The sword in the stone (25 page)

There was forty square miles of this forest, they said, and enough for all. Leave well alone, that was Sir Ector's motto. But that didn't alter the neighbors.

Another thing was the riot. It was all very well for these crack hunts in practically artificial forests like those at Windsor, where the King hunted, but it was quite a different thing in the Forest Sauvage. Suppose His Majesty's famous hounds was to go runnin' riot after a unicorn or something? Everybody knew that you could never catch a unicorn without a young virgin for bait (in which case the unicorn meekly laid its white head and mother-of-pearl horn in her lap) and so the puppies would go chargin' off into the forest for leagues and leagues, and never catch it, and get lost, and then what would Sir Ector say to his sovereign? It wasn't only unicorns. There was this Beast Glatisant that everybody had heard so much about. If you had the head of a serpent, the body of a leopard, the haunches of a lion, and were footed like a hart, and especially if you made a noise like thirty couple of hounds questin', it stood to reason that you would account for an excessive number of royal puppies before they pulled you down. Serve them right too. And what would King Pellinore says if Master William Twyti did succeed in killing his beast? Then there were the small dragons which lived under stones and hissed like kettles; dangerous varmints, very. Or suppose they were to come across one of the really big dragons? The boy Wart had been talkin' for months about nothin' except some dragon called Atlantic something-or-other, which was killed by a chap called St. Georgius. Suppose they was to run into one of them? Why, the boy said it was a hundred and fifteen feet long. Sir Ector considered the prospect moodily for some time, then began to feel better. It would be a jolly good thing, he concluded, if Master Twyti and his beastly dogs did meet Atlantic what-you-may-call-it, yes, and get eaten up by it too, every one.

Cheered by this vision, he turned round at the edge of the plowing and stumped off home. At the hedge where the old lady lay waiting to scare rooks he was lucky enough to spot some approaching pigeons before she was aware of him or them, and let such a screech that he felt amply repaid for his own jump by seeing hers. It was going to be a good evening after all. "Good night to you," said Sir Ector affably, when the old lady recovered herself enough to drop him a curtsey.

He felt so much restored by this that he dropped in on the vicar, half-way up the village street, and invited him to dinner in hall. Then he climbed up to the solar, which was his special chamber, and sat down heavily to write a submissive message to King Uther in the two or three hours which remained to him before the meal. It would take him quite that time, what with sharpening quill pens, using too much sand to blot with, going to the top of the stairs to ask the butler how to spell things, and starting again if he made a mess.

Sir Ector sat in the solar, while the wintering sunlight threw broad orange beams across his bald head. He scratched and pluttered away, and laboriously bit the end of his pen, and the enormous castle room darkened about him. It was a room as big as the main hall over which it stood, and it could afford to have large southern windows because it was on the second story. There were two fireplaces, in which the ashy logs of wood turned from gray to red as the sunlight retreated. Round these, some favorite hounds lay snuffling in their dreams, or scratching themselves for fleas, or gnawing mutton bones which they had scrounged from the kitchens. The peregrine falcon stood hooded on a perch in the corner, a motionless idol dreaming of other skies.

If you were to go now to view the solar of Castle Sauvage, you would find it empty of furniture; but the sun would still stream in at those stone windows two feet thick, and, as it barred the mullions, it would catch a warmth of sandstone from them: the amber light of age. If you went to the nearest curiosity shop, you might find some clever copies of the furniture which it was supposed to contain. These would be oak chests and cupboards with Gothic paneling and strange faces of men or angels —

or devils — carved darkly upon them, black, bees-waxed, worm-eaten and shiny: gloomy testimonies to the old life in their coffin-like solidity. But the furniture in the solar was not like that. The devils' heads were there and the linen-fold paneling, but the wood was five or six centuries younger. So, in the warm-looking light of sunset, it was not only the mullions which had an amber glow. All the spare, strong chests in the room (they were converted for sitting by laying bright carpets upon them) were the young, the golden oak, and the cheeks of the devils and cherubim shone as if they had just been given a good soaping.

