The Once and Future King

Chapter IX

The Queen’s suggestion about hunting unicorns had a curious result. The more lovelorn King Pellinore became, the more obvious it was that something would have to be done. Sir Palomides had an inspiration.

‘The royal melancholy,’ said he, ‘can only be dispelled by Questing Beast. This is the subject to which the maharajah sahib has been accustomed by lifelong habit. Yours truly has said so all along.’

‘Personally,’ said Grummore, ‘I believe the Questin’ Beast is dead. Anyway, it is in Flanders.’

‘Then we must dress up,’ said Sir Palomides. ‘We must assume the rôle of Questing Beast and be hunted ourselves.’

‘We could scarcely dress as the Beast.’

But the Saracen had run away with the idea.

‘Why not?’ he asked ‘Why not, by Jingo? Joculators assume garb of animals – as stags, goats and so forth – and dance to bells and tabor with many gyrings and circumflexions.’

‘But really Palomides, we are not joculators.’

‘Then we must learn to be so!’

‘Joculators!’

A joculator was a juggler, a low kind of minstrel, and Sir Grummore did not relish the idea at all.

‘However could we dress as the Questin’ Beast?’ he asked weakly. ‘She is a frightfully complicated animal.’

‘Describe this animal.’

‘Well, dash it all. She has a snake’s head and the body of a leopard and haunches like a lion and feet like a hart. And hang it, man, how could we make this noise in her belly, like thirty couple of hounds questin’?’

‘Yours truly will be the belly,’ replied Sir Palomides, ‘and will give tongue as follows.’

He began yodelling.

‘Hush!’ cried Sir Grummore. ‘You will wake the castle.’

‘Then it is agreed?’

‘No, it is not agreed. Never heard such nonsense in me life. Besides, she don’t make a noise like that. She makes a noise like this.’

And Sir Grummore began cackling in a tuneless alto, like thousands of wild geese on the Wash.

‘Hush! Hush!’ cried Sir Palomides.

‘I won’t hush. The noise you was makin’ was like pigs.’

The two naturalists began hooting, grunting, squawking, squealing, crowing, mooing, growling, snuffling, quacking, snarling and mewing at one another, until they were red in the face.

‘The head,’ said Sir Grummore, stopping suddenly, ‘will have to be of cardboard.’

‘Or canvas,’ said Sir Palomides. ‘The fishing populace will be in possession of canvas.’

‘We can make leather boots for hoofs.’

‘Spots can be painted on the body.’

‘It will have to button round the middle –’

‘– where we join.’

‘And you,’ added Sir Palomides generously, ‘can be the back end and do hounds. The noise is plainly stated to come from the belly.’

Sir Grummore blushed with pleasure and said gruffly in his Norman way, ‘Well, thanks, Palomides. I must say, I think that’s demned decent of you.’

‘Not at all.’

For a week King Pellinore saw hardly anything of his friends. ‘You write poems, Pellinore,’ they told him, ‘or go and sigh on the cliffs, there’s a good fellow.’ He wandered about, occasionally crying out, ‘Flanders – Glanders’ or ‘daughter – ought to,’ whenever the ideas occurred to him, while the dark Queen hung in the background.

Meanwhile, in Sir Palomides’ room, where the door was kept locked, there was such a stitching and snipping and painting and arguing as had seldom been known before.

‘My dear chap, I tell you a libbard has black spots.’

‘Puce,’ Sir Palomides said obstinately.

‘What is puce? And anyway we have not got any.’

They glared at each other with the fury of creators.

‘Try on the head.’

‘There, you’ve torn it. I said you would.’

‘Construction was of feeble nature.’

‘We must construct the thing again.’

When the reconstruction was finished, the paynim stood back to admire it.

‘Look out for the spots, Palomides. There, you’ve smudged them.’

‘A thousand pardons!’

‘You ought to look where you are goin’.’

‘Well, who put his foot through the ribs?’

On the second day there was trouble with the back end.

‘These haunches are too tight.’

‘Don’t bend over.’

