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the once and future king by t h white

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contents the sword in the stone the queen of air and darkness the ill-made knight the candle in the wind

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the critics on t h white s the once and future king a gay warm sad glinting rich mystical true and beautiful tapestry of human history and human spirit read it and laugh read it and learn read it and be glad you are human minneapolis tribune intensely contemporary and pungent not only better and richer for being a retelling it is also more original in fact there is everything in this great book saturday review should be enormously popular and become one of the curious classics of english literature david garnett

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other books by t h white the book of merlyn england have my bones letters to a friend the maharajah and other stories mistress masham s repose

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incipit liber primus the sword in the stone she is not any common earth water or wood or air but merlin s isle of gramarye where you and i will fare 1 on mondays wednesdays and fridays it was court hand and summulae logicales while the rest of the week it was the organon repetition and astrology the governess was always getting muddled with her astrolabe and when she got specially muddled she would take it out of the wart by rapping his knuckles she did not rap kay s knuckles because when kay grew older he would be sir kay the master of the estate the wart was called the wart because it more or less rhymed with art which was short for his real name kay had given him the nickname kay was not called anything but kay as he was too dignified to have a nickname and would have flown into a passion if anybody had tried to give him one the governess had red hair and some mysterious wound from which she derived a lot of prestige by showing it to all the women of the castle behind closed doors it was believed to be where she sat down and to have been caused by sitting on some armour at a picnic by mistake eventually she offered to show it to sir ector who was kay s father had hysterics and was sent away they found out afterwards that she had been in a lunatic hospital for three years in the afternoons the programme was mondays and fridays tilting and horsemanship tuesdays hawking wednesdays fencing thursdays archery saturdays the theory of chivalry with the proper measures to be blown on all occasions terminology of the chase and hunting etiquette if you did the wrong thing at the mort or the undoing for instance you were bent over the body of the dead beast and smacked with the flat side of a sword this was called being bladed it was horseplay a sort of joke like being shaved when crossing the line kay was not bladed although he often went wrong when they had got rid of the governess sir ector said after all damn it all we can t have the boys runnin about all day like hooligans after all damn it all ought to be havin a firstrate eddication at their age when i was their age i was doin all this latin and stuff at five o clock every mornin happiest time of me life pass the port sir grummore grummursum who was staying the night because he had been benighted out questin after a specially long run said that when he was their age he was swished every mornin because he would go hawkin instead of learnin he attributed to this weakness the fact that he could never get beyond the future simple of utor it was a third of the way down the left-hand leaf he said he thought it was leaf ninety-seven he passed the port.

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sir ector said had a good quest today sir grummore said oh not so bad rattlin good day in fact found a chap called sir bruce saunce pité choppin off a maiden s head in weedon bushes ran him to mixbury plantation in the bicester where he doubled back and lost him in wicken wood must have been a good twenty-five miles as he ran a straight-necked un said sir ector but about these boys and all this latin and that added the old gentleman amo amas you know and runnin about like hooligans what would you advise ah said sir grummore laying his finger by his nose and winking at the bottle that takes a deal of thinkin about if you don t mind my sayin so don t mind at all said sir ector very kind of you to say anythin much obliged i m sure help yourself to port good port this get it from a friend of mine but about these boys said sir grummore how many of them are there do you know two said sir ector counting them both that is couldn t send them to eton i suppose inquired sir grummore cautiously long way and all that we know it was not really eton that he mentioned for the college of blessed mary was not founded until 1440 but it was a place of the same sort also they were drinking metheglyn not port but by mentioning the modern wine it is easier to give you the feel isn t so much the distance said sir ector but that giant what s is-name is in the way have to pass through his country you understand what is his name can t recollect it at the moment not for the life of me fellow that lives by the burbly water galapas said sir grummore that s the very chap the only other thing said sir grummore is to have a tutor you mean a fellow who teaches you that s it said sir grummore a tutor you know a fellow who teaches you

