The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-4)

by T.H. White

Wart would not have been frightened of an English forest nowadays, but the great jungle of Old England was a different matter. It was not only that there were wild boars in it, whose sounders would at this season be furiously rooting about, nor that one of the surviving wolves might be slinking behind any tree, with pale eyes and slavering chops. The mad and wicked animals were not the only inhabitants of the crowded gloom. When men themselves became wicked they took refuge there, outlaws cunning and bloody as the gore-crow, and as persecuted.

If I was rich that’s what I would buy. A nice bed with a nice pillow and a nice sheet that you could lie in, and then I would put this beastly horse in a meadow and tell that beastly brachet to run away and play, and throw all this beastly armour out of the window, and let the beastly Beast go and chase himself—that I would.”

a guncase with all sorts of weapons which would not be invented for half a thousand years,

But I unfortunately was born at the wrong end of time, and I have to live backwards from in front, while surrounded by a lot of people living forwards from behind. Some people call it having second sight.”

Instantly there were some heavy tablets in it, signed by Aristotle, a parchment signed by Hecate, and some typewritten duplicates signed by the Master of Trinity, who could not remember having met him. All these gave Merlyn an excellent character.

“Kay,” said Merlyn, suddenly terrible, “thou wast ever a proud and ill-tongued speaker, and a misfortunate one. Thy sorrow will come from thine own mouth.”

Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.”

“Love is a trick played on us by the forces of evolution. Pleasure is the bait laid down by the same. There is only power. Power is of the individual mind, but the mind’s power is not enough. Power of the body decides everything in the end, and only Might is Right.

“Your wife will scarcely enjoy the life.” “Oh, I am not going to have a wife. I think they are stupid.

“Hail,” said Merlyn, in his most mysterious manner. “Hail,” replied the King, anxious to make a good impression. They shook hands. “Did you say Hail?” inquired the King, looking about him nervously. “I thought it was going to be fine, myself.”

Wart was only an infuriated hurricane.

It took him half an hour to escape, and then only at the price of carrying with him a juicy piece of raw beef which he was supposed to hold over his eye.

“Well,” he said, “suppose that Morgan is the queen of the fairies, or at any rate has to do with them, and that fairies are not the kind of creatures your nurse has told you about. Some people say they are the Oldest Ones of All, who lived in England before the Romans came here—before us Saxons, before the Old Ones themselves—and that they have been driven underground.

“If I am made to get married,” thought the Wart, who had doubts on the subject, “I will marry a girl like this: a kind of golden vixen.”

In the end they came to the inner chamber, where Morgan le Fay herself lay stretched upon her bed of glorious lard.

“For heaven’s sake, don’t do anything to annoy your nurse,” exclaimed Merlyn, looking about him anxiously. “That old woman hit me with a broom when I came to see you this forenoon, and broke my spectacles.

IN SPITE OF his protests, the unhappy invalid was confined to his chamber for three mortal days.

for it has to be admitted that starving nations never seem to be quite so starving that they cannot afford to have far more expensive armaments than anybody else

Such marvels were great and comfortable ones. But in the Old England there was a greater marvel still. The weather behaved itself.

It was Christmas night and the proper things had been done. The whole village had come to dinner in hall. There had been boar’s head and venison and pork and beef and mutton and capons—but no turkey, because this bird had not yet been invented.

Beaumont licked his hand but could not wag his tail. The huntsman nodded to Robin, who was standing behind, and held the hound’s eyes with his own. He said, “Good dog, Beaumont the valiant, sleep now, old friend Beaumont, good old dog.” Then Robin’s falchion let Beaumont out of this world, to run free with Orion and roll among the stars.

Ouch

In this enormous flatness, there lived one element—the wind. For it was an element. It was a dimension, a power of darkness. In the human world, the wind comes from somewhere, and goes somewhere, and, as it goes, it passes through somewhere—through trees or streets or hedgerows. This wind came from nowhere. It was going through the flatness of nowhere, to no place. Horizontal, soundless except for a peculiar boom, tangible, infinite, the astounding dimensional weight of it streamed across the mud.

The Wart, facing into this wind, felt that he was uncreated. Except for the wet solidity under his webbed feet, he was living in nothing—a solid nothing, like chaos.

But what creature could be so low as to go about in bands, to murder others of its own blood?”

