Arthur Rex (2 page)

Then the glossy black bird flapped his wings twice and before their bulging eyes he was transformed into a man with a long white beard and wearing the raiment of a wizard, which is to say a long gown and a tall hat in the shape of a cone, both dark as the sky at midnight with here and there twinkling stars and a horned moon. And the next instant Merlin (for it was he) caused both knights and horses to return to their proper forms, and only then did he laugh most merrily.

“Forgive me,” said he, “for my magician’s japery. Surely it did no harm.”

Then the knights informed him that he was required by the king, and he revealed that through his arts he had long known the summons would come and should be at Uther Pendragon’s side in an instant, and so he was. But the knights were constrained to return as they had come, and as it happened they were never seen again, and it was supposed they had been destroyed by monsters.

Now when Merlin materialized in the king’s pavilion Uther Pendragon said to him, “Merlin, I have all the grief in the world, being ruler of all the civilized portion of it. A spell or charm hath been put upon me in which I love to the point of madness the one woman I am denied. Either get for me the woman or relieve me of the spell, and thou shalt be granted any good that is within my power.”

“Sire,” said Merlin, “your distress is at an end. You shall lie with the fair Ygraine this night, and you shall have pleasure to the limits of your capacity, which a thousand women can certify is formidable as befits a mighty king.”

“Thou undercounteth me somewhat, Merlin, unless thy computation refers only to the previous twelvemonth,” said Uther Pen-dragon, rising from the couch. But then he peered suspiciously at his wizard, saying, “Methinks thou wilt ask a king’s ransom for making this arrangement. Thy sovereign is not Croesus.”

“What I shall ask, Sire,” said Merlin, “is nothing which you now possess, no gold, gems, land, castles, nor serfs. The material is of no value to me, I who traffic in the ethereal.” Saying which he moved his wand and for a moment the pavilion was thronged with airy spirits who danced on fox fire. But with another gesture Merlin caused them to vanish as quickly, and then he spake as follows.

“By your exertions this night you will beget upon the fair Ygraine a male child. This child is what I ask you to grant me.”

Now though he had heard pleasantly Merlin’s listing of the rewards which he would never ask for, the king was not quick to assent to the positive demand.

“A son?
My
son? Though having no interest in my gold, Merlin, surely thou art extravagant with my blood. My heir and successor? The next king of Britain? For what purpose, pray? To apprentice him in thy black art of nigromancy?” Uther did scowl. “A British king kills many, but it would be unnatural for him to speak with the dead.”

“Even so long ago as the reign of your predecessor,” said Merlin, “the unfortunate Vortigern, who introduced the treacherous Anglish and the vile Saxons into this land to help him fight the barbarous Picts and savage Scots (and soon found the Germans at his own throat), I did prophesy the coming one day of a great king, the greatest king of all that was and would ever be amongst humankind.”

“Indeed thou didst do,” said Uther Pendragon, plucking from the little tree of stag horns next the couch his crown and placing it upon his head. “I have reigned now for twelve years.”

“Truly,” said Merlin, who was also a diplomatist, “only from the loins of such a mighty king could come the one who would realize my prophecy.”

“I see,” said Uther Pendragon, who could not long have ruled his realm were he a mere vassal to his own vanity. “Well, no man can escape what hath been foretold. If I am to be father to the greatest, and not the greatest in mine own self, then so be it.”

“Therefore,” said Merlin, “the time is at hand for the conception of that future king, whom you will beget on the fair Ygraine. And even as it is I who will make possible your begetting of him, so must it be I who will prepare him in the time of his nonage for the high office to come.”

“I grant that which thou wouldst have,” said Uther Pendragon. “But my pleasure in thinking on his future achievements is stained with the awareness that I must necessarily be dead before they come about—for I warn thee, Merlin, that I shall, unlike my forebear Lear, not while I live relinquish my crown to my offspring, be he another Alexander or Caesar.”

“Far greater than either,” said Merlin, and this statement caused a shadow to cross through Uther Pendragon’s eye with the swiftness of a swallow darting over a battlement. Therefore the wizard was quick to distract the king with the nearer prospect of lust satisfied. “But now, as to the business with the fair Ygraine, through my craft I shall change you into the very likeness of her husband, the duke of Cornwall, and in such guise, while Gorlois stays besieged here at Terrabil, you shall go to Tintagel, be admitted to that castle as its proper lord and into the chaste Ygraine’s bed as her rightful master.”