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have some more port said sir ector you need it after all this questin splendid day said sir grummore only they never seem to kill nowadays run twentyfive miles and then mark to ground or lose him altogether the worst is when you start a fresh quest we kill all our giants cubbin said sir ector after that they give you a fine run but get away run out of scent said sir grummore i dare say it s always the same with these big giants in a big country they run out of scent but even if you was to have a tutor said sir ector i don t see how you would get him advertise said sir grummore i have advertised said sir ector it was cried by the humberland newsman and cardoile advertiser the only other way said sir grummore is to start a quest you mean a quest for a tutor explained sir ector that s it hie haec hoc said sir ector have some more of this drink whatever it calls itself hunc said sir grummore so it was decided when grummore grummursum had gone home next day sir ector tied a knot in his handkerchief to remember to start a quest for a tutor as soon as he had time to do so and as he was not sure how to set about it he told the boys what sir grummore had suggested and warned them not to be hooligans meanwhile then they went hay-making it was july and every able-bodied man and woman on the estate worked during that month in the field under sir ector s direction in any case the boys would have been excused from being eddicated just then sir ector s castle stood in an enormous clearing in a still more enormous forest it had a courtyard and a moat with pike in it the moat was crossed by a fortified stone bridge which ended half-way across it the other half was covered by a wooden drawbridge which was wound up every night as soon as you had crossed the drawbridge you were at the top of the village street it had only one street and this extended for about half a mile with thatched houses of wattle and daub on either side of it the street divided the clearing into two huge fields that on the left being cultivated in hundreds of long narrow strips while that on the right ran down to a river and was used as pasture half of the right-hand field was fenced off for hay it was july and real july weather such as they had in old england everybody went bright brown like red indians with startling teeth and flashing eyes the dogs moved about with their tongues hanging out or lay panting in bits of shade while the farm horses sweated

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through their coats and flicked their tails and tried to kick the horse-flies off their bellies with their great hind hoofs in the pasture field the cows were on the gad and could be seen galloping about with their tails in the air which made sir ector angry sir ector stood on the top of a rick whence he could see what everybody was doing and shouted commands all over the two-hundred-acre field and grew purple in the face the best mowers mowed away in a line where the grass was still uncut their scythes roaring in the strong sunlight the women raked the dry hay together in long strips with wooden rakes and the two boys with pitchforks followed up on either side of the strip turning the hay inwards so that it lay well for picking up then the great carts followed rumbling with their spiked wooden wheels drawn by horses or slow white oxen one man stood on top of the cart to receive the hay and direct operations while one man walked on either side picking up what the boys had prepared and throwing it to him with a fork the cart was led down the lane between two lines of hay and was loaded in strict rotation from the front poles to the back the man on top calling out in a stern voice where he wanted each fork to be pitched the loaders grumbled at the boys for not having laid the hay properly and threatened to tan them when they caught them if they got left behind when the wagon was loaded it was drawn to sir ector s rick and pitched to him it came up easily because it had been loaded systematically not like modern hay and sir ector scrambled about on top getting in the way of his assistants who did the real work and stamping and perspiring and scratching about with his fork and trying to make the rick grow straight and shouting that it would all fall down as soon as the west winds came the wart loved hay-making and was good at it kay who was two years older generally stood on the edge of the bundle which he was trying to pick up with the result that he worked twice as hard as the wart for only half the result but he hated to be beaten at anything and used to fight away with the wretched hay which he loathed like poison until he was quite sick the day after sir grummore s visit was sweltering for the men who toiled from milking to milking and then again till sunset in their battle with the sultry element for the hay was an element to them like sea or air in which they bathed and plunged themselves and which they even breathed in the seeds and small scraps stuck in their hair their mouths their nostrils and worked tickling inside their clothes they did not wear many clothes and the shadows between their sliding muscles were blue on the nut-brown skins those who feared thunder had felt ill that morning in the afternoon the storm broke sir ector kept them at it till the great flashes were right overhead and then with the sky as dark as night the rain came hurling against them so that they were drenched at once and could not see a hundred yards the boys lay crouched under the wagons wrapped in hay to keep their wet bodies warm against the now cold wind and all joked with one another while heaven fell kay was shivering though not with cold but he joked like the others because he would not show he was afraid at the last and greatest thunderbolt every man startled involuntarily and each saw the other startle until they laughed away their shame but that was the end of the hay-making and the beginning of play the boys were sent home to change their clothes the old dame who had been their nurse fetched dry jerkins out of a press and scolded them for catching their deaths and denounced sir ector for keeping on so

