T. White - The Once and Future King

‘Boy!’ cried the Colonel in an unearthly voice, ‘don’t come near me, don’t come near. Ah, tempt not the foul fiend to his damnation.’

‘I do not fear you, sir,’ said the Wart. ‘Do not vex yourself, for no harm will come to either of us.’

‘No harm, quotha! Ah, go, before it is too late. I feel eternal longings in me.’

‘Never fear, sir. They have only to ring three times.’

At this the knights lowered their raised legs and gave them a solemn shake. The first sweet tinkling filled the room.

‘Madam, Madam!’ cried the Colonel in torture. ‘Have pity, have pity on a damned man of blood. Ring out the old, ring in the new. I can’t hold off much longer.’

‘Be brave, sir,’ said the Wart softly.

‘Be brave, sir! Why, but two nights since, one met the duke ’bout midnight in a lane behind Saint Mark’s Church, with the leg of a man upon his shoulder: and he howled fearfully.’

‘It is nothing,’ said the Wart.

‘Nothing! Said he was a wolf, only the difference was a wolf’s skin was hairy on the outside, his on the inside. Rip up my flesh and try. Ah, for quietus, with a bare bodkin!’

The bells rang for the second time.

The Wart’s heart was thumping, and now the Colonel was sidling toward him along the perch. Stamp, stamp, he went, striking the wood he trod on with a convulsive grip at every pace. His poor, mad, brooding eyes glared in the moonlight, shone against the persecuted darkness of his scowling brow. There was nothing cruel about him, no ignoble passion. He was terrified of the Wart, not triumphing, and he must slay.

‘If it were done when ’tis done,’ whispered the Colonel, ‘then ’twere well it were done quickly. Who would have thought the young man had so much blood in him?’

‘Colonel!’ said the Wart, but held himself there.

‘Boy!’ cried the Colonel. ‘Speak, stop me, mercy!’

‘There is a cat behind you,’ said the Wart calmly, ‘or a pinemarten. Look.’

The Colonel turned, swift as a wasp’s sting, and menaced into the gloom. There was nothing. He swung his wild eyes again upon the Wart, guessing the trick. Then, in the cold voice of an adder, ‘The bell invites me. Hear it not, Merlin, for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell.’

The third bells were indeed ringing as he spoke, and honour was allowed to move. The ordeal was over and the Wart might fly. But as he moved, but as he flew, quicker than any movement or flight in the world, the terrible sickles had shot from the Colonel’s planted legs – not flashed out, for they moved too quickly for sight – and with a thump, with a clutch, with an apprehension, like being arrested by a big policeman, the great scimitars had fixed themselves in his retreating thumb.

They fixed themselves, and fixed irrevocably. Gripe, gripe, the enormous thigh muscles tautened in two convulsions. Then the Wart was two yards further down the screen, and Colonel Cully was standing on one foot with a few meshes of string netting and the Wart’s false primary, with its covert-feathers, vice-fisted in the other. Two or three minor feathers drifted softly in a moonbeam toward the floor.

‘Well stood!’ cried Balan, delightedly.

‘A very gentlemanly exhibition,’ said the peregrine, not minding that Captain Balan had spoken before her.

‘Amen!’ said the spar-hawk.

‘Brave heart!’ said the kestrel.

‘Might we give him the Triumph Song?’ asked Balin, relenting.

‘Certainly,’ said the peregrine.

And they all sang together, led by Colonel Cully at the top of his voice, all belling triumphantly in the terrible moonlight.

The mountain birds are sweeter

But the valley birds are fatter ,

And so we deemed it meeter

To carry off the latter .

We met a cowering coney

And struck him through the vitals .

The Coney was like honey

And squealed our requitals .

Some struck the lark in feathers

Whose puffing clouds were shed off .

Some plucked the partridge’s nethers ,

While others pulled his head off .

But Wart the King of Merlins

Struck foot most far before us .

His birds and beasts

Supply our feasts ,

And his feats our glorious chorus!

‘Mark my words,’ cried the beautiful Balan, ‘we shall have a regular king in that young candidate. Now, boys, chorus altogether for the last time’:

But Wart the King of Merlins

Struck foot most far before us .

His birds and beasts

Supply our feasts ,

And his feats our glorious chorus!

‘Well!’ said the Wart, as he woke up in his own bed next morning. ‘What a horrible, grand crew!’

Kay sat up in bed and began scolding like a squirrel. ‘Where were you last night?’ he cried. ‘I believe you climbed out. I shall tell my father and get you tanned. You know we are not allowed out after curfew. What have you been doing? I looked for you everywhere. I know you climbed out.’

The boys had a way of sliding down a rain-water pipe into the moat, which they could swim on secret occasions when it was necessary to be out at night – to wait for a badger, for instance, or to catch tench, which can only be taken just before dawn.

‘Oh, shut up,’ said the Wart. ‘I’m sleepy.’

Kay said. ‘Wake up, wake up, you beast. Where have you been?’

‘I shan’t tell you.’

He was sure that Kay would not believe the story, but only call him a liar and get angrier than ever.

‘If you don’t tell me I shall kill you.’

‘You will not, then.’

‘I will.’

The Wart turned over on his other side.

‘Beast,’ said Kay. He took a fold of the Wart’s arm between the nails of first finger and thumb, and pinched for all he was worth. Wart kicked like a salmon which has been suddenly hooked, and hit him wildly in the eye. In a trice they were out of bed, pale and indignant, looking rather like skinned rabbits – for, in those days, nobody wore clothes in bed – and whirling their arms like windmills in the effort to do each other mischief.

Kay was older and bigger than the Wart, so that he was bound to win in the end, but he was more nervous and imaginative. He could imagine the effect of each blow that was aimed at him, and this weakened his defence. Wart was only an infuriated hurricane.

‘Leave me alone, can’t you?’ And all the while he did not leave Kay alone, but with his head down and swinging arms made it impossible for Kay to do as he was bid. They punched entirely at each other’s faces.

Kay had a longer reach and a heavier fist. He straightened his arm, more in self-defence than in anything else, and the Wart smacked his own eye upon the end of it. The sky became a noisy and shocking black, streaked outward with a blaze of meteors. The Wart began to sob and pant. He managed to get in a blow upon his opponent’s nose, and this began to bleed. Kay lowered his defence, turned his back on the Wart, and said in a cold, snuffling, reproachful voice, ‘Now it’s bleeding.’ The battle was over.

Kay lay on the stone floor, bubbling blood out of his nose, and the Wart, with a black eye, fetched the enormous key out of the door to put under Kay’s back. Neither of them spoke.

Presently Kay turned over on his face and began to sob. He said, ‘Merlyn does everything for you, but he never does anything for me.’

At this the Wart felt he had been a beast. He dressed himself in silence and hurried off to find the magician.

On the way he was caught by his nurse.