IT WAS Christmas night, the eve of the Boxing Day Meet. You must remember that this was in the old Merry England, when the rosy barons ate with their fingers, and had peacocks served before them with all their tall feathers streaming, or boars' heads with the tusks stuck in again; when there was no unemployment because there were too few people to be unemployed; when the forests rang with knights walloping each other on the helm, and the unicorns in the wintry moonlight stamped with their silver feet and snorted their noble breaths of blue upon the frozen air. These marvels were great and comfortable ones, but in the old England there was a greater still. The weather behaved itself.

In the spring all the little flowers came out obediently in the meads, and the dew sparkled, and the birds sang; in the summer it was beautifully hot for no less than four months, and, if it did rain just enough for agricultural purposes, they managed to arrange it so that it rained while you were in bed; in the autumn the leaves flamed and rattled before the west winds, tempering their sad adieu with glory; and in the winter, which was confined by statute to two months, the snow lay evenly, three feet thick, but never turned into slush.

It was Christmas night in the Castle of the Forest Sauvage, and all around the castle the snow lay as it ought to he. It hung heavily on the battlements, like extremely thick icing on a very good cake, and in a few convenient places it modestly turned itself into the clearest icicles of the greatest possible length. It hung on the boughs of the forest trees in rounded lumps, even better than apple-blossom, and occasionally slid off the roofs of the village, when it saw a chance of falling upon some amusing character and giving pleasure to all. The boys made snowballs with it, but never put stones in them to hurt each other, and the dogs, when they were taken out to scombre, bit it and rolled in it, and looked surprised but delighted when they vanished into the bigger drifts. There was skating on the moat, which roared all day with the gliding steel, while hot chestnuts and spiced mead were served on the bank to all and sundry. The owls hooted. The cooks put out all the crumbs they could for the small birds. The villagers brought out their red mufflers. Sir Ector's face shone redder even than these. And reddest of all shone the cottage fires all down the main street of an evening, while the winds howled outside and the old English wolves wandered about slavering in an appropriate manner, or sometimes peeping in at the keyholes with their blood-red eyes. It was Christmas night and all the proper things had been done. The whole village had come to dinner in the hall. There had been boar's head and venison and pork and beef and mutton and capons; but no turkey, on account of this bird not having yet been invented. There had been plum pudding and snap-dragon, with blue fire on the tips of one's fingers, and as much mead as anybody could drink. Sir Ector's health had been drunk with "Best respects, Measter," with "Best compliments of the Season, my lords and ladies, and many of them." There had been mummers to play an exciting dramatic presentation of a story in which St. George and a Saracen and a very funny Doctor did some surprising things, also carol-singers who rendered "Adeste Fideles" and "I Sing of a Maiden," in high, clear, tenor voices. After that, those children who had not been sick over their dinner played Hoodman Blind and other appropriate games, while the young men and maidens danced morris dances in the middle, the tables having been cleared away. The old folks sat round the walls holding glasses of mead in their hands and feeling thankful that they were past all such capers, hoppings and skippings, while those children who had been sick sat with them, and soon went to sleep, the small heads leaning against their shoulders. At the high table Sir Ector sat with his knightly guests, who had come for the morrow's hunting, smiling and nodding and drinking burgundy or sherries, sack or malmsey wine. After a bit, silence was prayed for Sir Grummore. He stood up and sang his old school song, amidst great applause, but forgot most of it and had to make a humming noise in his mustache. Then King Pellinore was nudged to his feet and sang bashfully:

Oh, I was born a Pellinore in famous Lincolnshire.

Full well I chased the Questing Beast for more than seventeen year. Till I took up with Sir Grummore here In the season of the year. (Since when) 'tis my delight On a feather-bed night

To sleep at home, my dear.

"You see," explained King Pellinore blushing, as he sat down with everybody whacking him on the back, "old Grummore invited me home, what, after we had been having a splendid joust together, and since then I've been letting my beastly Beast go and hang itself on the wall, what?"

"Well done," they all told him. "You live your own life while you've got it."

William Twyti was called for, who had arrived on the previous evening, and the famous huntsman stood up with a perfectly straight face, and his crooked eye fixed upon Sir Ector, to sing:

D'ye ken William Twyti

With his jerkin so dagged?

