The Once and Future King (#1-4)

by T. H. White

  ‘I never could stomach these nationalists,’ he exclaimed. ‘The destiny of Man is to unite, not to divide. If you keep on dividing you end up as a collection of monkeys throwing nuts at each other out of separate trees.’

  ‘All the same,’ said the King, ‘there seems to have been a good deal of provocation. Perhaps I ought not to fight?’

  ‘And give in?’ asked Kay, more in amusement than dismay.

  ‘I could abdicate.’

  They looked at Merlyn, who refused to meet their eyes. He rode on, staring straight in front of him, munching his beard.

  ‘Ought I to give in?’

  ‘You are the King,’ said the old man stubbornly. ‘Nobody can say anything if you do.’

  Later on, he began to speak in a gentler tone.

  ‘Did you know,’ he asked rather wistfully, ‘that I was one of the Old Ones myself? My father was a demon, they say, but my mother was a Gael. The only human blood I have comes from the Old Ones. Yet here I am denouncing their ideas of nationalism, being what their politicians would call a traitor – because, by calling names, they can score the cheap debating points. And do you know another thing, Arthur? Life is too bitter already, without territories and wars and noble feuds.’

  Chapter IV

  The hay was safe and the corn would be ripe in a week. They sat in the shade at the edge of a cornfield, watching the dark brown people with their white teeth who were aimlessly busy in the sunlight, firehanging their scythes, sharpening their sickles and generally getting ready for the end of the farm year. It was peaceful in the fields which were close to the castle, and no arrows needed to be apprehended. While they watched the harvesters, they stripped the half—ripe heads of corn with their fingers and bit the grain daintily, tasting the furry milkiness of the wheat, and the husky, less generous flesh of the oats. The pearly taste of barley would have been strange to them, for it had not yet come to Gramarye.

  Merlyn was still explaining.

  ‘When I was a young man,’ he said, ‘there was a general idea that it was wrong to fight in wars of any sort. Quite a lot of people in those days declared that they would never fight for anything whatever.’

  ‘Perhaps they were right,’ said the King.

  ‘No. There is one fairly good reason for fighting – and that is, if the other man starts it. You see, wars are a wickedness of a wicked species. They are so wicked that they must not be allowed. When you can be perfectly certain that the other man started them, then is the time when you might have a sort of duty to stop him.’

  ‘But both sides always say that the other side started them.’

  ‘Of course they do, and it is a good thing that it should be so. At least, it shows that both sides are conscious, inside themselves, that the wicked thing about a war is its beginning.’

  ‘But the reasons,’ protested Arthur. ‘If one side was starving the other by some means or other – some peaceful, economic means which were not actually warlike – then the starving side might have to fight its way out – if you see what I mean?’

  ‘I see what you think you mean,’ said the magician, ‘but you are wrong. There is no excuse for war, none whatever, and whatever the wrong which your nation might be doing to mine – short of war – my nation would be in the wrong if it started a war so as to redress it. A murderer, for instance, is not allowed to plead that his victim was rich and oppressing him – so why should a nation be allowed to? Wrongs have to be redressed by reason, not by force.’

  Kay said: ‘Suppose King Lot of Orkney was to draw up his army all along the northern border, what could our King here do except send his own army to stand on the same line? Then supposing all Lot’s men drew their swords, what could we do except draw ours? The situation could be more complicated than that. It seems to me that aggression is a difficult thing to be sure about.’

  Merlyn was annoyed.

  ‘Only because you want it to seem so,’ he said. ‘Obviously Lot would be the aggressor, for making the threat of force. You can always spot the villain, if you keep a fair mind. In the last resort, it is ultimately the man who strikes the first blow.’

  Kay persisted with his argument.

  ‘Let it be two men,’ he said, ‘instead of two armies. They stand opposite each other – they draw their swords, pretending it is for some reason – they move about, so as to get to the weak side of one another – they even make feints with their swords, pretending to strike, but not doing so. Do you mean to tell me that the aggressor is the one who actually hits first?’

  ‘Yes, if there is nothing else to decide by. But in your case it is obviously the man who first took his army to the frontier.’

