The Once and Future King

Wart watched the great man in silence for some time, then went indoors to see if there was any hope of breakfast. He found that there was, for the whole castle was suffering from the same sort of nervous excitement which had got him out of bed so early, and even Merlyn had dressed himself in a pair of breeches which had been fashionable some centuries later with the University Beagles.

Boar-hunting was fun. It was nothing like badger-digging or covert-shooting or foxhunting today. Perhaps the nearest thing to it would be ferreting for rabbits – except that you used dogs instead of ferrets, had a boar that easily might kill you, instead of a rabbit, and carried a boar-spear upon which your life depended instead of a gun. They did not usually hunt the boar on horseback. Perhaps the reason for this was that the boar season happened in the two winter months, when the old English snow would be liable to ball in your horse’s hoofs and render galloping too dangerous. The result was that you were yourself on foot, armed only with steel, against an adversary who weighed a good deal more than you did and who could unseam you from the nave to the chaps, and set your head upon his battlements. There was only one rule in boar-hunting. It was: Hold on. If the boar charged, you had to drop on one knee and present your boar-spear in his direction. You held the butt of it with your right hand on the ground to take the shock, while you stretched your left arm to its fullest extent and kept the point toward the charging boar. The spear was as sharp as a razor, and it had a cross-piece about eighteen inches away from the point. This cross-piece or horizontal bar prevented the spear from going more than eighteen inches into his chest. Without the cross-piece, a charging boar would have been capable of rushing right up the spear, even if it did go through him, and getting at the hunter like that. But with the cross-piece he was held away from you at a spear’s length, with eighteen inches of steel inside him. It was in this situation that you had to hold on.

He weighed between ten and twenty score, and his one object in life was to heave and weave and sidestep, until he could get at his assailant and champ him into chops, while the assailant’s one object was not to let go of the spear, clasped tight under his arm, until somebody had come to finish him off. If he could keep hold of his end of the weapon, while the other end was stuck in the boar, he knew that there was at least a spear’s length between them, however much the boar ran him round the forest. You may be able to understand, if you think this over, why all the sportsmen of the castle got up early for the Boxing Day Meet, and ate their breakfast with a certain amount of suppressed feeling.

‘Ah,’ said Sir Grummore, gnawing a pork chop which he held in his fingers, ‘down in time for breakfast, hey?’

‘Yes, I am,’ said the Wart.

‘Fine huntin’ mornin’,’ said Sir Grummore. ‘Got your spear sharp, hey?’

‘Yes, I have, thank you,’ said the Wart. He went over to the sideboard to get a chop for himself.

‘Come on, Pellinore,’ said Sir Ector. ‘Have a few of these chickens. You’re eatin’ nothin’ this mornin’.’

King Pellinore said, ‘I don’t think I will, thank you all the same. I don’t think I feel quite the thing, this morning, what?’

Sir Grummore took his nose out of his chop and inquired sharply, ‘Nerves?’

‘Oh, no,’ cried King Pellinore. ‘Oh, no, really not that, what? I think I must have taken something last night that disagreed with me.’

‘Nonsense, my dear fellah,’ said Sir Ector, ‘here you are, just you have a few chickens to keep your strength up.’

He helped the unfortunate King to two or three capons, and the latter sat down miserably at the end of the table, trying to swallow a few bits of them.

‘Need them,’ said Sir Grummore meaningly, ‘by the end of the day, I dare say.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘Know so,’ said Sir Grummore, and winked at his host.

The Wart noticed that Sir Ector and Sir Grummore were eating with rather exaggerated gusto. He did not feel that he could manage more than one chop himself, and, as for Kay, he had stayed away from the breakfast-room altogether.

When breakfast was over, and Master Twyti had been consulted, the Boxing Day cavalcade moved off to the Meet. Perhaps the hounds would have seemed rather a mixed pack to a master of hounds today. There were half a dozen black and white alaunts, which looked like greyhounds with the heads of bull-terriers or worse. These, which were the proper hounds for boars, wore muzzles because of their ferocity. The gaze-hounds, of which there were two taken just in case, were in reality nothing but greyhounds according to modern language, while the lymers were a sort of mixture between the bloodhound and the red setter of today. The latter had collars on, and were led with straps. The brachets were like beagles, and trotted along with the master in the way that beagles always have trotted, and a charming way it is.