‘I have to bend over, if I am the back end.’

‘They won’t split.’

‘Yes, they will.’

‘No, they won’t.’

‘Well, they have.’

‘Look out for my tail,’ said Sir Grummore on the third day. ‘You are treadin’ on it.’

‘Don’t hold so tight, Grummore. My neck is twisted.’

‘Can’t you see?’

‘No, I can’t. My neck is twisted.’

‘There goes my tail.’

There was a pause while they sorted themselves out.

‘Now, carefully this time. We must walk in step.’

‘You give the step.’

‘Left! Right! Left! Right!’

‘I think my haunches are comin’ down.’

‘If you let go of yours truly’s waist, we shall come in half.’

‘Well, I can’t hold up my haunches unless I do.’

‘There go the buttons.’

‘Damn the buttons.’

‘Yours truly told you so.’

So they sewed on buttons during the fourth day, and started again.

‘Can I practise my bayin’ now?’

‘Yes, indeed.’

‘How does my bayin’ sound from inside?’

‘It sounds splendid, Grummore, splendid. Only it is strange, in a way, coming from behind, if you follow my argument.’

‘I thought it sounded muffled.’

‘It did, a bit.’

‘Perhaps it will be all right from outside.’

On the fifth day they were far advanced.

‘We ought to practise a gallop. After all, we can’t walk all the time, not when he is hunting us.’

‘Very good.’

‘When I say Go, then, Go. Ready, steady, Go!’

‘Look out. Grummore, you are butting me.’

‘Buttin’?’

‘Be careful of the bed.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Oh, dear!’

‘Confound the bed to blazes. Oh, my shins!’

‘You have burst the buttons again.’

‘Damn the buttons. I have stubbed my toe.’

‘Well, yours truly’s head has come off also.’

‘We shall have to stick to walkin’.’

‘It would be easier to gallop,’ said Sir Grummore on the sixth day, ‘if we had some music. Somethin’ like Tantivvy, you know.’

‘Well, we have not got any music.’

‘No.’

‘Could you sing out Tantivvy, Palomides, while I am bayin’?’

‘Yours truly could try.’

‘Very well, then, off we go!’

‘Tantivvy, tantivvy, tantivvy!’

‘Damn!’

‘We shall have to make the whole thing again,’ said Sir Palomides over the week-end. ‘We can still use the hoofs.’

‘I don’t suppose it will hurt so much fallin’ down out of doors – not on the moss, you know.’

‘And probably it won’t tear the canvas so badly.’

‘We will make it double strength.’

‘Yes.’

‘I am glad the hoofs will still do.’

‘By jove, Palomides, don’t he look a monster!’

‘A splendid effort this time.’

‘Pity you can’t make fire come out of his mouth, or somethin’.’

‘A danger of combustion there.’

‘Shall we try another gallop, Palomides?’

‘By all means.’

‘Push the bed in the corner, then.’

‘Look out for the buttons.’

‘If you see anythin’ we are runnin’ into, just stop, see?’

‘Yes.’

‘Keep a sharp look-out, Palomides.’

‘Right ho, Grummore.’

‘Ready, then?’

‘Ready.’

‘Off we go.’

‘That was a splendid burst, Palomides,’ exclaimed the Knight of the Forest Sauvage.

‘A noble gallop.’

‘Did you notice how I was bayin’ all the time?’

‘I could not fail to notice it, Sir Grummore.’

‘Well, well, I don’t know when I have enjoyed myself so much.’

They panted with triumph, standing amid their monster.

‘I say, Palomides, look at me swishin’ my tail!’

‘Charming, Sir Grummore. Look at me winking one of my eyes.’

‘No, no, Palomides. You look at my tail. You ought not to miss it, really.’

‘Well, if I look at you swishing, you ought to look at me winking. That is only fair.’

‘But I can’t see anythin’ from inside.’

‘As for that, Sir Grummore, yours truly can’t see so far round as the anal appendage.’

‘Now then, we will have one last go. I shall swish my tail round and round all the time, and bay like mad. It will be a frightful spectacle.’

