I say, let’s go back.”

“I just want to look at this place,” said the Wart. “It’s probably a wizard’s.”

The cottage had a brass plate screwed on the garden gate. It said:

MADAME MIM, B.A. (Dom-Daniel)

PIANOFORTE

NEEDLEWORK

NECROMANCY

No Hawkers,

Circulars or Income Tax

Beware of the Dragon

The cottage had lace curtains. These stirred ever so slightly, for behind them there was a lady peeping. The gore-crow was standing on the chimney.

“Come on,” said Kay. “Oh, do come on. I tell you, she’ll never give it back.”

At this point the door of the cottage opened suddenly and the witch was revealed standing in the passage. She was a strikingly beautiful woman of about thirty, with coal-black hair so rich that it had the blue-black of the maggot-pies in it, sky bright eyes and a general soft air of butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth. She was sly.

“How do you do, my dears,” said Madame Mim. “And what can I do for you today?”

The boys took off their leather caps, and Wart said, “Please, there is a crow sitting on your chimney and I think it has stolen one of my arrows.”

“Precisely,” said Madame Mim. “I have the arrow within.”

“Could I have it back, please?”

“Inevitably ,” said Madame Mim. “The young gentleman shall have his arrow on the very instant, in four ticks and ere the bat squeaks thrice.”

“Thank you very much,” said the Wart.

“Step forward,” said Madame Mim. “Honour the threshold. Accept the humble hospitality in the spirit in which it is given.”

“I really do not think we can stay,” said the Wart politely. “I really think we must go. We shall be expected back at home.”

“Sweet expectation,” replied Madame Mim in devout tones.

“Yet you would have thought,” she added, “that the young gentleman could have found time to honour a poor cottager, out of politeness. Few can believe how we ignoble tenants of the lower classes value a visit from the landlord’s sons.”

“We would like to come in,” said the Wart, “very much. But you see we shall be late already.”

The lady now began to give a sort of simpering whine. “The fare is lowly,” she said. “no doubt it is not what you would be accustomed to eating, and so naturally such highly-born ones would not care to partake.”

Kay’s strongly-developed feeling for good form gave way at this. He was an aristocratic boy always, and condescended to his inferiors so that they could admire him. Even at the risk of visiting a witch, he was not going to have it said that he had refused to eat a tenant’s food because it was too humble.

“Come on, Wart,” he said. “We needn’t be back before vespers.”

Madame Mim swept them a low curtsey as they crossed the threshold. Then she took them each by the scruff of the neck, lifted them right off the ground with her strong gypsy arms, and shot out of the back door with them almost before they had got in at the front. The Wart caught a hurried glimpse of her parlour and kitchen. The lace curtains, the aspidistra, the lithograph called the Virgin’s Choise, the printed text of the Lord’s Prayer written backwards and hung upside down, the sea-shell, the needle-case in the shape of a heart with A Present from Camelot written on it, the broomsticks, the cauldrons, and the bottles of dandelion wine. Then they were kicking and struggling in the back yard.

“We thought that the growing sportsmen would care to examine our rabbits,” said Madame Mim.

There was indeed a row of large rabbit hutches in front of them, but they were empty of rabbits. In one hutch there was a poor ragged old eagle owl, evidently quite miserable and neglected: in another a small boy unknown to them, a wittol who could only roll his eyes and burble when the witch came near. In a third there was a moulting black cock. A fourth had a mangy goat in it, also black, and two more stood empty.

“Grizzle Greediguts,” cried the witch.

“Here, Mother,” answered the carrion crow.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.