With the hounds went the foot-people. Merlyn, in his running breeches, looked rather like Lord Baden-Powell, except, of course, that the latter did not wear a beard. Sir Ector was dressed in ‘sensible’ leather clothes – it was not considered sporting to hunt in armour – and he walked beside Master Twyti with that bothered and important expression which has always been worn by masters of hounds. Sir Grummore, just behind, was puffing and asking everybody whether they had sharpened their spears. King Pellinore had dropped back among the villagers, feeling that there was safety in numbers. All the villagers were there, every male soul on the estate from Hob the austringer down to old Wat with no nose, every man carrying a spear or a pitchfork or a worn scythe blade on a stout pole. Even some of the young women who were courting had come out, with baskets of provisions for the men. It was a regular Boxing Day Meet.

At the edge of the forest the last follower joined up. He was a tall, distinguished-looking person dressed in green, and he carried a seven-foot bow.

‘Good morning, Master,’ he said pleasantly to Sir Ector.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Sir Ector. ‘Yes, yes, good mornin’, eh? Yes, good mornin’.’

He led the gentleman in green aside and said in a loud whisper that could be heard by everybody, ‘For heaven’s sake, my dear fellow, do be careful. This is the King’s own huntsman, and those two other chaps are King Pellinore and Sir Grummore. Now do be a good chap, my dear fellow, and don’t say anything controversial, will you, old boy, there’s a good chap?’

‘Certainly I won’t,’ said the green man reassuringly, ‘but I think you had better introduce me to them.’

Sir Ector blushed deeply and called out: ‘Ah, Grummore, come over here a minute, will you? I want to introduce a friend of mine, old chap, a chap called Wood, old chap – Wood with a W, you know, not an H. Yes, and this is King Pellinore. Master Wood – King Pellinore.’

‘Hail,’ said King Pellinore, who had not quite got out of the habit when nervous.

‘How do?’ said Sir Grummore. ‘No relation to Robin Hood, I suppose?’

‘Oh, not in the least,’ interrupted Sir Ector hastily. ‘Double you, double owe, dee, you know, like the stuff they make furniture out of – furniture, you know, and spears, and – well – spears, you know, and furniture.’

‘How do you do?’ said Robin.

‘Hail,’ said King Pellinore.

‘Well,’ said Sir Grummore, ‘it is funny you should both wear green.’

‘Yes, it is funny, isn’t it?’ said Sir Ector anxiously. ‘He wears it in mournin’ for an aunt of his, who died by fallin’ out of a tree.’

‘Beg pardon, I’m sure,’ said Sir Grummore, grieved at having touched upon this tender subject – and all was well.

‘Now, then, Mr Wood,’ said Sir Ector when he had recovered. ‘Where shall we go for our first draw?’

As soon as this question had been put, Master Twyti was fetched into the conversation, and a brief confabulation followed in which all sorts of technical terms like ‘lesses’ were bandied about. Then there was a long walk in the wintry forest, and the fun began.

Wart had lost the panicky feeling which had taken hold of his stomach when he was breaking his fast. The exercise and the snow-wind had breathed him, so that his eyes sparkled almost as brilliantly as the frost crystals in the white winter sunlight, and his blood raced with the excitement of the chase. He watched the lymerer who held the two bloodhound dogs on their leashes, and saw the dogs straining more and more as the boar’s lair was approached. He saw how, one by one and ending with the gaze-hounds – who did not hunt by scent – the various hounds became uneasy and began to whimper with desire. He noticed Robin pause and pick up some lesses, which he handed to Master Twyti, and then the whole cavalcade came to a halt. They had reached the dangerous spot.

Boar-hunting was like cub-hunting to this extent, that the boar was attempted to be held up. The object of the hunt was to kill him as quickly as possible. Wart took up his position in the circle round the monster’s lair, and knelt down on one knee in the snow, with the handle of his spear couched on the ground, ready for emergencies. He felt the hush which fell upon the company, and saw Master Twyti wave silently to the lymerer to uncouple his hounds. The two lymers plunged immediately into the covert which the hunters surrounded. They ran mute.

There were five long minutes during which nothing happened. The hearts beat thunderously in the circle, and a small vein on the side of each neck throbbed in harmony with each heart. The heads turned quickly from side to side, as each man assured himself of his neighbours, and the breath of life streamed away on the north wind sweetly, as each realized how beautiful life was, which a reeking tusk might, in a few seconds, rape away from one or another of them if things went wrong.