‘And yours truly will continuously wink one optic or the other.’

‘Could we put a bit of a bound into the gallop, Palomides, every now and then, do you think? You know, a kind of prance?’

‘The prance could more naturally be effected by the back end, solo.’

‘You mean I could do it alone?’

‘Effectually.’

‘Well, I must say that is uncommonly decent of you, Palomides, to let me do the prancin’.’

‘Yours truly trusts that a modicum of caution will be exercised in the prance, to prevent delivery of uncomfortable blows to the posterior of the forequarters?’

‘Just as you say, Palomides.’

‘Boot and saddle, Sir Grummore.’

‘Tally-ho, Sir Palomides.’

‘Tantivvy, tantivvy, tantivvy, a-questin’ we will go!’

The Queen had recognized the impossible. Even in the miasma of her Gaelic mind, she had come to see that asses do not mate with pythons. It was useless to go on dramatizing her charms and talents for the benefit of these ridiculous knights – useless to go on hunting them with the tyrannous baits of what she thought was love. With a sudden turn of feeling she discovered that she hated them. They were imbeciles, as well as being the Sassenach, and she herself was a saint. She was, she discovered with a change of posture, interested in nothing but her darling boys. She was the best mother to them in the world! Her heart ached for them, her maternal bosom swelled. When Gareth nervously brought white heather to her bedroom as an apology for being whipped, she covered him with kisses, glancing in the mirror.

He escaped from the embrace and dried his tears – partly uncomfortable, partly in rapture. The heather which he had brought was set up dramatically in a cup with no water – she was every inch the homebody – and he was free to go. He scampered from the royal chamber with the news of forgiveness, went spinning down the circular stairs like a tee-to-tum. It was a different castle to the one in which King Arthur used to scamper. A Norman would hardly have recognized it as a castle, except for the pele tower. It was a thousand years more ancient than anything the Normans knew.

This castle, through which the child was running to bring the good news of their mother’s love to his brothers, had begun, in the mists of the past, as that strange symbol of the Old Ones – a promontory fort. Driven to the sea by the volcano of history, they had turned at bay on the last peninsula. With the sea literally at their backs, on a cliffy tongue of land, they had built their single wall across the root of the tongue. The sea which was their doom had also been their last defender on every other side. There, on the promontory, the blue-painted cannibals had piled up their cyclopean wall of unmortared stones, fourteen feet high and equally thick, with terraces on the inside from which they could hurl their flints. All along the outside of the wall they had embedded thousands of sharp stones in the scraw, each stone pointing outward in a cheval de frise which was like a petrified hedgehog. Behind it, and behind the enormous wall, they had huddled at night in wooden shacks, together with their domestic animals. There had been heads of enemies erected on poles for decoration, and their king had built himself an underground treasure chamber which was also a subterranean passage for escape. It had led under the wall, so that even if the fort were stormed he could creep out behind the attackers. It had been a passage along which only one man could crawl at a time, and it had been constructed with a special kink in it, at which he could wait to knock a pursuer on the head, as the latter negotiated the obstacle. The diggers of the souterrain had been executed by their own priest-king, to keep the secret of it.

All that was in an earlier millennium.

Dunlothian had grown with the slow conservancy of the Old Ones Here, with a Scandinavian conquest, had sprung up a wooden long-house – there, the original stones of the curtain wall had been pulled down to build a round tower for priests. The pele tower, with a cow-byre under the two living chambers, had come the last of all.

So it was among the untidy wreckage of centuries that Gareth scampered, looking for his brothers. It was among lean-to’s and adaptations – past ogham stones commemorating some long-dead Deag the son of No, built into a later bastion upside down. It was on the top of a wind-swept cliff purged to the bone by the airs of the Atlantic, under which the little fishing village nestled among the dunes. It was as the inheritor of a view which covered a dozen miles of rollers, and hundreds of miles of cumulus. All along the coast-line the saints and scholars of Eriu inhabited their stone igloos in holy horribleness – reciting fifty psalms in their beehives and fifty in the open air and fifty with their bodies plunged in cold water, in their loathing for the twinkling world. St Toirdealbhach was far from typical of their species.

