The Once and Future King

Chapter III

Sir Kay had heard stories about the Queen of Orkney, and he was inquisitive about her.

‘Who is Queen Morgause?’ he asked one day. ‘I was told that she is beautiful. What did these Old Ones want to fight us about? And what is her husband like, King Lot? What is his proper name? I heard somebody calling him the King of the Out Isles, and then there are others who call him the King of Lothian and Orkney. Where is Lothian? Is it near Hy Brazil? I can’t understand what the revolt was about. Everybody knows that the King of England is their feudal overlord. I heard that she has four sons. Is it true that she doesn’t get on with her husband?’

They were riding back from a day on the mountain, where they had been hunting grouse with the peregrines, and Merlyn had gone with them for the sake of the ride. He had become a vegetarian lately – an opponent of blood-sports on principle – although he had gone through most of them during his thoughtless youth – and even now he secretly adored to watch the falcons for themselves. Their masterly circles, as they waited on – mere specks in the sky – and the bur-r-r with which they scythed on the grouse, and the way in which the wretched quarry, killed instantaneously, went end-over tip into the heather – these were a temptation to which he yielded in the uncomfortable knowledge that it was sin. He consoled himself by saying that the grouse were for the pot. But it was a shallow excuse, for he did not believe in eating meat either.

Arthur, who was riding watchfully like a sensible young monarch, withdrew his eye from a clump of whins which might have held an ambush in those early days of anarchy, and cocked one eyebrow at his tutor. He was wondering with half his mind which of Kay’s questions the magician would choose to answer, but the other half was still upon the martial possibilities of the landscape. He knew how far the falconers were behind them – the cadger carrying the hooded hawks on a square framework slung from his shoulders, with a man-at-arms on either side – and how far in front was the next likely place for a William Rufus arrow.

Merlyn chose the second question.

‘Wars are never fought for one reason,’ he said. ‘They are fought for dozens of reasons, in a muddle. It is the same with revolts.’

‘But there must have been a main reason,’ said Kay.

‘Not necessarily.’

Arthur observed: ‘We might have a trot now. It is clear going for two miles since those whins, and we can have a canter back again, to keep with the men. It would breathe the horses.’

Merlyn’s hat blew off. They had to stop to pick it up. Afterwards they walked their horses sedately in a row.

‘One reason,’ said the magician, ‘is the immortal feud of Gael and Gall. The Gaelic Confederation are representatives of an ancient race which has been harried out of England by several races which are represented by you. Naturally they want to be as nasty as possible to you when they can.’

‘Racial history is beyond me,’ said Kay. ‘Nobody knows which race is which. They are all serfs, in any case.’

The old man looked at him with something like amusement.

‘One of the startling things about the Norman,’ he said, ‘is that he really does not know a single things about anybody except himself. And you, Kay, as a Norman gentleman, carry the peculiarity to its limit. I wonder if you even know what a Gael is? Some people call them Celts.’

‘A celt is a kind of battle-axe,’ said Arthur, surprising the magician with this piece of information more than he had been surprised for several generations. For it was true, in one of the meanings of the word, although Arthur ought not to have known it.

‘Not that kind of celt. I am talking about the people. Let’s stick to calling them Gaels. I mean the Old Ones who live in Brittany and Cornwall and Wales and Ireland and Scotland. Picts and that.’

‘Picts?’ asked Kay. ‘I think I have heard about Picts. Pictures. They were painted blue.’

‘And I am supposed to have managed your education!’

The King said thoughtfully: ‘Would you mind telling me about the races, Merlyn? I supposed I ought to understand the situation, if there has to be a second war.’

This time it was Kay who looked surprised.

‘Is there to be a war?’ he asked. ‘This is the first I’ve heard of it. I thought the revolt was crushed last year?’

‘They have made a new confederation since they went home, with five new kings, which makes them eleven altogether. The new ones belong to the old blood too. They are Clariance of North Humberland, Idres of Cornwall, Cradelmas of North Wales, Brandegoris of Stranggore and Anguish of Ireland. It will be a proper war, I’m afraid.’

‘And all about races,’ said his foster-brother in disgust. ‘Still, it may be fun.’

The King ignored him.

‘Go on,’ he said to Merlyn. ‘I want you to explain.

‘Only,’ he added quickly, as the magician opened his mouth, ‘not too many details.’

Merlyn opened his mouth and shut it twice, before he was able to comply with this restriction.