The boar did not express his fury with his voice. There was no uproar in the covert or yelping from the lymers. Only, about a hundred yards away from the Wart, there was suddenly a black creature standing on the edge of the clearing. It did not seem to be a boar particularly, not in the first seconds that it stood there. It had come too quickly to seem to be anything. It was charging Sir Grummore before the Wart had recognized what it was.

The black thing rushed over the white snow, throwing up little puffs of it. Sir Grummore – also looking black against the snow – turned a quick somersault in a larger puff. A kind of grunt, but no noise of falling, came clearly on the north wind, and then the boar was gone. When it was gone, but not before, the Wart knew certain things about it – things which he had not had time to notice while the boar was there. He remembered the rank mane of bristles standing upright on its razor back, one flash of a sour tush, the staring ribs, the head held low, and the red flame from a piggy eye.

Sir Grummore got up, dusting snow out of himself unhurt, blaming his spear. A few drops of blood were to be seen frothing on the white earth. Master Twyti put his horn to his lips. The alaunts were uncoupled as the exciting notes of the menee began to ring through the forest and then the whole scene began to move. The lymers which had reared the boar – the proper word for dislodging – were allowed to pursue him to make them keen on their work. The brachets gave musical tongue. The alaunts galloped baying through the drifts. Everybody began to shout and run.

‘Avoy, avoy!’ cried the foot-people. ‘Shahou, shahou! Avaunt, sire, avaunt!’

‘Swef, swef!’ cried Master Twyti anxiously. ‘Now, now, gentlemen, give the hounds room, if you please.’

‘I say, I say!’ cried King Pellinore. ‘Did anybody see which way he went? What an exciting day, what? Sa sa cy avaunt, cy sa avaunt, sa cy avaunt!’

‘Hold hard, Pellinore!’ cried Sir Ector. ‘’Ware hounds, man, ’ware hounds. Can’t catch him yourself, you know. Il est hault. Il est hault!’

And ‘Til est ho,’ echoed the foot-people. ‘Tilly-ho,’ sang the trees. ‘Tally-ho,’ murmured the distant snow-drifts as the heavy branches, disturbed by the vibrations, slid noiseless puffs of sparkling powder to the muffled earth.

The Wart found himself running with Master Twyti.

It was like beagling in a way, except that it was beagling in a forest where it was sometimes difficult even to move. Everything depended on the music of the hounds and the various notes which the huntsman could blow to tell where he was and what he was doing. Without these the whole field would have been lost in two minutes – and even with them about half of it was lost in three.

Wart stuck to Twyti like a burr. He could move as quickly as the huntsman because, although the latter had the experience of a lifetime, he himself was smaller to get through obstacles and had, moreover, been taught by Maid Marian. He noticed that Robin kept up too, but soon the grunting of Sir Ector and the baa-ing of King Pellinore were left behind. Sir Grummore had given in early, having had most of the breath knocked out of him by the boar, and stood far in the rear declaring that his spear could no longer be quite sharp. Kay had stayed with him, so that he should not get lost. The foot-people had been early mislaid because they did not understand the notes of the horn. Merlyn had torn his breeches and stopped to mend them up by magic.

The sergeant had thrown out his chest so far in crying Tally-ho and telling everybody which way they ought to run that he had lost all sense of place, and was leading a disconsolate party of villagers, in Indian file, at the double, with knees up, in the wrong direction. Hob was still in the running.

‘Swef, swef,’ panted the huntsman, addressing the Wart as if he had been a hound. ‘Not so fast, Master, they are going off the line.’

Even as he spoke, Wart noticed that the hound music was weaker and more querulous.

‘Stop,’ said Robin, ‘or we may tumble over him.’

The music died away.

‘Swef, swef!’ shouted Master Twyti at the top of his voice. ‘Sto arere, so howe, so howe!’ He swung his baldric in front of him, and, lifting the horn to his lips, began to blow a recheat.

There was a single note from one of the lymers.

‘Hoo arere,’ cried the huntsman.

The lymer’s note grew in confidence, faltered, then rose to the full bay.

‘Hoo arere! Here how, amy. Hark to Beaumont the valiant! Ho moy, ho moy, hole, hole, hole, hole.’

The lymer was taken up by the tenor bells of the brachets. The noises grew to a crescendo of excitement as the blood-thirsty thunder of the alaunts pealed through the lesser notes.

‘They have him,’ said Twyti briefly, and the three humans began to run again, while the huntsman blew encouragement with Trou-rou-root.