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long then they slipped their heads into the laundered shirts and ran out to the refreshed and sparkling court i vote we take cully and see if we can get some rabbits in the chase cried the wart the rabbits will not be out in this wet said kay sarcastically delighted to have caught him over natural history oh come on it will soon be dry i must carry cully then kay insisted on carrying the goshawk and flying her when they went hawking together this he had a right to do not only because he was older than the wart but also because he was sir ector s proper son the wart was not a proper son he did not understand this but it made him feel unhappy because kay seemed to regard it as making him inferior in some way also it was different not having a father and mother and kay had taught him that being different was wrong nobody talked to him about it but he thought about it when he was alone and was distressed he did not like people to bring it up since the other boy always did bring it up when a question of precedence arose he had got into the habit of giving in at once before it could be mentioned besides he admired kay and was a born follower he was a heroworshipper come on then cried the wart and they scampered off toward the mews turning a few cartwheels on the way the mews was one of the most important parts of the castle next to the stables and the kennels it was opposite to the solar and faced south the outside windows had to be small for reasons of fortification but the windows which looked inward to the courtyard were big and sunny the windows had close vertical slats nailed down them but no horizontal ones there was no glass but to keep the hawks from draughts there was horn in the small windows at one end of the mews there was a little fireplace and a kind of snuggery like the place in a saddle-room where the grooms sit to clean their tack on wet nights after foxhunting here there were a couple of stools a cauldron a bench with all sorts of small knives and surgical instruments and some shelves with pots on them the pots were labelled cardamum ginger barley sugar wrangle for a snurt for the craye vertigo etc there were leather skins hanging up which had been snipped about as pieces were cut out of them for jesses hoods or leashes on a neat row of nails there were indian bells and swivels and silver varvels each with ector cut on a special shelf and the most beautiful of all held the hoods very old cracked rufter hoods which had been made for birds before kay was born tiny hoods for the merlins small hoods for tiercels splendid new hoods which had been knocked up to pass away the long winter evenings all the hoods except the rufters were made in sir ector s colours white leather with red baize at the sides and a bunch of blue-grey plumes on top made out of the hackle feathers of herons on the bench there was a jumble of oddments such as are to be found in every workshop bits of cord wire metal tools some bread and cheese which the mice had been at a leather bottle some frayed gauntlets for the left hand nails bits of sacking a couple of lures and some rough tallies scratched on the wood these read conays 1111 1111 harn 111 etc they were not spelled very well.

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right down the length of the room with the afternoon sun shining full on them there ran the screen perches to which the birds were tied there were two little merlins which had only just been taking up from hacking an old peregrine who was not much use in this wooded country but who was kept for appearances a kestrel on which the boys had learned the rudiments of falconry a spar-hawk which sir ector was kind enough to keep for the parish priest and caged off in a special apartment of his own at the far end there was the tiercel goshawk cully the mews was neatly kept with sawdust on the floor to absorb the mutes and the castings taken up every day sir ector visited the place each morning at seven o clock and the two austringers stood at attention outside the door if they had forgotten to brush their hair he confined them to barracks they took no notice kay put on one of the left-hand gauntlets and called cully from the perch but cully with all his feathers close-set and malevolent glared at him with a mad marigold eye and refused to come so kay took him up do you think we ought to fly him asked the wart doubtfully deep in the moult like this of course we can fly him you ninny said kay he only wants to be carried a bit that s all so they went out across the hay-field noting how the carefully raked hay was now sodden again and losing its goodness into the chase where the trees began to grow far apart as yet and parklike but gradually crowding into the forest shade the conies had hundreds of buries under these trees so close together that the problem was not to find a rabbit but to find a rabbit far enough away from its hole hob says that we must not fly cully till he has roused at least twice said the wart hob does not know anything about it nobody can tell whether a hawk is fit to fly except the man who is carrying it hob is only a villein anyway added kay and began to undo the leash and swivel from the jesses when he felt the trappings being taken off him so that he was in hunting order cully did make some movements as if to rouse he raised his crest his shoulder coverts and the soft feathers of his thighs but at the last moment he thought better or worse of it and subsided without the rattle this movement of the hawk s made the wart itch to carry him he yearned to take him away from kay and set him to rights himself he felt certain that he could get cully into a good temper by scratching his feet and softly teasing his breast feathers upward if only he were allowed to do it himself instead of having to plod along behind with the stupid lure but he knew how annoying it must be for the elder boy to be continually subjected to advice and so he held his peace just as in modern shooting you must never offer criticism to the man in command so in hawking it was important that no outside advice should be allowed to disturb the judgment of the austringer.

