Arthur Rex (6 page)

But King Arthur frowned. “Cold beef and pickles will do nicely for the midday meal,” said he. “As king we shall eat no tarted-up dishes. Sumptuousness has caused the ruin of the Roman Empire. On boiled meat we shall expel the gluttonous Anglish-Saxon pagans and make our island a British bastion.”

Then he pointed towards the east wall of the churchyard. “And speaking of tarts, from the stage next the stone we saw what looked very like a dreadful stews just there, beyond the wall, and a queue awaiting entrance to it of peers of this realm, as well as divers monks and friars.”

Now at this point Merlin materialized from behind the stone, which was large enough to have hid him naturally, and the king was therefore not amazed.

“Indeed, Sire,” said the wizard, “it is called the Nunnery of St. Paul’s and its strumpet residents, the Archbishop’s Sisters.”

“Go and have it burned,” commanded King Arthur. “And send those unfortunate trollops to a proper convent. As to that queue, and whoever is within the bordel, feeding his beastly appetite—O scandalous baron, O unchaste monk!—have all put in close arrest and delivered to the Tower, there to be scourged.”

And recognizing that this was the zeal of youth conjoined with a novel sense of power (but the lad was a real king, for only such could have identified at long range a brothel, another ensample of which he could never have seen living in bucolic Wales), Merlin cast a spell upon King Arthur, in which he seemed to see smoke and flames arising from the stews, and therefore he was satisfied.

Now the king next demanded that the archbishop of Canterbury be brought to him, and Merlin fetched from the cathedral that aged prelate, who as always was carried upon his ornate chair by the robust bearers.

But seeing young Arthur the archbishop did snort, and ask, “Merlin, hast thou become a pander? A king? This is but a beardless varlet, and by the look of his soft cheek, a Nan-boy.”

And Sir Hector did gasp, and seeing him the prelate said, “And this clown his father, come to sell him at London. Well, ’tis not mine own pleasure, but many of my bishops could not say as much.”

Then to Merlin, King Arthur said, “Have this toad quartered, then burned. Then have his bishops flayed alive.”

“Sire,” said Merlin, “I would speak with you alone, as so often I spake with your father, in the privacy which befits the graveness of the theme.”

Therefore the young king drew aside with the old magician, saying, “Methinks I know thee, but as if in a dream.”

“I am Merlin,” said the same, “and we were companions in your infancy.... Now, as to the Church, it is a very complicated business. Certes, its leaders are caitiffs, and what you have commanded is not nearly such condign punishment as they deserve. Yet as an institution Christianity doth provide a containment for the mob as the banks of a stream a channel for the water, and as a faith it doth meet the universal requirement of men for that which is beyond the evident, the which is often vile. And the Nazarene, by taking upon himself the guilt for all human pollution, hath proved the most cunning god of the many to which mortals have resorted.”

“Merlin,” said King Arthur, “in thy special situation thou hast special privileges, but blasphemy (which is to be expected from the son of an imp) is never one of them. I shall be a Christian king because Christ was Our Saviour, and not because of expediency, political or spiritual. Loving and fearing God, I shall display no device but His Cross, and around me I shall gather, at a circular table at which no seat is more favored than the next, a body of knights as devout as they are brave. Our purpose shall be solely to serve the Right, by destroying the Wrong. There shall be no material magnificence, no personal aggrandizements, and no wars except in defense. Indeed, we shall offer our hand even unto all paynims, who will have nought to fear from us unless they reply with the sword, in which case we shall serve as God’s instrument and strike them down.

“Our brotherhood shall be as chaste as it is pious. Concupiscence, gluttony, vanity, covetousness, envy, and sloth we do proscribe utterly, and those who practice these sins, unless in innocent ignorance, are our sworn enemies.”

“Your list,” said Merlin, “is wanting only in Anger, perhaps because you are, yourself, angry at this moment. I do counsel you to remember the four cardinal virtues, for not even a Christian king can rule long on the seven negations.
Prudence, justice, temperance,
and
fortitude.
Three of these, omitting justice, should be applied in this matter of the Church, which you distinguish (correctly, perhaps, though I am not the one to speak with authority of this) from the Faith. Mountebank, charlatan, rogue that he is, Canterbury yet controlleth that institution in Britain. If he is deposed at this time by you, you will run afoul of the pope, who is notably jealous in this regard. Then, too, the archbishop might well transfer his fealty to the detestable Saxons and serve Masses for their barbarous deity Wotan.”

