The Once and Future King (#1-4)

by T. H. White

  ‘So I recollect.’

  ‘Well, it was a good battle,’ he repeated defensively. ‘It was a jolly battle, and I won it myself, and it was fun.’

  The magician’s eyes veiled themselves like a vulture’s, as he vanished inside his mind. There was silence on the battlements for several minutes, while a pair of peregrines that were being hacked in a nearby field flew over their heads in a playful chase, crying out Kik—kik—kik, their bells ringing. Merlyn looked out of his eyes once more.

  ‘It was clever of you,’ he said slowly, ‘to win the battle.’

  Arthur had been taught that he ought to be modest, and he was too simple to notice that the vulture was going to pounce.

  ‘Oh well. It was luck.’

  ‘Very clever,’ repeated Merlyn. ‘How many of your kerns were killed?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Kay said –’

  The King stopped in the middle of the sentence, and looked at him.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘It was not fun, then. I had not thought.’

  ‘The tally was more than seven hundred. They were all kerns, of course. None of the knights were injured, except the one who broke his leg falling off the horse.’

  When he saw that Arthur was not going to answer, the old fellow went on in a bitter voice.

  ‘I was forgetting,’ he added, ‘that you had some really nasty bruises.’

  Arthur glared at his finger—nails.

  ‘I hate you when you are a prig.’

  Merlyn was charmed.

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ he said, putting his arm through the King’s and smiling cheerfully. ‘That’s more like it. Stand up for yourself, that’s the ticket. Asking advice is the fatal thing. Besides, I won’t be here to advise you, fairly soon.’

  ‘What is this you keep talking about, about not being here, and the tumulus and so on?’

  ‘It is nothing. I am due to fall in love with a girl called Nimue in a short time, and then she learns my spells and locks me up in a cave for several centuries. It is one of those things which are going to happen.’

  ‘But, Merlyn, how horrible! To be stuck in a cave for centuries like a toad in a hole! We must do something about it.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said the magician. ‘What was I talking about?’

  ‘About this maiden…’

  ‘I was talking about advice, and how you must never take it. Well, I am going to give you some now. I advise you to think about battles, and about your realm of Gramarye, and about the sort of things a king has to do. Will you do that?’

  ‘I will. Of course I will. But about this girl who learns your spells…’

  ‘You see, it is a question of the people, as well as of the kings. When you said about the battle being a lovely one, you were thinking like your father. I want you to think like yourself, so that you will be a credit to all this education I have been giving you – afterwards, when I am only an old man locked up in a hole.’

  ‘Merlyn!’

  ‘There, there! I was playing for sympathy. Never mind. I said it for effect. As a matter of fact, it will be charming to have a rest for a few hundred years, and, as for Nimue, I am looking backward to her a good deal. No, no, the important thing is this thinking—for—yourself business and the matter of battles. Have you ever thought seriously about the state of your country, for instance, or are you going to go on all your life being like Uther Pendragon? After all, you are the King of the place.’

  ‘I have not thought very much.’

  ‘No. Then let me do some thinking with you. Suppose we think about your Gaelic friend, Sir Bruce Sans Pitié.’

  ‘That fellow!’

  ‘Exactly. And why do you say it like that?’

  ‘He is a swine. He goes murdering maidens – and, as soon as a real knight turns up to rescue them, he gallops off for all he is worth. He breeds special fast horses so that nobody can catch him, and he stabs people in the back. He’s a marauder. I would kill him at once if I could catch him.’