As the years went by, Kay became more difficult. He always used a bow too big for him, and did not shoot very accurately with it either. He lost his temper and challenged nearly everybody to have a fight, and in those few cases where he did actually have the fight he was invariably beaten. Also he became sarcastic.

He thrust the end of his beard into his mouth, stared tragically at the fire, and began to munch it fiercely.

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something.

Badgers are not like foxes. They have a special midden where they put out their used bones and rubbish, proper earth closets, and bedrooms whose bedding they turn out frequently, to keep it clean.

As for you, Man, you will be a naked tool all your life, though a user of tools. You will look like an embryo till they bury you, but all the others will be embryos before your might.

True warfare is rarer in Nature than cannibalism.

There was a quiet churchyard at the end of it, with a kind of square in front of the church door. In the middle of the square there was a heavy stone with an anvil on it, and a fine new sword was stuck through the anvil. “Well,” said the Wart, “I suppose it is some sort of war memorial, but it will have to do. I am sure nobody would grudge Kay a war memorial, if they knew his desperate straits.”

In future it will be your glorious doom to take up the burden and to enjoy the nobility of your proper title: so now I shall crave the privilege of being the very first of your subjects to address you with it—as my dear liege lord, King Arthur.”

“When shall I be dead and rid Of the wrong my father did? How long, how long, till spade and hearse Put to sleep my mother’s curse?”

The third brother, Agravaine, was moved because it was a matter which concerned his mother. He had curious feelings about her, which he kept to himself.

Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts uncritically—to those who hardly think about us in return.

Arthur was a young man, just on the threshold of life. He had fair hair and a stupid face, or at any rate there was a lack of cunning in it. It was an open face, with kind eyes and a reliable or faithful expression, as though he were a good learner who enjoyed being alive and did not believe in original sin.

The King was dressed in a robe of velvet which had belonged to Uther the Conqueror, his father, trimmed with the beards of fourteen kings who had been vanquished in the olden days. Unfortunately some of these kings had had red hair, some black, some pepper-and-salt, while their growth of beard had been uneven.

What is all this chivalry, anyway? It simply means being rich enough to have a castle and a suit of armour, and then, when you have them, you make the Saxon people do what you like.

England’s difficulty, we used to say, is Ireland’s opportunity.

I don’t think things ought to be done because you are able to do them. I think they should be done because you ought to do them.

Gareth said, “Never mind, Meg, do not cry. We will not let it hurt you.” “After all, it can only kill you,” said Agravaine brutally.

The rope was tied round what remained of the head, and thus at last, with eyes ruined, flesh bruised and separating from the bones, the muddy, bloody, heather-mangled exhibit was conveyed on its last stage to the herb garden.

Horror

“There will be a lot of jealousy,” said Kay. “You will have all these knights in this order of yours saying that they are the best one, and wanting to sit at the top of the table.” “Then we must have a round table, with no top.”

We could call them the Knights of the Round Table.”

We must breed up a new generation of chivalry for the future. That child Lancelot who came over with You-know-who, for instance: we must get hold of kids like him. They will be the real Table.”

Well, if the human beings were too wicked or too stupid to accept his way, he might have to force it on them, in their own interests, by the sword.” The magician clenched his fists, twisted his gown into screws, and began to shake all over. “Very interesting,” he said in a trembling voice. “Very interesting. There was just such a man when I was young—an Austrian who invented a new way of life and convinced himself that he was the chap to make it work. He tried to impose his reformation by the sword, and plunged the civilized world into misery and chaos.

This was constructed on the snout principle, since it was found that if one had an ugly helmet it frightened the enemy. King Pellinore’s looked like an inquisitive pig.

“I have told you about Guenever, haven’t I?” “I don’t believe it.” “No matter. And I have warned you about her and Lancelot.” “That warning,” said the King, “would be a base one anyway, whether it was true or false.”

“I will tell you something else, King, which may be a surprise for you. It will not happen for hundreds of years, but both of us are to come back. Do you know what is going to be written on your tombstone? Hic jacet Arthurus Rex quondam Rexque futurus. Do you remember your Latin? It means, the once and future king.”

“Be off, you shameless hussy,” she cried, bringing her hunting crop down on the creature’s nose. The Questing Beast recoiled with the tears springing to its eyes, and the portcullis crashed between them.