Now the young king did scowl. “’Tis true, Merlin, that I am yet a novice at ruling, but must I accept thy cynicism? Is it not a poor beginning?”

“’Tis rather a rich one, methinks,” said Merlin, “if at the outset you see power clearly.”

“Then what wouldst have us do with this filthy old man?” asked King Arthur.

“Have him crown you,” said Merlin, and while Arthur waxed incredulous the wizard continued in this wise. “And with all ceremony and, despite your distaste for display, much pomp. When seated firmly on the throne you may do as you wish, but first you would be wise to do what others expect. Precedent may be mostly rubbish, but timorous mankind looks with less fear on that which is oft repeated, even if evil, than on the new, even if good.”

“One thing we know as a kingly principle,” said Arthur, “and that is that no monarch may hesitate for long. We shall therefore accept thy counsel, Merlin, for we know of thy powers, which have ever been at the service of the British throne.”

“You will never regret this decision,” said Merlin. “Subsequent to your coronation I shall cause the pope to receive intelligences to the effect that Canterbury does connive secretly to break away from Rome and establish his own British Church. Be assured that the old caitiff will soon be excommunicate.”

And this was all done as Merlin promised. Arthur was crowned with great magnificence, and all the peers and all the commons swore fealty to him. And within the twelvemonth a papal messenger came with the archbishop’s excommunication, and Merlin spirited away the ex-prelate and dropped him over Hadrian’s Wall, amongst the pagan Picts, whom he expected him to corrupt, thereby weakening some enemies of Britain without resort to violence.

But before that happened, King Arthur was constrained to fight two wars, the first of which was against an alliance of the very barons who had earlier sworn fealty to him at London, but then reaching the remote counties began to see as suspect the manner by which he gained the crown: which is to say, not by the traditional means of war, or at least murder, but rather by sleight of hand, and joining together in a mighty host they did attack him.

And at the head of his loyal forces, the which were not mounted knights but rather common kerns who fought afoot, and brandishing the sword from the stone, he did defeat these traitors soundly. But once the war was over he took no revenge against the defeated.

Now King Arthur’s second war was fought against the Angles and the Saxons, who did spurn his hand of friendship, and therefore he drave them from Britain and into the Channel, where those he had not killed by spear and sword perished by water, either by drowning or by the aquatic monsters who there abound and who cause the tempests for which those straits are notable.

Then King Arthur did remove his main seat from London, which had been a Roman town and yet possessed many souvenirs of that time, including ingenious systems of conduits to bring water into the buildings and even to warm it. And such decadent conveniences were believed by the king to weaken the British spirit (especially in the public baths, which encouraged the vile crime of sodomy), and therefore he took his court to Caerleon-upon-Usk, in Wales.

Then Arthur called Merlin unto him, saying, “Killing so many traitors and Anglish savages hath dulled our sword. The Jewish armorers have had to sharpen it so often as to grind the blade into little more than a bodkin. We know now it was thou who arranged for us to take it from the stone: and we ask thee now to furnish us with another sword, for King Ryons, who is sovereign lord of Ireland, hath sent us the most villainous and lewdest message that ever one king hath sent another, to this effect: that he would have us do homage to him by flaying off our beard and presenting it to him so that he might trim his mantle with it.”

“Sire, you are yet too young to have grown a beard,” said Merlin.

“That is beside the point, Merlin,” King Arthur said, ruefully rubbing his bare chin. “We can not accept this insult. Ryons saith furthermore that if we do not furnish him with the hair of our chin, he will cross over to Britain and lay waste the land and burn and slay and never leave till he takes the beard by cutting off our head which bears it.”

“Then,” said Merlin, “let us go to the Lady of the Lake.” And he conducted King Arthur to a lake of which the water was still as glass until suddenly, as they watched, an arm clothed in white samite rose above the surface of it and holding in its hand a sword.

Now Merlin found upon the bank a punt and into it the king and he did enter, and Merlin poled it to the middle of the lake, of which the water was shallow until they reached the arm, and then there was no bottom that could be seen.