D'ye ken William Twyti

Who never yet lagged?

Yes, I ken William Twyti

And he ought to be gagged

With his hounds and his horn in the morning.

"Bravo!" cried Sir Ector. "Did you hear that, eh? Said he ought to be gagged, my deah fellah. Blest if I didn't think he was going to boast when he began. Splendid chaps, these huntsmen, eh? Pass Master Twyti the malmsey with my compliments."

The boys lay curled up under the benches near the fire, Wart with Cavall in his arms. Cavall did not like the heat and the shouting and the smell of mead, and wanted to go away, but Wart held him tightly because he needed something to hug, and Cavall had to stay with him perforce, panting over a long pink tongue.

"Now, Ralph Passelewe," cried Sir Ector, and all his Villeins cried,

"Ralph Passelewe," "Good wold Ralph," "Who killed the cow, Ralph?" "Pray silence for Master Passelewe that couldn't help it."

At this, the most lovely old man got up at the very furthest and humblest end of the hall, as he had got up on all similar occasions for the past half-century. He was no less than eighty-seven years of age, almost blind, almost dumb, almost deaf, but still able and willing and happy to quaver out the same old song which he had sung for the pleasure of the Forest Sauvage since before Sir Ector was bound up in a kind of tight linen puttee in his cradle. They could not hear him at the high table — he was much too far away in Time to be able to reach across a room — but everybody knew what the cracked old voice was singing, and everybody loved it. This is what he sang:

Whe—an/Wold King — Cole/was a/wakkin -doon-t'street,

H—e/saw -a-lovely laid-y a/steppin-in-a-puddle./

She—e/lifted hup-er-skeat/

For to/

Hop acrorst ter middle,/

An ee/saw her/an-kel.

Wasn't that a fuddle?/

Ee could 'ernt elp it,/ee Ad to.

There were about twenty verses of this song, in which Wold King Cole helplessly saw more and more things that he ought not to have seen, and everybody cheered at the end of each verse until, at the conclusion, old Ralph was overwhelmed with congratulations and sat down smiling dimly to a replenished mug of mead.

It was now Sir Ector's turn to wind up the proceedings. He stood up importantly and delivered the following speech: "Friends, tenants and otherwise. Unaccustomed as I am to public speakin' — "

There was a faint cheer at this, for everybody recognized the speech which Sir Ector had made for the last twenty years, and welcomed it like a brother.

" — unaccustomed as I am to public speakin', it is my pleasant duty

— I might say my very pleasant duty — to welcome all and sundry to this our homely feast. It has been a good year, and I say it without fear of contradiction, in pasture and plow. We all know how Crumbocke of Forest Sauvage won the first prize at Cardoyle Cattle Show for the second time, and one more year will win the cup outright. More power to the Forest Sauvage. As we sit down tonight, I notice some faces now gone from amongst us and some which have added to the family circle. Such matters are in the hands of an almighty Providence, to which we all feel thankful. We ourselves have been first created and then spared to enjoy the rejoicin's of this pleasant evening. I think we are all grateful for the blessin's which have been showered upon us. Tonight we welcome in our midst the famous King Pellinore, whose labors in riddin' our forest of the redoubtable Questin' Beast are known to us all. God bless King Pellinore. (Hear, hear.) Also Sir Grummore Grummursum, a sportsman, though I say it to his face, who will stick to his mount as long as his Quest will stand up in front of him. (Hooray!) Finally, last but not least, we are honored by a visit from his Majesty's most famous huntsman, Master William Twyti, who will, I feel sure, show us such sport tomorrow that we will rub our eyes and wish that a royal pack of hounds could always be huntin' in the Forest which we all love so well. (View-halloo and several recheats blown in imitation.) Thank you, my dear friends, for your spontaneous welcome to these gentlemen. They will, I know, accept it in the true and warm-hearted spirit in which it is offered. And now it is time that I should bring my brief remarks to a close. Another year has almost sped and it is time that we should be lookin' forward to the challengin' future. What about the Cattle Show next year? Friends, I can only wish you a very Merry Christmas, and, after Reverend Sidebottom has said our Grace for us, we shall conclude with a singin' of the National Anthem."