  ‘This first blow business brings it down to a matter of nothing. Suppose they both struck at once, or suppose you could not see which one gave the first blow, because there were so many facing each other?’

  ‘But there nearly always is something else to decide by,’ exclaimed the old man. ‘Use your common sense. Look at this Gaelic revolt, for example. What reason has the King here for being an aggressor? He is their feudal overlord already. It isn’t sensible to pretend that he is making the attack. People don’t attack their own possessions.’

  ‘I certainly don’t feel,’ said Arthur, ‘as if I had started it. Indeed, I didn’t know it was going to start, until it had. I suppose that was due to my having been brought up in the country.’

  ‘Any reasoning man,’ continued his tutor, ignoring the interruption, ‘who keeps a steady mind, can tell which side is the aggressor in ninety wars out of a hundred. He can see which side is likely to benefit by going to war in the first place, and that is a strong reason for suspicion. He can see which side began to make the threat of force or was the first to arm itself. And finally he can often put his finger on the one who struck the first blow.’

  ‘But supposing,’ said Kay, ‘that one side was the one to make the threat, while the other side was the one to strike the first blow?’

  ‘Oh, go and put your head in a bucket. I’m not suggesting that all of them can be decided. I was saying, from the start of the argument, that there are many wars in which the aggression is as plain as a pike—staff, and in those wars at any rate it might be the duty of decent men to fight the criminal. If you aren’t sure that he is the criminal – and you must sum it up for yourself with every ounce of fairness you can muster – then go and be a pacifist by all means. I recollect that I was a fervent pacifist myself once, in the Boer War, when my country was the aggressor, and a young woman blew a squeaker at me on Mafeking Night.’

  ‘Tell us about Mafeking Night,’ said Kay. ‘One gets sick of these discussions about right and wrong.’

  ‘Mafeking Night…’ began the magician, who was prepared to tell anybody about anything. But the King prevented him.

  ‘Tell us about Lot,’ he said. ‘I want to know about him, if I have to fight him. Personally I am beginning to be interested in right and wrong.’

  ‘King Lot…’ began Merlyn in the same tone of voice, only to be interrupted by Kay.

  ‘No,’ said Kay. ‘Talk about the Queen. She sounds more interesting.’

  ‘Queen Morgause…’

  Arthur assumed the right of veto for the first time in his life. Merlyn, catching the lifted eyebrow, reverted to the King of Orkney with unexpected humility.

  ‘King Lot,’ said he, ‘is simply a member of your peerage and landed royalty. He’s a cipher. You don’t have to think about him at all.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘In the first place, he is what we used to call in my young days a Gentleman of the Ascendancy. His subjects are Gaels and so is his wife, but he himself is an import from Norway. He is a Gall like yourself, a member of the ruling class who conquered the Islands long ago. This means that his attitude to the war is the same as your father’s would have been. He doesn’t care a fig about Gaels or Galls, but he goes in for wars in the same way as my Victorian friends used to go in for foxhunting or else for profit in ranso
ms. Besides, his wife makes him.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said the King. ‘I wish you had been born forwards like other people. What with Victorians and Mafeking Night…’

  Merlyn was indignant.

  ‘The link between Norman warfare and Victorian foxhunting is perfect. Leave your father and King Lot outside the question for the moment, and look at literature. Look at the Norman myths about legendary figures like the Angevin kings. From William the Conqueror to Henry the Third, they indulged in warfare seasonally. The season came round, and off they went to the meet in splendid armour which reduced the risk of injury to a foxhunter’s minimum. Look at the decisive battle of Brenneville in which a field of nine hundred knights took part, and only three were killed. Look at Henry the Second borrowing money from Stephen, to pay his own troops in fighting Stephen. Look at the sporting etiquette, according to which Henry had to withdraw from a siege as soon as his enemy Louis joined the defenders inside the town, because Louis was his feudal overlord. Look at the siege of Mont St Michel, at which it was considered unsporting to win through the defenders’ lack of water. Look at the battle of Malmesbury, which was given up on account of bad weather. That is the inheritance to which you have succeeded, Arthur. You have become the king of a domain in which the popular agitators hate each other for racial reasons, while the nobility fight each other for fun, and neither the racial maniac nor the overlord stops to consider the lot of the common soldier, who is the one person that gets hurt. Unless you can make the world wag better than it does at present, King, your reign will be an endless series of petty battles, in which the aggressions will either be from spiteful reasons or from sporting ones, and in which the poor man will be the only one who dies. That is why I have been asking you to think. That is why…’

  ‘I think,’ said Kay, ‘that Dinadan is waving to us, to say that dinner is ready.’