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so-ho cried kay throwing his arm upward to give the hawk a better take-off and a rabbit was scooting across the close-nibbled turf in front of them and cully was in the air the movement had surprised the wart the rabbit and the hawk all three and all three hung a moment in surprise then the great wings of the aerial assassin began to row the air but reluctant and undecided the rabbit vanished in a hidden hole up went the hawk swooping like a child flung high in a swing until the wings folded and he was sitting in a tree cully looked down at his masters opened his beak in an angry pant of failure and remained motionless the two hearts stood still 2 a good while later when they had been whistling and luring and following the disturbed and sulky hawk from tree to tree kay lost his temper let him go then he said he is no use anyway oh we could not leave him cried the wart what would hob say it is my hawk not hob s exclaimed kay furiously what does it matter what hob says he is a servant but hob made cully it is all right for us to lose him because we did not have to sit up with him three nights and carry him all day and all that but we can t lose hob s hawk it would be beastly serve him right then he is a fool and it is a rotten hawk who wants a rotten stupid hawk you had better stay yourself if you are so keen on it i am going home i will stay said the wart sadly if you will send hob when you get there kay began walking off in the wrong direction raging in his heart because he knew that he had flown the bird when he was not properly in yarak and the wart had to shout after him the right way then the latter sat down under the tree and looked up at cully like a cat watching a sparrow with his heart beating fast it was well enough for kay who was not really keen on hawking except in so far as it was the proper occupation for a boy in his station of life but the wart had some of the falconer s feelings and knew that a lost hawk was the greatest possible calamity he knew that hob had worked on cully for fourteen hours a day to teach him his trade and that his work had been like jacob s struggle with the angel when cully was lost a part of hob would be lost too the wart did not dare to face the look of reproach which would be in the falconer s eye after all that he had tried to teach them what was he to do he had better sit still leaving the lure on the ground so that cully could settle down and come in his own time but cully had no intention of doing this he had been given a generous gorge the night before and he was not hungry the hot day had put him in a bad temper the waving and whistling of the boys below and their pursuit of him from tree to tree had disturbed his never powerful brains now he did not quite know what he wanted

