T. White - The Once and Future King

The Wart got up from his stool and stood in front of his tutor. Merlyn put down his knitting.

‘First you go small,’ said he, pressing him on the top of his head, until he was a bit smaller than a pigeon. ‘Then you stand on the ball of your toes, bend at the knees, hold your elbows to your sides, lift your hands to the level of your shoulders, and press your first and second fingers together, as also your third and fourth. Look, it is like this.’

With these words the ancient nigromant stood upon tiptoe and did as he had explained.

The Wart copied him carefully and wondered what would happen next. What did happen was that Merlyn, who had been saying the final spells under his breath, suddenly turned himself into a condor, leaving the Wart standing on tiptoe unchanged. He stood there as if he were drying himself in the sun, with a wingspread of about eleven feet, a bright orange head and a magenta carbuncle. He looked very surprised and rather funny.

‘Come back,’ said the Wart. ‘You have changed the wrong one.’

‘It is this by-our-lady spring cleaning,’ exclaimed Merlyn, turning back into himself. ‘Once you let a woman into your study for half an hour, you do not know where to lay your hands on the right spell, not if it was ever so. Stand up and we will try again.’

This time the now tiny Wart felt his toes shooting out and scratching on the floor. He felt his heels rise and stick out behind and his knees draw into his stomach. His thighs became quite short. A web of skin grew from his wrists to his shoulders, while his primary feathers burst out in soft quills from the end of his fingers and quickly grew. His secondaries sprouted along his forearm, and a charming little false primary sprang from the end of each thumb.

The dozen feathers of his tail, with the double deck-feathers in the middle, grew out in the twinkling of an eye, and all the covert feathers of his back and breast and shoulders slipped out of the skin to hide the roots of the more important plumes. Wart looked quickly at Merlyn, ducked his head between his legs and had a look through there, rattled his feathers into place, and began to scratch his chin with the sharp talon of one toe.

‘Good,’ said Merlyn. ‘Now hop on my hand – ah, be careful and don’t gripe – and listen to what I have to tell you. I shall take you into the mews now that Hob has locked up for the night, and I shall put you loose and unhooded beside Balin and Balan. Now pay attention. Don’t go close to anybody without speaking first. You must remember that most of them are hooded and might be startled into doing something rash. You can trust Balin and Balan, also the kestrel and the spar-hawk. Don’t go within reach of the falcon unless she invites you to. On no account must you stand beside Cully’s special enclosure, for he is unhooded and will go for you through the mesh if he gets half a chance. He is not quite right in his brains, poor chap, and if he once grips you, you will never leave his grip alive. Remember that you are visiting a kind of Spartan military mess. These fellows are regulars. As the junior subaltern your only business is to keep your mouth shut, speak when you are spoken to, and not interrupt.’

‘I bet I am more than a subaltern,’ said the Wart, ‘if I am a merlin.’

‘Well, as a matter of fact, you are. You will find that both the kestrel and the spar-hawk will be polite to you, but for all sake’s sake don’t interrupt the senior merlins or the falcon. She is the honorary colonel of the regiment. And as for Cully, well, he is a colonel too, even if he is infantry, so you must mind your p’s and q’s.’

‘I will be careful,’ said the Wart, who was beginning to feel rather scared.

‘Good. I shall come for you in the morning, before Hob is up.’

All the hawks were silent as Merlyn carried their new companion into the mews, and silent for some time afterwards when they had been left in the dark. The rain had given place to a full August moonlight, so clear that you could see a woolly bear caterpillar fifteen yards away out of doors, as it climbed up and up the knobbly sandstone of the great keep, and it took the Wart only a few moments for his eyes to become accustomed to the diffused brightness inside the mews. The darkness became watered with light, with silver radiance, and then it was an eerie sight which dawned upon his vision. Each hawk or falcon stood in the silver upon one leg, the other tucked up inside the apron of its panel, and each was a motionless statue of a knight in armour. They stood gravely in their plumed helmets, spurred and armed. The canvas or sacking screens of their perches moved heavily in a breath of wind, like banners in a chapel, and the rapt nobility of the air kept their knight’s vigil in knightly patience. In those days they used to hood everything they could, even the goshawk and the merlin, which are no longer hooded according to modern practice.

Wart drew his breath at the sight of all these stately figures, standing so still that they might have been cut of stone. He was overwhelmed by their magnificence, and felt no need of Merlyn’s warning that he was to be humble and behave himself.

Presently there was a gentle ringing of a bell. The great peregrine falcon had bestirred herself and now said, in a high nasal voice which came from her aristocratic nose, ‘Gentlemen, you may converse.’

There was dead silence.

Only in the far corner of the room, which had been netted off for Cully – loose there, unhooded and deep in moult – they could hear a faint muttering from the choleric infantry colonel. ‘Damned niggers,’ he was mumbling. ‘Damned administration. Damned politicians. Damned bolsheviks. Is this a damned dagger that I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Damned spot. Now, Cully, hast thou but one brief hour to live, and then thou must be damned perpetually.’

‘Colonel,’ said the peregrine coldly, ‘not before the younger officers.’

‘I beg your pardon, Ma’am,’ said the poor Colonel at once. ‘It is something that gets into my head, you know. Some deep demnation.’

There was silence again formal, terrible and calm.

‘Who is the new officer?’ inquired the first fierce and beautiful voice.

Nobody answered.

‘Speak for yourself, sir,’ commanded the peregrine, looking straight before her as if she were talking in her sleep.

They could not see him through their hoods.

‘Please,’ began the Wart, ‘I am a merlin …’

And he stopped, scared in the stillness.

Balan, who was one of the real merlins standing beside him, leaned over and whispered quite kindly in his ear, ‘Don’t be afraid. Call her Madam.’

‘I am a merlin, Madam, an it please you.’

‘A Merlin. That is good. And what branch of the Merlins do you stoop from?’

The Wart did not know in the least what branch he stooped from, but he dared not be found out now in his lie.

‘Madame,’ he said, ‘I am one of the Merlins of the Forest Sauvage.’

There was silence at this again, the silver silence which he had begun to fear.

‘There are the Yorkshire Merlins,’ said the honorary colonel in her slow voice at last, ‘and the Welsh Merlins, and the McMerlins of the North. Then there are the Salisbury ones, and several from the neighbourhood of Exmoor, and the O’Merlins of Connaught. I do not think I have heard of any family in the Forest Sauvage.’

‘It could be a cadet branch, Madam,’ said Balan, ‘I dare say.’

‘Bless him,’ thought the Wart. ‘I shall catch him a special sparrow tomorrow and give it to him behind Hob’s back.’

‘That will be the solution, Captain Balan, no doubt.’

The silence fell again.

At last the peregrine rang her bell. She said, ‘We will proceed with the catechism, prior to swearing him in.’