  ‘Well,’ said Merlyn, ‘I don’t think he is very different from the others. What is all this chivalry, anyway? It simply means being rich enough to have a castle and a suit of armour, and then, when you have them, you make the Saxon people do what you like. The only risk you run is of getting a few bruises if you happen to come across another knight. Look at that tilt you saw between Pellinore and Grummore, when you were small. It is this armour that does it. All the barons can slice the poor people about as much as they want, and it is a day’s work to hurt each other, and the result is that the country is devastated. Might is Right, that’s the motto. Bruce Sans Pitié is only an example of the general situation. Look at Lord and Nentres and Uriens and all that Gaelic crew, fighting against you for the Kingdom. Pulling swords out of stones is not a legal proof of paternity, I admit, but the kings of the Old Ones are not fighting you about that. They have rebelled, although you are their feudal sovereign, simply because the throne is insecure. England’s difficulty, we used to say, is Ireland’s opportunity. This is their chance to pay off racial scores, and to have some blood—letting as sport, and to make a bit of money in ransoms. Their turbulence does not cost them anything themselves because they are dressed in armour – and you seem to enjoy it too. But look at the country. Look at the barns burned, and dead men’s legs sticking out of ponds, and horses with swelled bellies by the roadside, and mills falling down, and money buried, and nobody daring to walk abroad with gold or ornaments on their clothes. That is chivalry nowadays. That is the Uther Pendragon touch. And then you talk about a battle being fun!’

  ‘I was thinking of myself.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I ought to have thought of the people who had no armour.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Might isn’t Right, is it, Merlyn?’

  ‘Aha!’ replied the magician, beaming. ‘Aha! You are a cunning lad, Arthur, but you won’t catch your old tutor like that. You are trying to put me in a passion by making me do the thinking. But I am not to be caught. I am too old a fox for that. You will have to think the rest yourself. Is might right – and if not, why not, give reasons and draw a plan. Besides, what are you going to do about it?’

  ‘What…’ began the King, but he saw the gathering frown.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will think about it.’

  And he began thinking, stroking his upper lip, where the moustache was going to be.

  There was a small incident before they left the keep. The man who had been carrying the two buckets to the menagerie came back with his buckets empty. He passed directly under them, looking small on his way to the kitchen door. Arthur, who had been playing with a loose stone which he had dislodged from one of the machicolations, got tired of thinking and leaned over with the stone in his hand.

  ‘How small Curselaine looks.’

  ‘He is tiny.’

  ‘I wonder what would happen if I dropped this stone on his head.’

  Merlyn measured the distance.

  ‘At thirty—two feet per second,’ he said, ‘I think it would kill him dead. Four hundred g is enough to shatter the skull.’

  ‘I have never killed anybody like that,’ said the boy, in an inquisitive tone.

  Merlyn was watching.

  ‘You are the King,’ he said.

  Then he added, ‘Nobody can say anything to you if you try.’

  Arthur stayed motionless, leaning out with the stone in his hand. Then, without his body moving, his eyes slid sideways to meet his tutor’s.

  The stone knocked Merlyn’s hat off as clean as a whistle, and the old gentleman chased him featly down the stairs, waving his wand of lignum vitae.

  Arthur was happy. Like the man in Eden before the fall, he was enjoying his innocence and fortune. Instead of being a poor squire, he was a king. Instead of being an orphan, he was loved by nearly everybody except the Gaels, and he loved everybody in return.

  So far as he was concerned
, as yet, there might never have been such a thing as a single particle of sorrow on the gay, sweet surface of the dew—glittering world.

  Chapter III

  Sir Kay had heard stories about the Queen of Orkney, and he was inquisitive about her.

  ‘Who is Queen Morgause?’ he asked one day. ‘I was told that she is beautiful. What did these Old Ones want to fight us about? And what is her husband like, King Lot? What is his proper name? I heard somebody calling him the King of the Out Isles, and then there are others who call him the King of Lothian and Orkney. Where is Lothian? Is it near Hy Brazil? I can’t understand what the revolt was about. Everybody knows that the King of England is their feudal overlord. I heard that she has four sons. Is it true that she doesn’t get on with her husband?’

  They were riding back from a day on the mountain, where they had been hunting grouse with the peregrines, and Merlyn had gone with them for the sake of the ride. He had become a vegetarian lately – an opponent of blood—sports on principle – although he had gone through most of them during his thoughtless youth – and even now he secretly adored to watch the falcons for themselves. Their masterly circles, as they waited on – mere specks in the sky – and the bur—r—r with which they scythed on the grouse, and the way in which the wretched quarry, killed instantaneously, went end—over tip into the heather – these were a temptation to which he yielded in the uncomfortable knowledge that it was sin. He consoled himself by saying that the grouse were for the pot. But it was a shallow excuse, for he did not believe in eating meat either.

