The Once and Future King. T. White H.

did not mean to leave you altogether. It was only because I wanted to sleep in a feather bed, just for a bit. I was coming back, honestly I was. Oh, please don’t die, Beast, and leave me without any fewmets!’

      When he saw Sir Ector, the King took command of the situation. Desperation had given him authority.

      ‘Now, then, Ector,’ he exclaimed. ‘Don’t stand there like a ninny. Fetch that barrel of wine along at once.’

      They brought the barrel and poured out a generous tot for the Questing Beast.

      ‘Poor creature,’ said King Pellinore indignantly. ‘It has pined away, positively pined away, just because there was nobody to take an interest in it. How I could have stayed all that while with Sir Grummore and never given my old Beast a thought I really don’t know. Look at its ribs, I ask you. Like the hoops of a barrel. And lying out in the snow all by itself, almost without the will to live. Come on, Beast, you see if you can’t get down another gulp of this. It will do you good.

      ‘Mollocking about in a feather bed,’ added the remorseful monarch, glaring at Sir Grummore, ‘like a – like a kidney!’

      ‘But how did you – how did you find it?’ faltered Sir Grummore.

      ‘I happened on it. And small thanks to you. Running about like a lot of nincompoops and smacking each other with swords. I happened on it in this gorse bush here, with snow all over its poor back and tears in its eyes and nobody to care for it in the wide world. It’s what comes of not leading a regular life. Before, it was all right. We got up at the same time, and quested for regular hours, and went to bed at half past ten. Now look at it. It has gone to pieces altogether, and it will be your fault if it dies. You and your bed.’

      ‘But, Pellinore!’ said Sir Grummore …

      ‘Shut your mouth,’ replied the King at once. ‘Don’t stand there bleating like a fool, man. Do something. Fetch another pole so that we can carry old Glatisant home. Now then, Ector, haven’t you got any sense? We must just carry him home and put him in front of the kitchen fire. Send somebody on to make some bread and milk. And you, Twyti, or whatever you choose to call yourself, stop fiddling with that trumpet of yours and run ahead to get some blankets warmed.

      ‘When we get home,’ concluded King Pellinore, ‘the first thing will be to give it a nourishing meal, and then, if it is all right in the morning, I will give it a couple of hours’ start and then hey-ho for the old life once again. What about that, Glatisant, hey? You’ll tak’ the high road and I’ll tak’ the low road, what? Come along, Robin Hood, or whoever you are – you may think I don’t know, but I do – stop leaning on your bow with that look of negligent woodcraft. Pull yourself together, man, and get that muscle-bound sergeant to help you carry her. Now then, lift her easy. Come along, you chuckle-heads, and mind you don’t trip. Feather beds and quarry, indeed; a lot of childish nonsense. Go on, advance, proceed, step forward, march! Feather brains, I call it, that’s what I do.

      ‘And as for you, Grummore,’ added the King, even after he had concluded, ‘you can just roll yourself up in your bed and stifle in it.’

Chapter XVII

      ‘I think it must be time,’ said Merlyn, looking at him over the top of his spectacles one afternoon, ‘that you had another dose of education. That is, as Time goes.’

      It was an afternoon in early spring and everything outside the window looked beautiful. The winter mantle had gone, taking with it Sir Grummore, Master Twyti, King Pellinore, and the Questing Beast – the latter having revived under the influence of kindliness and bread and milk. It had bounded off into the snow with every sign of gratitude, to be followed two hours later by the excited King, and the watchers from the battlements had observed it confusing its snowy footprints most ingeniously, as it reached the edge of the chase. It was running backward, bounding twenty foot sideways, rubbing out its marks with its tail, climbing along horizontal branches, and performing many other tricks with evident enjoyment. They had also seen King Pellinore – who had dutifully kept his eyes shut and counted ten thousand while this was going on – becoming quite confused when he arrived at the difficult spot, and finally galloping off in the wrong direction with his brachet trailing behind him.

      It was a lovely afternoon. Outside the schoolroom window the larches of the distant forest had already taken on the fullness of their dazzling green, the earth twinkled and swelled with a million drops, and every bird in the world had come home to court and sing. The village folk were forth in their gardens every evening, planting garden beans, and it seemed that, what with these emergencies and those of the slugs (coincidentally with the beans), the buds, the lambs, and the birds, every living thing had conspired to come out.

      ‘What would you like to be?’ asked Merlyn.

      Wart looked out of the window, listening to the thrush’s twice-done song of dew.

      He said, ‘I have been a bird once, but it was only in the mews at night, and I never got a chance to fly. Even if one ought not to do one’s education twice, do you think I could be a bird so as to learn about that?’

      He had been bitten with the craze for birds which bites all sensible people in the spring, and which sometimes even leads to excesses like bird’s nesting.

      ‘I can see no reason why you should not,’ said the magician. ‘Why not try it at night?’

      ‘But they will be asleep at night.’

      ‘All the better chance of seeing them, without their flying away. You could go with Archimedes this evening, and he would tell you about them.’

      ‘Would you do that, Archimedes?’

      ‘I should love to,’ said the owl. ‘I was feeling like a little saunter myself.’

      ‘Do you know,’ asked the Wart, thinking of the thrush, ‘why birds sing, or how? Is it a language?’

      ‘Of course it is a language. It is not a big language like human speech, but it is large.’

      ‘Gilbert White,’ said Merlyn, ‘remarks, or will remark, however you like to put it, that “the language of birds is very ancient, and, like other ancient modes of speech, little is said, but much is intended.” He also says somewhere that “the rooks, in the breeding season, attempt sometimes, in the gaiety of their hearts, to sing – but with no great success.”’

      ‘I love rooks,’ said the Wart. ‘It is funny, but I think they are my favourite birds.’

      ‘Why?’ asked Archimedes.

      ‘Well, I like them. I like their sauce.’

      ‘Neglectful parents,’ quoted Merlyn, who was in a scholarly mood, ‘and saucy, perverse children.’

      ‘It is true,’ said Archimedes reflectively, ‘that all the corvidae have a distorted sense of humour.’

      Wart explained.

      ‘I love the way they enjoy flying. They don’t just fly, like other birds, but they fly for fun. It is lovely when they hoist home to bed in a flock at night, all cheering and making rude remarks and pouncing on each other in a vulgar way. They turn over on their backs sometimes and tumble out of the air, just to be ridiculous, or else because they have forgotten they are flying and have coarsely begun to scratch themselves for fleas, without thinking about it.’

      ‘They are intelligent birds,’ said Archimedes, ‘in spite of their low humour. They are one of the birds that have parliaments, you know, and a social system.’

      ‘Do you mean they have laws?’

      ‘Certainly they have laws. They meet in the autumn, in a field, to talk them over.’

      ‘What sort of laws?’

      ‘Oh, well, laws about the defence of the rookery, and marriage, and so forth. You are not allowed to marry outside the