In a small bushment the grim boar stood at bay. He had got his hindquarters into the nook of a tree blown down by a gale, in an impregnable position. He stood on the defensive with his upper lip writhed back in a snarl. The blood of Sir Grummore’s gash welled fatly among the bristles of his shoulder and down his leg, while the foam of his chops dropped on the blushing snow and melted it. His small eyes darted in every direction. The hounds stood round, yelling at his mask, and Beaumont, with his back broken, writhed at his feet. He paid no further attention to the living hound, which could do him no harm. He was black, flaming and bloody.

‘So-ho,’ said the huntsman.

He advanced with his spear held in front of him, and the hounds, encouraged by their master, stepped forward with him pace by pace.

The scene changed as suddenly as a house of cards falling down. The boar was not at bay any more, but charging Master Twyti. As it charged, the alaunts closed in, seizing it fiercely by the shoulder or throat or leg, so that what surged down on the huntsman was not one boar but a bundle of animals. He dared not use his spear for fear of hurting the dogs. The bundle rolled forward unchecked, as if the hounds did not impede it at all. Twyti began to reverse his spear, to keep the charge off with its butt end, but even as he reversed it the tussle was upon him. He sprang back, tripped over a root, and the battle closed on top. The Wart pranced round the edge, waving his own spear in an agony, but there was nowhere he dared to thrust it in. Robin dropped his spear, drew his falchion in the same movement, stepped into the huddle of snarls, and calmly picked an alaunt up by the leg. The dog did not let go, but there was space where its body had been. Into this space the falchion went slowly, once, twice, thrice. The whole superstructure stumbled, recovered itself, stumbled again, and sank down ponderously on its left side. The hunt was over.

Master Twyti drew one leg slowly from under the boar, stood up, took hold of his knee with his right hand, moved it inquiringly in various directions, nodded to himself and stretched his back straight. Then he picked up his spear without saying anything and limped over to Beaumont. He knelt down beside him and took his head on his lap. He stroked Beaumont’s head and said, ‘Hark to Beaumont. Softly, Beaumont, mon amy. Oyez à Beaumont the Valiant. Swef, le douce Beaumont, swef, swef.’ Beaumont licked his hand but could not wag his tail. The huntsman nodded to Robin, who was standing behind, and held the hound’s eyes with his own. He said, ‘Good dog, Beaumont the valiant, sleep now, old friend Beaumont, good old dog.’ Then Robin’s falchion let Beaumont out of this world, to run free with Orion and roll among the stars.

The Wart did not like to watch Master Twyti for a moment. The strange, leathery man stood up without saying anything and whipped the hounds off the corpse of the boar as he was accustomed to do. He put his horn to his lips and blew the four long notes of the mort without a quaver. But he was blowing the notes for a different reason, and he startled the Wart because he seemed to be crying.

The mort brought most of the stragglers up in due time. Hob was there already and Sir Ector came next, whacking the brambles aside with his boar-spear, puffing importantly and shouting, ‘Well done, Twyti. Splendid hunt, very. That’s the way to chase a beast of venery, I will say. What does he weigh?’ The others dribbled in by batches, King Pellinore bounding along and crying out, ‘Tally-ho! Tally-ho! Tally-ho!’ in ignorance that the hunt was done. When informed of this, he stopped and said, ‘Tally-ho, what?’ in a feeble voice, then relapsed into silence. Even the sergeant’s Indian file arrived in the end, still doubling with knees up, and were halted in the clearing while the sergeant explained to them with great satisfaction that if it had not been for him, all would have been lost. Merlyn appeared holding up his running shorts, having failed in his magic. Sir Grummore came stumping along with Kay, saying that it had been one of the finest points he had ever seen run, although he had not seen it, and then the butcher’s business of the ‘undoing’ was proceeded with apace.

Over this there was a bit of excitement. King Pellinore, who had really been scarcely himself all day, made the fatal mistake of asking when the hounds were going to be given their quarry. Now, as everybody knows, a quarry is a reward of entrails, etc., which is given to the hounds on the hide of the dead beast (sur le quir), and, as everybody else knows, a slain boar is not skinned. It is disembowelled without the hide being taken off, and since there can be no hide, there can be no quarry. We all know that the hounds are rewarded with a fouail, or mixture of bowels and bread cooked over a fire, and, of course, poor King Pellinore had used the wrong word.

So King Pellinore was bent over the dead beast amid loud huzzas, and the protesting monarch was given a hearty smack with a sword blade by Sir Ector. The King then said, ‘I think you are all a lot of beastly cads,’ and wandered off mumbling into the forest.

