The Once and Future King. T. White H.

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СКАЧАТЬ comes of teaching the young Hidea ’ow to shoot,’ said the sergeant proudly.

      Sir Ector kissed both boys and commanded the griffin to be displayed before him.

      ‘Well!’ he exclaimed. ‘What a monster! We’ll have him stuffed in the dinin’ hall. What did you say his measurements were?’

      ‘Eighty-two inches from ear to ear. Robin said it might be a record.’

      ‘We shall have to get it chronicled.’

      ‘It is rather a good one, isn’t it?’ remarked Kay with studied calm.

      ‘I shall have it set up by Sir Rowland Ward,’ Sir Ector went on in high delight, ‘with a little ivory card with KAY’S FIRST GRIFFIN on it in black letters, and the date.’

      ‘Arrah, leave thy childishness,’ exclaimed the nurse. ‘Now, Master Art, my innocence, be off with thee to thy bed upon the instant. And thou, Sir Ector, let thee think shame to be playing with monsters’ heads like a godwit when the poor child stays upon the point of death. Now, sergeant, leave puffing of thy chest. Stir, man, and take horse to Cardoyle for the chirurgeon.’

      She waved her apron at the sergeant, who collapsed his chest and retreated like a shoo’d chicken.

      ‘It is all right,’ said the Wart, ‘I tell you. It is only a broken collar bone, and Robin set it for me last night. It does not hurt a bit.’

      ‘Leave the boy, nurse,’ commanded Sir Ector, taking sides with the men against the women, anxious to re-establish his superiority after the matter of the cudgel. ‘Merlyn will see to him if he needs it, no doubt. Who is this Robin?’

      ‘Robin Wood,’ cried the boys together.

      ‘Never heard of him.’

      ‘You call him Robin Hood,’ explained Kay in a superior tone. ‘But it is Wood really, like the Wood that he is the spirit of.’

      ‘Well, well, well, so you’ve been foragin’ with that rascal! Come in to breakfast, boys, and tell me all about him.’

      ‘We have had breakfast,’ said the Wart, ‘hours ago. May I please take Wat with me to see Merlyn?’

      ‘Why, it’s the old man who went wild and started rootin’ in the forest. Wherever did you get hold of him?’

      ‘The Good People had captured him with the Dog Boy and Cavall.’

      ‘But we shot the griffin,’ Kay put in. ‘I shot it myself.’

      ‘So now I want to see if Merlyn can restore him to his wits.’

      ‘Master Art,’ said the nurse sternly. She had been breathless up to now on account of Sir Ector’s rebuke. ‘Master Art, thy room and thy bed is where thou art tending to, and that this instant. Wold fools may be wold fools, whether by yea or by nay, but I ha’n’t served the Family for fifty year without a-learning of my duty. A flibberty-gibbeting about wi’ a lot of want-wits, when thy own arm may be dropping to the floor!

      ‘Yes, thou wold turkey-cock,’ she added, turning fiercely upon Sir Ector, ‘and thou canst keep thy magician away from the poor mite’s room till he be rested, that thou canst!

      ‘A wantoning wi’ monsters and lunaticals,’ continued the victor as she led her helpless captive from the stricken field. ‘I never heard the like.’

      ‘Please, someone tell Merlyn to look after Wat,’ cried the victim over his shoulder, in diminishing tones.

      He woke up in his cool bed, feeling better. The old fire-eater who looked after him had covered the windows with a curtain, so that the room was dark and comfortable, and he could tell by the one ray of golden sunlight which shot across the floor that it was late afternoon. He not only felt better. He felt very well, so well that it was not possible to stay in bed. He moved quickly to throw back the sheet, but stopped with a hiss at the creak or scratch of his shoulder, which he had forgotten in his sleep. Then he got out more carefully by sliding down the bed and pushing himself upright with one hand, shoved his bare feet into a pair of slippers, and managed to wrap a dressing-gown round him more or less. He padded off through the stone passages up the worn circular stairs to find Merlyn.

      When he reached the schoolroom, he found that Kay was continuing his First Rate Eddication. He was doing dictation, for as Wart opened the door he heard Merlyn pronouncing in measured tones the famous medieval mnemonic: ‘Barabara Celarent Darii Ferioque Prioris,’ and Kay saying, ‘Wait a bit. My pen has gone all squee-gee.’

      ‘You will catch it,’ remarked Kay, when they saw him. ‘You are supposed to be in bed, dying of gangrene or something.’

      ‘Merlyn,’ said the Wart. ‘What have you done with Wat?’

      ‘You should try to speak without assonances,’ said the wizard. ‘For instance. “The beer is never clear near here, dear,” is unfortunate, even as an assonance. And then again, your sentence is ambiguous to say the least of it. “What what?” I might reply, taking it to be a conundrum, or if I were King Pellinore, “What what, what?” Nobody can be too careful about their habits of speech.’

      Kay had evidently been doing his dictation well and the old gentleman was in a good humour.

      ‘You know what I mean,’ said the Wart. ‘What have you done with the old man with no nose?’

      ‘He has cured him,’ said Kay.

      ‘Well,’ said Merlyn, ‘you might call it that, and then again you might not. Of course, when one has lived in the world as long as I have, and backwards at that, one does learn to know a thing or two about pathology. The wonders of analytical psychology and plastic surgery are, I am afraid, to this generation but a closed book.’

      ‘What did you do to him?’

      ‘Oh, I just psycho-analysed him,’ replied the magician grandly. ‘That, and of course I sewed on a new nose on both of them.’

      ‘What kind of nose?’ asked the Wart.

      ‘It is too funny,’ said Kay. ‘He wanted to have the griffin’s nose for one, but I would not let him. So then he took the noses off the young pigs which we are going to have for supper, and used those. Personally I think they will grunt.’

      ‘A ticklish operation,’ said Merlyn, ‘but a successful one.’

      ‘Well,’ said the Wart, doubtfully. ‘I hope it will be all right. What did they do then?’

      ‘They went off to the kennels. Old Wat is very sorry for what he did to the Dog Boy, but he says he can’t remember having done it. He says that suddenly everything went black, when they were throwing stones once, and he can’t remember anything since. The Dog Boy forgave him and said he did not mind a bit. They are going to work together in the kennels in future, and not think of what is past any more. The Dog Boy says that the old man was good to him while they were prisoners of the Fairy Queen, and that he knows he ought not to have thrown stones at him in the first place. He says he often thought about that when other boys were throwing stones at him.’

      ‘Well,’ said the Wart, ‘I am glad it has all turned out for СКАЧАТЬ