  Chapter V

  Mother Morlan’s house in the Out Isles was hardly bigger than a large dog kennel – but it was comfortable and full of interesting things. There were two horse—shoes nailed on the door – five statues bought from pilgrims, with the used—up rosaries wound round them – for beads break, if one is a good prayer – several bunches of fairy—flax laid on top of the salt—box – some scapulars wound round the poker – twenty bottles of mountain dew, all empty but one – about a bushel of withered palm, relic of Palm Sundays for the past seventy years – and plenty of woollen thread for tying round the cow’s tail when she was calving. There was also a large scythe blade which the old lady hoped to use on a burglar – if ever one was foolish enough to come that way – and, in the chimney, there were hung some ash—rungs which her deceased husband had been intending to use for flails, together with eel skins and strips of horse leather as hangings to them. Under the eel skins was an enormous bottle of holy water, and in front of the turf fire sat one of the Irish Saints who lived in the beehive cells of the outer islands, with a glass of water—of—life in his hand. He was a relapsed saint, who had fallen into the Pelagian heresy of Celestius, and he believed that the soul was capable of its own salvation. He was busy saving it with Mother Morlan and the usquebaugh.

  ‘God and Mary to you, Mother Morlan,’ said Gawaine. ‘We have come for a story, ma’am, about the shee.’

  ‘God and Mary and Andrew to you,’ exclaimed the beldame. ‘And you asking me for a story, whateffer, with his reverence here among the ashes!’

  ‘Good evening, St Toirdealbhach, we did not notice you because of the dark.’

  ‘The blessing of God to you.’

  ‘The same blessing to you yourself.’

  ‘It must be about murders,’ said Agravaine. ‘About murders and some corbies which peck out your eyes.’

  ‘No, no,’ cried Gareth. ‘It must be about a mysterious girl who marries a man because he has stolen the giant’s magic horse.’

  ‘Glory be to God,’ remarked St Toirdealbhach. ‘It does be a strange story yer after wanting entirely.’

  ‘Come now, St Toirdealbhach, tell us one yourself.’

  ‘Tell us about Ireland.’

  ‘Tell us about Queen Maeve, who desired the bull.’

  ‘Or dance us one of the jigs.’

  ‘Maircy on the puir bairns, to think of his holiness dancing a jig!’

  The four representatives of the upper classes sat down wherever they could – there were only two stools – and stared at the holy man in receptive silence.

  ‘Is it a moral tale yer after?’

  ‘No, no. No morals. We like a story about fighting. Come, St Toirdealbhach, what about the time you broke the Bishop’s head?’

  The saint drank a big gulp of his white whisky and spat in the fire.

  ‘There was a king in it one time,’ said he, and the whole audience made a rustling noise with their rumps, as they settled down.