Gareth found his brother in the store-room.

It smelt of oatmeal, ham, smoked salmon, dried cod, onions, shark oil, pickled herrings in tubs, hemp, maize, hen’s fluff, sailcloth, milk – the butter was churned there on Thursdays – seasoning pine wood, apples, herbs drying, fish glue and varnish used by the fletcher, spices from overseas, dead rat in trap, venison, seaweed, wood shavings, litter of kittens, fleeces from the mountain sheep not yet sold, and the pungent smell of tar.

Gawaine, Agravaine and Gaheris were sitting on the fleeces, eating apples. They were in the middle of an argument.

‘It is not our business,’ said Gawaine stubbornly.

Agravaine whined: ‘But it is our business. It is at us more than anybody, and it is not right.’

‘How dare you to say that our mother is not right?’

‘She is not.’

‘She is.’

‘If you can but contradict …’

‘They are decent for the Sassenach,’ said Gawaine. ‘Sir Grummore let me try his helm last night.’

‘That has nothing to do with it.’

Gawaine said: ‘I am not wishing to talk about it. It is base to be talking.’

‘Pure Gawaine!’

As Gareth came in, he could see Gawaine’s face flaming at Agravaine, under his red hair. It was obvious that he was going to have one of his rages – but Agravaine was one of those luckless intellectuals who are too proud to give in to brute force. He was the kind who gets knocked down in an argument because he cannot defend himself, but continues the argument on the floor sneering, ‘Go on, then, hit me again to show how clever you are.’

Gawaine glared at him.

‘Silence your mouth!’

‘I will not.’

‘I will make you.’

‘If you will make me or not, it will be the same.’

Gareth said: ‘Be quiet, Agravaine. Gawaine, leave him alone; Agravaine, if you do not be quiet he will kill you.’

‘I do not care if he does kill me. What I say is true.’

‘Hold your noise.’

‘I will not. I say we ought to indite a letter to our father about these knights. We ought to tell him about our mother. We –’

Gawaine was upon him before he could finish the sentence.

‘Your soul to the devil!’ he shouted. ‘Traitor! Ach, so you would!’

For Agravaine had done something unprecedented in the family troubles. He was the weaker of the two and he was afraid of pain. As he went down, he had drawn his dirk upon his brother.

‘Look to his arm,’ cried Gareth.

The two were going over and over among the rolled fleeces.

‘Gaheris, catch his hand! Gawaine, leave him alone! Agravaine, drop it! Agravaine, if you do not drop it, he will kill you. Ah, you brute!’

The boy’s face was blue and the dirk nowhere to be seen. Gawaine, with his hands round Agravaine’s throat, was ferociously beating his head on the floor. Gareth took hold of Gawaine’s shirt at the neck and twisted it to choke him. Gaheris, hovering round the edge, ferreted for the dirk.

‘Leave me,’ panted Gawaine. ‘Let me be.’ He gave a coughing or husky noise in his chest, like a young lion making its roar.

Agravaine, whose Adam’s apple had been hurt, relaxed his muscles and lay hiccoughing with his eyes shut. He looked as if he were going to die. They dragged Gawaine off and held him down, still struggling to get at his victim and finish the work.

It was curious that when he was in one of these black passions he seemed to pass out of human life. In later days he even killed women, when he had been worked into such a state – though he regretted it bitterly afterwards.

When the counterfeit Beast was perfected, the knights took it away and hid it in a cave at the foot of the cliffs, above high-water mark. Then they had some whisky to celebrate, and set off in search of the King as darkness fell.

They found him in his chamber, with a quill pen and a sheet of parchment. There was no poetry on the parchment – only a picture which was intended to be a heart transfixed by an arrow, with two P’s drawn inside it, interlaced. The King was blowing his nose.

‘Excuse me, Pellinore,’ said Sir Grummore, ‘but we have seen something on the cliffs.’