“This is thy Lady of the Lake?” asked King Arthur. “Doth she breathe water, Merlin? Doth she kneel amongst the fishes?”

“Take you the sword from the hand, Sire, and ask no more, for of any mysterious thing it can be said that to explain it is to degenerate it of all power.”

Yet Arthur did still hesitate, saying, “Did not the greatest sage amongst the Greeks say that the unexamined life was not worth living?”

“Indeed he did,” said Merlin, “but soon afterwards he was constrained to drink poison. Therefore perhaps he was not the wisest man in Athens but the greatest fool. Pray you take this sword, which is hight Excalibur. With it you will be invincible till the end of your days.”

“Which,” said King Arthur, “is to say nothing more than that a man liveth till he dies. The end of our days might well be the end of this very day, for example. Dost mean rather that with the aid of this sword we shall live longer than without it?”

“Indeed,” said Merlin with wryness, “I mean just that, Sire. I am a wizard and not a logician, as you are a king and not a philosopher. Any effort to compound these offices is inadvisable. Pray take the sword.”

So Arthur shrugged and bracing himself with a foot on either side of the punt, did lean and grasp the cross-handles of the sword, for the white hand clutched the hilt firmly, and his movement caused the boat to swing away behind him, so that he found himself arched over sheer water, and he did cry out in a certain vexation.

Then Merlin poled the punt around so that the king regained his balance, and Arthur plucked forth the sword from the hand, and the hand sank slowly into the water, in the which, though it was clear as air, nought could be seen except the rippling lights in its crystalline depths that seemed to extend to infinity.

“A stout weapon,” said Arthur, weighing the sword in his hands, and then hurling it into the air, where it spun, pommel over point, for several revolutions too rapid to count, he seized the hilt from amidst the whirling brilliance of its descent to the boat.

Now Merlin did gasp, and say, “Surely you are deft, Sire, but I would that you performed no more legerdemain with Excalibur.” And from out of a secret place in his robe he drew a scarf of such fine and weightless weave that in comparison to it a cobweb would seem opaque and gossamer leaden, and asking the king to extend the blade horizontally, Merlin threw the scarf into the air above, and it floated downwards more softly than dissipating steam, and when it touched the edge of Excalibur it was parted in twain.

And then Merlin poled the punt to the shore, where stood an adamantine boulder large as three oxen, the which had served a giant in his game of bowls, making a sound that men an hundred leagues away believed thunder, and the magician asked the king to strike it with the sword. And Arthur did so, with one blow dividing the great rock as though it were a Caerphilly cheese.

“Now see the edge,” said Merlin. And Arthur lifted the sword and saw the keenness burning like fire from hilt to point, the blade unflawed by the adamant. “Now,” said Merlin, “read the legend engraved around the flange below the pommel.”

And King Arthur did so. “‘When thou art done with me, return me whence I came.’” The king pondered on this for a moment and then he put Excalibur into the empty scabbard on his belt. “No doubt thou art wise, Merlin,” said he. “A king should not be too skeptical. Yet dost admit that he can not afford to be naive? Is there a scale so fine that ’twill gauge the moral differences which are oft so delicate?”

“There is none ready to hand,” said Merlin. “Each king must fashion his own, and determine for himself where pride becomes mere vanity, where apparent generosity is real meanness, where justice is not held in equilibrium but is overweighted towards spite or cowardice.”

“Give us thy mind in this matter of the Irish King Ryons,” asked Arthur, “for it is new to us to be mocked, though we are already much blooded in direct and honest battle.”

“No one,” said Merlin, “exceeds the Hibernians in bravery, but they do take delight in derisive wit. What they can do by the word, they save doing by the sword. This is their only economy. But do not believe King Ryons’ boast to be empty. He will have your head if you permit him to take it.”

Then Arthur touched the hilt of Excalibur. “Now, Merlin,” said he, “if with this sword we are indeed invincible, would it not be unjust to do battle against a man armed with only a conventional weapon?”

“Not when it is he who seeks you out!” said Merlin with vehemence.
“You
do not yearn to decorate
your
mantle with
his
beard. Tis never justice, but rather sentimentality, to deal mildly with intruders. Magnanimity is properly shown only to the defeated. As to Ryons, you require only that he let you alone.”