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to do but it was not what anybody else wanted he thought perhaps it would be nice to kill something from spite a long time after that the wart was on the verge of the true forest and cully was inside it in a series of infuriating removes they had come nearer and nearer till they were further from the castle than the boy had ever been and now they had reached it quite 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 the wart thought particularly of a man named wat whose name the cottagers used to frighten their children with he had once lived in sir ector s village and the wart could remember him he squinted had no nose and was weak in his wits the children threw stones at him one day he turned on the children and caught one and made a snarly noise and bit off his nose too then he ran into the forest they threw stones at the child with no nose now but wat was supposed to be in the forest still running on all fours and dressed in skins there were magicians in the forest also in those legendary days as well as strange animals not known to modern works of natural history there were regular bands of saxon outlaws not like wat who lived together and wore green and shot with arrows which never missed there were even a few dragons though these were small ones which lived under stones and could hiss like a kettle added to this there was the fact that it was getting dark the forest was trackless and nobody in the village knew what was on the other side the evening hush had fallen and the high trees stood looking at the wart without a sound he felt that it would be safer to go home while he still knew where he was but he had a stout heart and did not want to give in he understood that once cully had slept in freedom for a whole night he would be wild again and irreclaimable cully was a passager but if the poor wart could only mark him to roost and if hob would only arrive then with a dark lantern they might still take him that night by climbing the tree while he was sleepy and muddled with the light the boy could see more or less where the hawk had perched about a hundred yards within the thick trees because the home-going rooks of evening were mobbing that place he made a mark on one of the trees outside the forest hoping that it might help him to find his way back and then began to fight his way into the undergrowth as best he might he heard by the rooks that cully had immediately moved further off the night fell still as the small boy struggled with the brambles but he went on doggedly listening with all his ears and cully s evasions became sleepier and shorter until at last before the utter darkness fell he could see the hunched shoulders in a tree above him against the sky wart sat down under the tree so as not to disturb the bird any further as it went to sleep and cully standing on one leg ignored his existence.

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perhaps said the wart to himself even if hob does not come and i do not see how he can very well follow me in this trackless woodland now i shall be able to climb up by myself at about midnight and bring cully down he might stay there at about midnight because he ought to be asleep by then i could speak to him softly by name so that he thought it was just the usual person coming to take him up while hooded i shall have to climb very quietly then if i do get him i shall have to find my way home and the drawbridge will be up but perhaps somebody will wait for me for kay will have told them i am out i wonder which way it was i wish kay had not gone he snuggled down between the roots of the tree trying to find a comfortable place where the hard wood did not stick into his shoulder-blades i think the way was behind that big spruce with the spike top i ought to try to remember which side of me the sun is setting so that when it rises i may keep it on the same side going home did something move under that spruce tree i wonder oh i wish i may not meet that old wild wat and have my nose bitten off how aggravating cully looks standing there on one leg as if there was nothing the matter at this there was a quick whirr and a smack and the wart found an arrow sticking in the tree between the fingers of his right hand he snatched his hand away thinking he had been stung by something before he noticed it was an arrow then everything went slow he had time to notice quite carefully what sort of an arrow it was and how it had driven three inches into the solid wood it was a black arrow with yellow bands round it like a wasp and its cock feather was yellow the two others were black they were dyed goose feathers the wart found that although he was frightened of the danger of the forest before it happened once he was in it he was not frightened any more he got up quickly but it seemed to him slowly and went behind the other side of the tree as he did this another arrow came whirr and frump but this one buried all except its feathers in the grass and stayed still as if it had never moved on the other side of the tree he found a waste of bracken six foot high this was splendid cover but it betrayed his whereabouts by rustling he heard another arrow hiss through the fronds and what seemed to be a man s voice cursing but it was not very near then he heard the man or whatever it was running about in the bracken it was reluctant to fire any more arrows because they were valuable things and would certainly get lost in the undergrowth wart went like a snake like a coney like a silent owl he was small and the creature had no chance against him at this game in five minutes he was safe the assassin searched for his arrows and went away grumbling but the wart realized that even if he was safe from the archer he had lost his way and his hawk he had not the faintest idea where he was he lay down for half an hour pressed under the fallen tree where he had hidden to give time for the thing to go right away and for his own heart to cease thundering it had begun beating like this as soon as he knew that he had got away oh thought he now i am truly lost and now there is almost no alternative except to have my nose bitten off or to be pierced right through with one of those waspy arrows or to be eaten by a hissing dragon or a wolf or a wild boar or a magician if magicians do eat boys which i expect they do now i may well wish that i had been good and not angered the