The boar was undone, the hounds rewarded, and the foot-people, standing about in chattering groups because they would have got wet if they had sat down in the snow, ate the provisions which the young women had brought in baskets. A small barrel of wine which had been thoughtfully provided by Sir Ector was broached, and a good drink was had by all. The boar’s feet were tied together, a pole was slipped between his legs, and two men hoisted it upon their shoulders. William Twyti stood back, and courteously blew the prise.

It was at this moment that King Pellinore reappeared. Even before he came into view they could hear him crashing in the undergrowth and calling out, ‘I say, I say! Come here at once! A most dreadful thing has happened!’ He appeared dramatically upon the edge of the clearing, just as a disturbed branch, whose burden was too heavy, emptied a couple of hundredweight of snow on his head. King Pellinore paid no attention. He climbed out of the snow heap as if he had not noticed it, still calling out, ‘I say, I say!’

‘What is it, Pellinore?’ shouted Sir Ector.

‘Oh, come quick!’ cried the King, and, turning round distracted, he vanished again into the forest.

‘Is he all right,’ inquired Sir Ector, ‘do you suppose?’

‘Excitable character,’ said Sir Grummore. ‘Very.’

‘Better follow up and see what he’s doin’.’

The procession moved off sedately in King Pellinore’s direction, following his erratic course by the fresh tracks in the snow.

The spectacle which they came across was one for which they were not prepared. In the middle of a dead gorse bush King Pellinore was sitting, with the tears streaming down his face. In his lap there was an enormous snake’s head, which he was patting. At the other end of the snake’s head there was a long, lean, yellow body with spots on it. At the end of the body there were some lion’s legs which ended in the slots of a hart.

‘There, there,’ the King was saying. ‘I did not mean to leave you altogether. It was only because I wanted to sleep in a feather bed, just for a bit. I was coming back, honestly I was. Oh, please don’t die, Beast, and leave me without any fewmets!’

When he saw Sir Ector, the King took command of the situation. Desperation had given him authority.

‘Now, then, Ector,’ he exclaimed. ‘Don’t stand there like a ninny. Fetch that barrel of wine along at once.’

They brought the barrel and poured out a generous tot for the Questing Beast.

‘Poor creature,’ said King Pellinore indignantly. ‘It has pined away, positively pined away, just because there was nobody to take an interest in it. How I could have stayed all that while with Sir Grummore and never given my old Beast a thought I really don’t know. Look at its ribs, I ask you. Like the hoops of a barrel. And lying out in the snow all by itself, almost without the will to live. Come on, Beast, you see if you can’t get down another gulp of this. It will do you good.

‘Mollocking about in a feather bed,’ added the remorseful monarch, glaring at Sir Grummore, ‘like a – like a kidney!’

‘But how did you – how did you find it?’ faltered Sir Grummore.

‘I happened on it. And small thanks to you. Running about like a lot of nincompoops and smacking each other with swords. I happened on it in this gorse bush here, with snow all over its poor back and tears in its eyes and nobody to care for it in the wide world. It’s what comes of not leading a regular life. Before, it was all right. We got up at the same time, and quested for regular hours, and went to bed at half past ten. Now look at it. It has gone to pieces altogether, and it will be your fault if it dies. You and your bed.’

‘But, Pellinore!’ said Sir Grummore …

‘Shut your mouth,’ replied the King at once. ‘Don’t stand there bleating like a fool, man. Do something. Fetch another pole so that we can carry old Glatisant home. Now then, Ector, haven’t you got any sense? We must just carry him home and put him in front of the kitchen fire. Send somebody on to make some bread and milk. And you, Twyti, or whatever you choose to call yourself, stop fiddling with that trumpet of yours and run ahead to get some blankets warmed.

‘When we get home,’ concluded King Pellinore, ‘the first thing will be to give it a nourishing meal, and then, if it is all right in the morning, I will give it a couple of hours’ start and then hey-ho for the old life once again. What about that, Glatisant, hey? You’ll tak’ the high road and I’ll tak’ the low road, what? Come along, Robin Hood, or whoever you are – you may think I don’t know, but I do – stop leaning on your bow with that look of negligent woodcraft. Pull yourself together, man, and get that muscle-bound sergeant to help you carry her. Now then, lift her easy. Come along, you chuckle-heads, and mind you don’t trip. Feather beds and quarry, indeed; a lot of childish nonsense. Go on, advance, proceed, step forward, march! Feather brains, I call it, that’s what I do.