Now this plan did bring a glint to Uther’s eye, and he went to pick at his great nose even as it began to diminish in length and fatten at the lobes to become that, in image, of Gorlois. So did his height dwindle, the massive tun of his chest lose half its capacity, his legs bow, and his arms wither, for the duke of Cornwall was not a comely peer though married to a beautiful woman as is often the case.

And had not Merlin soon remembered to transform the king’s robes into a perfect representation of Gorlois’s clothing, the figure before him would have been ludicrous, with the crown supported only by the little ears like unto a squirrel’s and the ermine piled high around the feet.

“God’s body!” cried Uther Pendragon in a foul oath, staring at his altered visage in a looking-glass, “what an ugly toad is Gorlois and now, perforce, am I as well!” Then suddenly a terrible grimace did ugly his features further, and he grasped himself at the privy parts. But soon his brow cleared and he did grunt in an amazement that began as pleasurable but was shortly colored with wry reflection. “Either thou hast allowed me to retain mine own virility, Merlin, or” (and here he frowned in a certain envy) “there is substantial reason why the fair Ygraine hath ever been a loyal wife.”

But Merlin diplomatically assured his sovereign that the former was rather the case, though in fact he had transformed him into the duke of Cornwall in every wise.

Thereupon old Ulfin was summoned, and Merlin changed him in a trice into the image of Sir Jordan, Gorlois’s loyal retainer, and then Merlin transformed the day into the night, for the king was impatient to set out for Tintagel. But before they started for Cornwall, Uther Pendragon sent old Ulfin out of earshot and he spake privily to Merlin. And his voice was now that of Gorlois and of a thin and reedy quality foreign to his natural throat, the usual sounds from which were as of the drums of war (and when in his normal person he sought to whisper, the silken walls of his pavilion would tremble as in a tempest).

But as the duke he could scarce be heard until the magician came to his very stirrup.

“I have me the peculiarity,” said the king in this weak voice, “with a woman I have long desired, to tup her so often with the tool of the mind that when it comes to close buttocks my actual meat will not stand. It is as if a malignant spell hath been put upon it.”

“’Tis but the shock of reality (which always hath a touch of squalor) as opposed to the perfection of the fancied,” said Merlin. “But be you now at ease, Sire. I myself shall accompany you in the guise of Sir Bertel, another of the duke’s close retinue, and be assured you will be a stranger to this trouble, against which I can provide counterspells.”

Then having taken on the mirror-image of Sir Bertel, a very fat knight with a mustache like unto the horns of an ox, Merlin was bored with the prospect of a journey of some leagues, and therefore he transported himself, the king, and old Ulfin instantly, through magical means, to the great ironbound gate of lofty Tintagel on its eminence overlooking the sea which was so far below that the surf could not be heard in its furious dash against the base of the precipice.

“Ho!” cried Sir Ulfin at the lancet window of the porter’s lodge, within which all was dark, and “Ho!” thrice again, and then finally a feeble light did flicker within and at last a guttering taper was thrust into the window, the which served only to illuminate the turnip-nose of him who held it.

“Who stands without? And to what purpose? Speak, else I shall call the guard and loose the mastiffs.”

“His Grace the duke of Cornwall!” cried old Ulfin.

And the candle did disappear and soon the huge bolts that secured the gate did squeak and groan and the ponderous counterweights were lowered and the great gate did lift.

“Your Grace,” said the porter, bowing with his torch of pitch and tow.

Now Uther Pendragon was occupied with his lascivious anticipations, and he stared aloft among the many towers as if to identify that which would contain the fair Ygraine. But Merlin, in the guise of Sir Bertel, spake.

“Doth the main gate of Tintagel go unwatched except by thee, sleeping, in time of war?”

“Sir my lord Bertel,” said the porter, “’twas not this unworthy creature who made that arrangement but rather Her Grace, who did send the guard to bed and me as well, and the mastiffs would seem ailing or sopped, for they lie quiet in the kennels.” The porter shook his head in the torchlight. “Indeed, had you not been the duke and his retinue, but rather the warlike Uther and his host, I fear Tintagel would have been easily overwhelmed and Her Grace most vilely mishandled by that most goatish of monarchs.”