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governess when she got muddled with her astrolabe and had loved my dear guardian sir ector as much as he deserved at these melancholy thoughts and especially at the recollection of kind sir ector with his pitchfork and his red nose the poor wart s eyes became full of tears and he lay most desolate beneath the tree the sun finished the last rays of its lingering good-bye and the moon rose in awful majesty over the silver tree-tops before he dared to stand then he got up and dusted the twigs out of his jerkin and wandered off forlorn taking the easiest way and trusting himself to god he had been walking like this for about half an hour and sometimes feeling more cheerful because it really was very cool and lovely in the summer forest by moonlight when he came upon the most beautiful thing that he had seen in his short life so far there was a clearing in the forest a wide sward of moonlit grass and the white rays shone full upon the tree trunks on the opposite side these trees were beeches whose trunks are always more beautiful in a pearly light and among the beeches there was the smallest movement and a silvery clink before the clink there were just the beeches but immediately afterward there was a knight in full armour standing still and silent and unearthly among the majestic trunks he was mounted on an enormous white horse that stood as rapt as its master and he carried in his right hand with its butt resting on the stirrup a high smooth jousting lance which stood up among the tree stumps higher and higher till it was outlined against the velvet sky all was moonlit all silver too beautiful to describe the wart did not know what to do he did not know whether it would be safe to go up to this knight for there were so many terrible things in the forest that even the knight might be a ghost most ghostly he looked too as he hoved meditating on the confines of the gloom eventually the boy made up his mind that even if it were a ghost it would be the ghost of a knight and knights were bound by their vows to help people in distress excuse me he said when he was right under the mysterious figure but can you tell me the way back to sir ector s castle at this the ghost jumped so that it nearly fell off its horse and gave out a muffled baaa through its visor like a sheep excuse me began the wart again and stopped terrified in the middle of his speech for the ghost lifted up its visor revealing two enormous eyes frosted like ice exclaimed in an anxious voice what what took off its eyes which turned out to be hornrimmed spectacles fogged by being inside the helmet tried to wipe them on the horse s mane which only made them worse lifted both hands above its head and tried to wipe them on its plume dropped its lance dropped the spectacles got off the horse to search for them the visor shutting in the process lifted its visor bent down for the spectacles stood up again as the visor shut once more and exclaimed in a plaintive voice oh dear the wart found the spectacles wiped them and gave them to the ghost who immediately put them on the visor shut at once and began scrambling back on its horse for dear life when it was there it held out its hand for the lance which the wart handed up and feeling all secure,

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opened the visor with its left hand and held it open it peered at the boy with one hand up like a lost mariner searching for land and exclaimed ah-hah whom have we here what please said the wart i am a boy whose guardian is sir ector charming fellah said the knight never met him in me life can you tell me the way back to his castle faintest idea stranger in these parts meself i am lost said the wart funny thing that now i have been lost for seventeen years name of king pellinore continued the knight may have heard of me what the visor shut with a pop like an echo to the what but was opened again immediately seventeen years ago come michaelmas and been after the questing beast ever since boring very i should think it would be said the wart who had never heard of king pellinore nor of the questing beast but he felt that this was the safest thing to say in the circumstances it is the burden of the pellinores said the king proudly only a pellinore can catch it that is of course or his next of kin train all the pellinores with that idea in mind limited eddication rather fewmets and all that i know what fewmets are said the boy with interest they are the droppings of the beast pursued the harborer keeps them in his horn to show to his master and can tell by them whether it is a warrantable beast or otherwise and what state it is in intelligent child remarked the king very now i carry fewmets about with me practically all the time insanitary habit he added beginning to look dejected and quite pointless only one questing beast you know so there can t be any question whether she is warrantable or not here his visor began to droop so much that the wart decided he had better forget his own troubles and try to cheer his companion by asking questions on the one subject about which he seemed qualified to speak even talking to a lost royalty was better than being alone in the wood what does the questing beast look like ah we call it the beast glatisant you know replied the monarch assuming a learned air and beginning to speak quite volubly now the beast glatisant or as we say in english the questing beast you may call it either he added graciously this beast has the head of a serpent ah and the body of a libbard the haunches of a lion and he is footed like a hart wherever this beast goes he makes a noise in his belly as it had been the noise of thirty couple of hounds questing.

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