‘About three thousand years ago,’ he said, ‘the country you are riding through belonged to a Gaelic race who fought with copper hatchets. Two thousand years ago they were hunted west by another Gaelic race with bronze swords. A thousand years ago there was a Teuton invasion by people who had iron weapons, but it didn’t reach the whole of the Pictish Isles because the Romans arrived in the middle and got mixed up with it. The Romans went away about eight hundred years ago, and then another Teuton invasion – of people mainly called Saxons – drove the whole rag-bag west as usual. The Saxons were just beginning to settle down when your father the Conqueror arrived with his pack of Normans, and that is where we are today. Robin Wood was a Saxon partisan.’

‘I thought we were called the British Isles.’

‘So we are. People have got the B’s and P’s muddled up. Nothing like the Teuton race for confusing its consonants. In Ireland they are still chattering away about some people called Fomorians, who were really Pomeranians, while …’

Arthur interrupted him at the critical moment.

‘So it comes to this,’ he said, ‘that we Normans have the Saxons for serfs while the Saxons once had a sort of under serfs, who were called the Gaels – the Old Ones. In that case I don’t see why the Gaelic Confederation should want to fight against me – as a Norman king – when it was really the Saxons who hunted them, and when it was hundreds of years ago in any case.’

‘You are under-rating the Gaelic memory, dear boy. They don’t distinguish between you. The Normans are a Teuton race, like the Saxons whom your father conquered. So far as the ancient Gaels are concerned, they just regard both your races as branches of the same alien people, who have driven them north and west.’

Kay said definitely: ‘I can’t stand any more history. After all, we are supposed to be grown up. If we go on, we shall be doing dictation.’

Arthur grinned and began in the well-remembered sing-song voice: Barabara Celarent Darii Ferioque Prioris, while Kay sang the next four lines with him antiphonically.

Merlyn said: ‘You asked for it.’

‘And now we have it.’

‘The main thing is that the war is going to happen because the Teutons or the Galls or whatever you them upset the Gaels long ago.’

‘Certainly not,’ exclaimed the magician. ‘I never said anything of the sort.’

They gaped.

‘I said the war will happen for dozens of reasons, not for one. Another of the reasons for this particular war is because Queen Morgause wears the trousers. Perhaps I ought to say the trews.’

Arthur asked painstakingly: ‘Let me get this clear. First I was given to understand that Lot and the rest had rebelled because they were Gaels and we were Galls, but now I am told that it deals with the Queen of Orkney’s trousers. Could you be more definite?’

‘There is the feud of Gael and Gall which we have been talking about, but there are other feuds too. Surely you have not forgotten that your father killed the Earl of Cornwall before you were born? Queen Morgause was one of the daughters of that Earl’

‘The lovely Cornwall Sisters,’ observed Kay.

‘Exactly. You met one of them yourselves – Queen Morgan le Fay. That was when you were friends with Robin Wood, and you found her on a bed of lard. The third sister was Elaine. All three of them are witches of one sort or another, though Morgan is the only one who takes it seriously.’

‘If my father,’ said the King, ‘killed the Queen of Orkney’s father, then I think she has a good reason for wanting her husband to rebel against me.’

‘It is only a personal reason. Personal reasons are no excuse for war.’

‘And furthermore,’ the King continued, ‘if my race has driven out the Gaelic race, then I think the Queen of Orkney’s subjects have a good reason too.’

Merlyn scratched his chin in the middle of the beard, with the hand which held the reins, and pondered.

‘Uther,’ he said at length, ‘your lamented father, was an aggressor. So were his predecessors the Saxons, who drove the Old Ones away. But if we go on living backward like that, we shall never come to the end of it. The Old Ones themselves were aggressors, against the earlier race of the copper hatchets, and even the hatchet fellows were aggressors, against some earlier crew of Esquimaux who lived on shells. You simply go on and on, until you get to Cain and Abel. But the point is that the Saxon Conquest did succeed, and so did the Norman Conquest of the Saxons. Your father settled the unfortunate Saxons long ago, however brutally he did it, and when a great many years have passed one ought to be ready to accept a status quo. Also I would like to point out that the Norman Conquest was a process of welding small units into bigger ones – while the present revolt of the Gaelic Confederation is a process of disintegration. They want to smash up what we may call the United Kingdom into a lot of piffling little kingdoms of their own. That is why their reason is not what you might call a good one.’

He scratched his chin again, and became wrathful.

‘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.’