The Once and Future King. T. H. White

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      But the griffin’s plates were as thick as a crocodile’s and all but the best placed arrows glanced off. It still came on. It squealed as it came. Men began to fall, swept to the left or right by the lashing tail.

      The Wart was fitting an arrow to his bow. The cock feather would not go right. Everything was in slow motion.

      He saw the huge body coming blackly through the moonglare. He felt the claw which took him in the chest. He felt himself turning somersaults slowly, with a cruel weight on top of him. He saw Kay’s face somewhere in the cartwheel of the universe, flushed with starlit excitement, and Maid Marian’s on the other side with its mouth open, shouting. He thought, before he slid into blackness, that it was shouting at him.

      They dragged him from under the dead griffin and found Kay’s arrow sticking in its eye. It had died in its leap.

      Then there was a time which made him feel sick – while Robin set his collar bone and made him a sling from the green cloth of his hood – and after that the whole band lay down to sleep, dog-tired, beside the body. It was too late to return to Sir Ector’s castle, or even to get back to the outlaw’s camp by the big tree. The dangers of the expedition were over and all that could be done that night was to make fires, post sentries, and sleep where they were.

      Wart did not sleep much. He sat propped against a tree, watching the red sentries passing to and fro in the firelight, hearing their quiet passwords and thinking about the excitements of the day. These went round and round in his head, sometimes losing their proper order and happening backwards or by bits. He saw the leaping griffin, heard Marian shouting, ‘Good shot!’, listened to the humming of the bees muddled up with the stridulation of the grasshoppers, and shot and shot, hundreds and thousands of times, at popinjays which turned into griffins. Kay and the liberated Dog Boy slept twitching beside him, looking alien and incomprehensible as people do when they are asleep, and Cavall, lying at his good shoulder, occasionally licked his hot cheeks. The dawn came slowly, so slowly and pausingly that it was impossible to determine when it really had dawned, as it does during the summer months.

      ‘Well,’ said Robin, when they had wakened and eaten the breakfast of bread and cold venison which they had brought with them, ‘you will have to love us and leave us, Kay. Otherwise I shall have Sir Ector fitting out an expedition against me to fetch you back. Thank you for your help. Can I give you any little present as a reward?’

      ‘It has been lovely,’ said Kay. ‘Absolutely lovely. May I have the griffin I shot?’

      ‘He will be too heavy to carry. Why not take his head?’

      ‘That would do,’ said Kay, ‘if somebody would not mind cutting it off. It was my griffin.’

      ‘What are you going to do about old Wat?’ asked the Wart.

      ‘It depends on what he wants to do. Perhaps he will like to run off by himself and eat acorns, as he used to, or if he likes to join our band we shall be glad to have him. He ran away from your village in the first place, so I don’t suppose he will care to go back there. What do you think?’

      ‘If you are going to give me a present,’ said the Wart, slowly, ‘I would like to have him. Do you think that would be right?’

      ‘As a matter of fact,’ said Robin, ‘I don’t. I don’t think you can very well give people as presents: they might not like it. That is what we Saxons feel, at any rate. What did you intend to do with him?’

      ‘I don’t want to keep him or anything like that. You see, we have a tutor who is a magician and I thought he might be able to restore him to his wits.’

      ‘Good boy,’ said Robin. ‘Have him by all means. I am sorry I made a mistake. At least, we will ask him if he would like to go.’

      When somebody had gone off to fetch Wat, Robin said, ‘You had better talk to him yourself.’

      They brought the poor old man, smiling, confused, hideous and very dirty, and stood him before Robin.

      ‘Go on,’ said Robin.

      The Wart did not know quite how to put it, but he said, ‘I say, Wat, would you like to come home with me, please, just for a little?’

      ‘AhnaNanaWarraBaaBaa,’ said Wat, pulling his forelock, smiling, bowing and gently waving his arms in various directions.

      ‘Come with me?’

      ‘WanaNanaWanawana.’

      ‘Dinner?’ asked the Wart in desperation.

      ‘R!’ cried the poor creature affirmatively, and his eyes glowed with pleasure at the prospect of being given something to eat.

      ‘That way,’ said the Wart, pointing in the direction which he knew by the sun to be that of his guardian’s castle. ‘Dinner. Come with. I take.’

      ‘Measter,’ said Wat, suddenly remembering one word, the word which he had always been accustomed to offer to the great people who made him a present of food, his only livelihood. It was decided.

      ‘Well,’ said Robin, ‘it has been a good adventure and I am sorry you are going. I hope I shall see you again.’

      ‘Come any time,’ said Marian, ‘if you are feeling bored. You only have to follow the glades. And you, Wart, be careful of that collar bone for a few days.’

      ‘I will send some men with you to the edge of the chase,’ said Robin. ‘After that you must go by yourselves. I expect the Dog Boy can carry the griffin’s head.’

      ‘Good-bye,’ said Kay.

      ‘Good-bye,’ said Robin.

      ‘Good-bye,’ said Wart.

      ‘Good-bye,’ said Marian, smiling.

      ‘Good-bye,’ cried all the outlaws, waving their bows.

      And Kay and the Wart and the Dog Boy and Wat and Cavall and their escort set off on the long track home.

      They had an immense reception. The return on the previous day of all the hounds, except Cavall and the Dog Boy, and in the evening the failure to return of Kay and Wart, had set the household in an uproar. Their nurse had gone into hysterics. Hob had stayed out till midnight scouring the purlieus of the forest – the cooks had burned the joint for dinner – and the sergeant-at-arms had polished all the armour twice and sharpened all the swords and axes to a razor blade in case of invasion. At last somebody had thought of consulting Merlyn, whom they had found in the middle of his third nap. The magician, for the sake of peace and quietness to go on with his rest, had used his insight to tell Sir Ector exactly what the boys were doing, where they were, and when they might be expected back. He had prophesied their return to the minute.

      So, when the small procession of returning warriors came within sight of the drawbridge, they were greeted by the whole household. Sir Ector was standing in the middle with a thick walking-stick with which he proposed to whack them for going out of bounds and causing so much trouble; the nurse had insisted on bringing out a banner which used to be put up when Sir Ector came home for the holidays, as a small boy, and this said Welcome Home; Hob had forgotten about his beloved hawks and was standing on one side, shading his eagle eyes to get the first view; the cooks and all the kitchen staff were banging СКАЧАТЬ