  ‘There was a king in it, one time,’ said St Toirdealbhach, ‘and this king, what do you think, was called King Conor Mac Nessa. He was a whale of a man who lived with his relations at a place called Tara of the Kings. It was not long before this king had to go to battle against thim bloody O’Haras, and he got shot in the conflict with a magic ball. You are to understand that the ancient heroes were after making themselves bullets out of the brains of their adversaries – which they would roll between the palms of their hands in little pieces, and leave them to dry in the sun. I suppose they must have shot them out of the arquebus, you know, as if they were sling—shot or bolts. Well, and if they did, this old King was shot in the temples with one of thim same bullets, and it lodging against the bone of the skull, at the critical point whatever. “I’m a fine man now,” says the King, and he sends for the brehons and those to advise with them about the obstetrics. The first brehon says, “You’re a dead man, King Conor. This ball is at the lobe of the brain.” So said all the medical gintlemen, widout respect of person nor creed. “Oh, what’ll I do at all,” cries the King of Ireland. “It’s a hard fortune evidently, when a man can’t be fighting a little bit unless he comes to the end of his days.” “None of yer prate, now,” says the surgeons, “there’s wan thing which can be done, and that same thing is to keep from all unnatural excitement from this time forward.” “For that matter,” says they, “ye must keep from all natural excitement also, or otherwise the bullet will cause a rupture, and the rupture rising to a flux, and the flux to a conflammation, will occasion an absolute abruption in the vital functions at all. It’s yer only hope, King Conor, or otherwise ye will lie compunctually as the worms made ye.” Well, begor, it was a fine state of business, as you may imagine. There was that poor Conor in his castle, and he not able to laugh nor fight nor take any small sup of spirited water nor to look upon a white colleen anyhow, for fear that his brains would burst. The ball stood in his temples, half in, half out, and that was the sorrow with him, from that day forward.’

  ‘Wurra the doctors,’ said Mother Morlan. ‘Hoots, but they’re na canny.’

  ‘What happened him?’ asked Gawaine. ‘Did he live long in this dark room?’

  ‘What happened him? I was now coming to that. Wan day there was a slashing thunderstorm in it, and the castle walls shook like a long—net, and a great part of the bailey fell upon them. It was the worst storm that was known in those parts for whiles, and King Conor rushed out into the element to seek advice. He found wan of his brehons standing there whatever, and axed him what could it be. This brehon was a learned man, and he told King Conor. He said how our Saviour had been hanged on a tree in Jewry that day, and how the storm was broken on account of it, and he spoke to King Conor about the gospel of God. Then, what do you think, King Conor of Ireland ran back into his palace for to seek his sword in righteous passion, and he ran out with it throughout the tempest to defend his Saviour – and that was how he died.’

  ‘He was dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well!’

  ‘What a nice way to do it,’ said Gareth. ‘It was no good to him, but it was grand!’
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br />   Agravaine said, ‘If I was told by my doctors to be careful, I would not lose my temper over nothing. I should think what was happening, whatever.’

  ‘But it was chivalrous?’

  Gawaine began to fidget with his toes.

  ‘It was silly,’ he said eventually. ‘It did no good.’

  ‘But he was trying to do good.’

  ‘It was not for his family,’ said Gawaine. ‘I do not know why he was so excited at all.’

  ‘Of course it was for his family. It was for God, who is the family of every person. King Conor went out on the side of right, and gave his life to help it.’

  Agravaine moved his stern in the soft, rusty ashes of the turf impatiently. He considered that Gareth was a fool.

  ‘Tell us the story,’ he said, to change the subject, ‘about how pigs were made.’

  ‘Or the one,’ said Gawaine, ‘about the great Conan who was enchanted to a chair. He was stuck on it, whatever, and they could not get him off. So they pulled him from it by force, and then there was a necessity on them to graft a piece of skin on his bottom – but it was sheepskin, and from thence the stockings worn by the Fianna were made from the wool which grew on Conan!’

  ‘No, do not,’ said Gareth. ‘Let there be no stories. Let us sit and talk wisely, my heroes, on deep matters. Let us talk about our father, who is away to the wars.’

  St Toirdealbhach took a deep draught of his mountain dew, and spat in the fire.

  ‘Isn’t war the grand thing?’ he observed reminiscently. ‘I did be going to wars a great deal wan time, before I was sainted. Only I got tired on them.’

  Gawaine said: ‘I cannot see how people ever get tired of wars. I am sure I will not. After all, it is a gentleman’s occupation. I mean, it would be like getting tired of hunting, or of hawks.’

  ‘War,’ said Toirdealbhach, ‘be’s a good thing if there doesn’t be too many in it. When there’s too many fighting, how would you know what you are fighting about at all? There did be fine wars in Old Ireland, but it would be about a bull or something, and every man had his heart in it from the start.’