  Arthur, who was riding watchfully like a sensible young monarch, withdrew his eye from a clump of whins which might have held an ambush in those early days of anarchy, and cocked one eyebrow at his tutor. He was wondering with half his mind which of Kay’s questions the magician would choose to answer, but the other half was still upon the martial possibilities of the landscape. He knew how far the falconers were behind them – the cadger carrying the hooded hawks on a square framework slung from his shoulders, with a man—at—arms on either side – and how far in front was the next likely place for a William Rufus arrow.

  Merlyn chose the second question.

  ‘Wars are never fought for one reason,’ he said. ‘They are fought for dozens of reasons, in a muddle. It is the same with revolts.’

  ‘But there must have been a main reason,’ said Kay.

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  Arthur observed: ‘We might have a trot now. It is clear going for two miles since those whins, and we can have a canter back again, to keep with the men. It would breathe the horses.’

  Merlyn’s hat blew off. They had to stop to pick it up. Afterwards they walked their horses sedately in a row.

  ‘One reason,’ said the magician, ‘is the immortal feud of Gael and Gall. The Gaelic Confederation are representatives of an ancient race which has been harried out of England by several races which are represented by you. Naturally they want to be as nasty as possible to you when they can.’

  ‘Racial history is beyond me,’ said Kay. ‘Nobody knows which race is which. They are all serfs, in any case.’

  The old man looked at him with something like amusement.

  ‘One of the startling things about the Norman,’ he said, ‘is that he really does not know a single things about anybody except himself. And you, Kay, as a Norman gentleman, carry the peculiarity to its limit. I wonder if you even know what a Gael is? Some people call them Celts.’

  ‘A celt is a kind of battle—axe,’ said Arthur, surprising the magician with this piece of information more than he had been surprised for several generations. For it was true, in one of the meanings of the word, although Arthur ought not to have known it.

  ‘Not that kind of celt. I am talking about the people. Let’s stick to calling them Gaels. I mean the Old Ones who live in Brittany and Cornwall and Wales and Ireland and Scotland. Picts and that.’

  ‘Picts?’ asked Kay. ‘I think I have heard about Picts. Pictures. They were painted blue.’

  ‘And I am supposed to have managed your education!’

  The King said thoughtfully: ‘Would you mind telling me about the races, Merlyn? I supposed I ought to understand the situation, if there has to be a second war.’

  This time it was Kay who looked surprised.

  ‘Is there to be a war?’ he asked. ‘This is the first I’ve heard of it. I thought the revolt was crushed last year?’

  ‘They have made a new confederation since they went home, with five new kings, which makes them eleven altogether. The new ones belong to the old blood too. They are Clariance of North Humberland, Idres of Cornwall, Cradelmas of North Wales, Brandegoris of Stranggore and Anguish of Ireland. It will be a proper war, I’m afraid.’

  ‘And all about races,’ said his foster—brother in disgust. ‘Still, it may be fun.’

  The King ignored him.

  ‘Go on,’ he said to Merlyn. ‘I want you to explain.

  ‘Only,’ he added quickly, as the magician opened his mouth, ‘not too many details.’

  Merlyn opened his mouth and shut it twice, before he was able to comply with this restriction.

  ‘About three thousand years ago,’ he said, ‘the country you are riding through belonged to a Gaelic race who fought with copper hatchets. Two thousand years ago they were hunted west by another Gaelic race with bronze swords. A thousand years ago there was a Teuton invasion by people who had iron weapons, but it didn’t reach the whole of the Pictish Isles because the Romans arrived in the middle and got mixed up with it. The Romans went away about eight hundred years ago, and then another Teuton invasion – of people mainly called Saxons – drove the whole rag—bag west as usual. The Saxons were just beginning to settle down when your father the Conqueror arrived with his pack of Normans, and that is where we are today. Robin Wood was a Saxon partisan.’

