The Once and Future King. T. H. White

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 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.’

      The Wart heard the spar-hawk on his left giving nervous coughs at this, but the peregrine paid no attention.

      ‘Merlin of the Forest Sauvage,’ said the peregrine, ‘what is a Beast of the Foot?’

      ‘A Beast of the Foot,’ replied the Walt, blessing his stars that Sir Ector had chosen to give him a First Rate Eddication, ‘is a horse, or a hound, or a hawk.’

      ‘Why are these called beasts of the foot?’

      ‘Because these beasts depend upon the powers of their feet, so that, by law, any damage to the feet of hawk, hound or horse, is reckoned as damage to its life. A lamed horse is a murdered horse.’

      ‘Good,’ said the peregrine. ‘What are your most important members?’

      ‘My wings,’ said the Wart after a moment, guessing because he did not know.

      At this there was a simultaneous tintinnabulation of all the bells, as each graven image lowered its raised foot in distress. They stood on both feet now, disturbed.

      ‘Your what?’ called the peregrine sharply.

      ‘He said his damned wings,’ said Colonel Cully from his private enclosure. ‘And damned be he who first cries Hold, enough!’

      ‘But even a thrush has wings!’ cried the kestrel, speaking for the first time in his sharp-beaked alarm.

      ‘Think!’ whispered Balan, under his breath.

      The Wart thought feverishly.

      A thrush had wings, tail, eyes, legs – apparently everything.

      ‘My talons!’

      ‘It will do,’ said the peregrine kindly, after one of her dreadful pauses. ‘The answer ought to be Feet, just as it is to all the other questions, but Talons will do.’

      All the hawks, and of course we are using the term loosely, for some were hawks and some were falcons, raised their belled feet again and sat at ease.

      ‘What is the first law of the foot?’

      (‘Think,’ said friendly little Balan, behind his false primary.)

      The Wart thought, and thought right.

      ‘Never to let go,’ he said.

      ‘Last question,’ said the peregrine. ‘How would you, as a Merlin, kill a pigeon bigger than yourself?’

      Wart was lucky in this one, for he had heard Hob giving a description of how Balan did it one afternoon, and he answered warily, ‘I should strangle her with my foot.’

      ‘Good!’ said the peregrine.

      ‘Bravo!’ cried the others, raising their feathers.

      ‘Ninety per cent,’ said the spar-hawk after a quick sum. ‘That is if you give him a half for the talons.’

      ‘The devil damn me black!’

      ‘Colonel, please!’

      Balan whispered to the Wart, ‘Colonel Cully is not quite right in his wits. It is his liver, we believe, but the kestrel says it is the constant strain of living up to her ladyship’s standard. He says that her ladyship spoke to him from her full social station once, cavalry to infantry, you know, and that he just closed his eyes and got the vertigo. He has never been the same since.’

      ‘Captain Balan,’ said the СКАЧАТЬ