“Insolent knave,” said Merlin. “Dost criticize the duchess of Cornwall? Thou shalt be whipped.” But his false anger served to conceal his true amusement, and to himself he said,
that cunning baggage!
For not even Merlin, with all his arts, could divine the ways of women. And then he did wonder how she could have known the king would come this night, and he learned from the porter subsequently that these orders had been in effect since the duke had left Tintagel to be besieged in Terrabil at the very outset of the war, now a fortnight in progress.

But Uther Pendragon meanwhile did not await for the arrival of the grooms to dismount but rather flung his reins to old Ulfin, leaped afoot, and with lustful impatience hastened through the courtyard and hurled open the portal of the keep, which was unlocked and unguarded as well, and penetrating the darkness of the great entry hall, so lost himself, making a clangor amidst the shields hung upon the walls there.

“Ho!” cried the king. “A light! A light!” And at length a steward appeared in nightdress, carrying a dripping candle and rubbing his sleepy eyes with his knuckles.

“Your Grace!” cried he in amazement, freeing Uther Pendragon from entanglement in the straps of a shield. “We were told by Her Grace that Your Grace had been slain in the war with the king and to expect your return nevermore.”

Now Uther Pendragon was most pleased to hear this, but he nevertheless remembered to serve his imposture, and he said gruffly as he could in the duke’s thin voice, “No more of thy prattle. Where is thy lady?”

“Surely in her bedchamber, Your Grace,” said the steward, and he bowed, spattering tallow on the stones of the floor. “She hath not gone elsewhere since your departure.”

“Give me that light,” said the king, “and begone.” But no sooner had the steward obeyed this order and gone away than Uther Pendragon realized that he knew not the route to the fair Ygraine’s bedchamber, and he feared that he might spend the night in a vain search through the vast corridors of lofty Tintagel.

But meanwhile Merlin had come in from the courtyard, and he now undertook to guide the king to the private quarters of the duchess of Cornwall, the situation of which he knew exactly though never having been in this castle before. And soon this pair, monarch and wizard, in the guises of duke and knight, arrived before an arch framing a door upholstered in red silk onto which a golden dragon had been worked in cunning applique.

Now Uther Pendragon could not forbear from swearing vilely, “God’s blood! The traitorous Gorlois doth privily usurp my device. I’ll have his ugly head for that—after having swyved his beautiful wife.”

But Merlin spake in a whisper. “Methinks that is the work of the fair Ygraine and unbeknown to the duke, whose head she doth expect you will have already taken. But soft now, Sire. She waits within.” And the magician went to turn the handle of the door, but the king delayed him with a statement of great intensity.

“Thou hast done thy service, Merlin, and may retire.”

“But was it not you yourself, Sire, who applied to me for aid? Think on your habitual peculiarity arising from passionate anticipation.”

“Wouldst climb into bed along with me?” asked the king. “Art thou unnatural in this as in thine other modes of life?”

“As you wish, Sire. I shall await without until you need my craft,” said Merlin.

“I command that thou go away altogether!” said Uther Pendragon. “I assure thee that having seen my dragon upon this very door I shall never know my old peculiarity once I am within.” So saying he threw the door handle and plunged into the chamber beyond.

Now this proved to be but an anteroom, and he did hurl himself through it emerging in a chamber of which the walls were hung with silken tapestries, these illuminated by a fire which cast its glow as well on a bed upon which lay, under a robe of white fur, the most beautiful woman in Christendom, the fair Ygraine, her hair flowing down the velvet pillow like unto streams of molten gold.

And she had been in a slumber, but the clamor of Uther Pendragon’s arrival (he whose stride was unruly by reason of his concupiscence conjoined with the duke’s borrowed shanks, to which he was not yet used to walking with) caused her blue eyes to open and display their sapphire stars.

But recognizing her husband’s mean figure she did corrupt her beauty with a grimace and say in ill-humor, “Gorlois! How in heaven’s name—” But seeing him begin to divest himself of his clothing she left off the expression of disagreeable amazement at his return alive, and she hastened to inform him of the sickness that had claimed her on his departure this fortnight, which surely was the pestilence, association with which would kill him quickly as it was killing her by degrees.