  ‘I thought we were called the British Isles.’

  ‘So we are. People have got the B’s and P’s muddled up. Nothing like the Teuton race for confusing its consonants. In Ireland they are still chattering away about some people called Fomorians, who were really Pomeranians, while…’

  Arthur interrupted him at the critical moment.

  ‘So it comes to this,’ he said, ‘that we Normans have the Saxons for serfs while the Saxons once had a sort of under serfs, who were called the Gaels – the Old Ones. In that case I don’t see why the Gaelic Confederation should want to fight against me – as a Norman king – when it was really the Saxons who hunted them, and when it was hundreds of years ago in any case.’

  ‘You are under—rating the Gaelic memory, dear boy. They don’t distinguish between you. The Normans are a Teuton race, like the Saxons whom your father conquered. So far as the ancient Gaels are concerned, they just regard both your races as branches of the same alien people, who have driven them north and west.’

  Kay said definitely: ‘I can’t stand any more history. After all, we are supposed to be grown up. If we go on, we shall be doing dictation.’

  Arthur grinned and began in the well—remembered sing—song voice: Barabara Celarent Darii Ferioque Prioris, while Kay sang the next four lines with him antiphonically.

  Merlyn said: ‘You asked for it.’

  ‘And now we have it.’

  ‘The main thing is that the war is going to happen because the Teutons or the Galls or whatever you them upset the Gaels long ago.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ exclaimed the magician. ‘I never said anything of the sort.’

  They gaped.

  ‘I said the war will happen for dozens of reasons, not for one. Another of the reasons for this particular war is because Queen Morgause wears the trousers. Perhaps I ought to say the trews.’

  Arthur asked painstakingly: ‘Let me get this clear. First I was given to understand that Lot and the rest had rebelled because they were Gaels and we were Galls, but now I am told that it deals with the Queen of Orkney’s trousers. Could you be more definite?’

&
nbsp; ‘There is the feud of Gael and Gall which we have been talking about, but there are other feuds too. Surely you have not forgotten that your father killed the Earl of Cornwall before you were born? Queen Morgause was one of the daughters of that Earl.’

  ‘The lovely Cornwall Sisters,’ observed Kay.

  ‘Exactly. You met one of them yourselves – Queen Morgan le Fay. That was when you were friends with Robin Wood, and you found her on a bed of lard. The third sister was Elaine. All three of them are witches of one sort or another, though Morgan is the only one who takes it seriously.’

  ‘If my father,’ said the King, ‘killed the Queen of Orkney’s father, then I think she has a good reason for wanting her husband to rebel against me.’

  ‘It is only a personal reason. Personal reasons are no excuse for war.’

  ‘And furthermore,’ the King continued, ‘if my race has driven out the Gaelic race, then I think the Queen of Orkney’s subjects have a good reason too.’

  Merlyn scratched his chin in the middle of the beard, with the hand which held the reins, and pondered.

  ‘Uther,’ he said at length, ‘your lamented father, was an aggressor. So were his predecessors the Saxons, who drove the Old Ones away. But if we go on living backward like that, we shall never come to the end of it. The Old Ones themselves were aggressors, against the earlier race of the copper hatchets, and even the hatchet fellows were aggressors, against some earlier crew of Esquimaux who lived on shells. You simply go on and on, until you get to Cain and Abel. But the point is that the Saxon Conquest did succeed, and so did the Norman Conquest of the Saxons. Your father settled the unfortunate Saxons long ago, however brutally he did it, and when a great many years have passed one ought to be ready to accept a status quo. Also I would like to point out that the Norman Conquest was a process of welding small units into bigger ones – while the present revolt of the Gaelic Confederation is a process of disintegration. They want to smash up what we may call the United Kingdom into a lot of piffling little kingdoms of their own. That is why their reason is not what you might call a good one.’

  He scratched his chin again, and became wrathful.