‘Something nasty?’

‘Well, not exactly …’

‘I hoped it would be.’

Sir Grummore thought the situation over, and drew the Saracen aside. They decided that tact was needed.

‘Oh, Pellinore,’ said Sir Grummore nonchalantly, ‘what is this that you are drawin’?’

‘What do you think it is?’

‘It looks like a sort of drawin’.’

‘That is what it is,’ said the King. ‘I wish you two would go away. I mean, if you could take a hint.’

‘It would be better if you were to make a line here,’ pursued Sir Grummore.

‘Where?’

‘Here, where the pig is.’

‘My dear fellow, I don’t know what you are talking about.’

‘I am sorry, Pellinore, I thought you was drawin’ a pig with your eyes shut.’

Sir Palomides thought it was time to interfere.

‘Sir Grummore,’ he said coyly, ‘has observed a phenomenon, by Jove!’

‘A phenomenon?’

‘A thing,’ explained Sir Grummore.

‘What sort of thing?’ asked the King suspiciously.

‘Something you will like.’

‘It has four legs,’ added the Saracen.

‘Is it animal?’ asked the King, ‘vegetable or mineral?’

‘Animal.’

‘A pig?’ inquired the King, who was beginning to feel they must be driving at something.

‘No, no, Pellinore. Not a pig. Get pigs out of your head right away. This thing makes a noise like hounds.’

‘Like sixty hounds,’ explained Sir Palomides.

‘It is a whale!’ cried the King.

‘No, no, Pellinore. A whale has no legs.’

‘But it makes such a noise.’

‘Does a whale?’

‘My dear fellow, how am I to know? You must try to keep the issue clear.’

‘I see, but what is the issue, what? It seems to be a menagerie game.’

‘No, no, Pellinore. It is something we have seen which bays.’

‘Oh, I say,’ he wailed. ‘I do wish you two would either shut up or go away. What with whales and pigs, and now this thing which bays, a fellow does not know where he is half the time. Can’t you leave a fellow alone, to draw his little things and hang himself quietly, for once? I mean to say, it is not much to ask, is it, what, don’t you know?’

‘Pellinore,’ said Sir Grummore, ‘you must pull yourself together. We have seen the Questing Beast!’

‘Why?’

‘Why?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘Why do you say why?’

‘I mean,’ explained Sir Grummore, ‘you could say Where? or When? But why Why?’

‘Why not?’

‘Pellinore, have you lost all sense of decency? We have seen the Questing Beast, I tell you – seen it on the cliffs here, quite close.’

‘It is not an it. It is a She.’

‘My dear chap, it doesn’t matter what she is. We have seen her.’

‘Then why don’t you go and catch her?’

‘It is not for us to catch her, Pellinore. It is for you. After all, she is your life’s work, isn’t she?’

‘She’s stupid,’ said the King.

‘She may be stupid, or she may not,’ said Sir Grummore in an offended tone. ‘The point is, she is your magnum opus. Only a Pellinore can catch her. You have told us so often.’

‘What is the point of catching her?’ asked the monarch. ‘What? After all, she is probably quite happy on the cliffs. I don’t see what you are fussing about.

‘It seems dreadfully sad,’ he added at a tangent, ‘that people can’t be married when they want to. I mean, what is the good of this animal to me? I have not married it, have I? So why am I chasing it all the time? It doesn’t seem logical.’

‘What you want, Pellinore, is a good hunt. Shake up your liver.’

They took away his pen and poured him several bumpers of usquebaugh, not forgetting to take a nip or two themselves.

‘It seems the only thing to do,’ he said suddenly. ‘After all, only a Pellinore can catch it.’

‘That’s the brave fellow.’

‘Only I do feel sad sometimes,’ he added, before they could stop him, ‘about the Queen of Flanders’ daughter. She was not beautiful, Grummore, but she understood me. We seemed to get on together, if you see what I mean. I amn’t clever, perhaps, and I may get into trouble when I am by myself, but when I was with Piggy she always knew what to do. It was company too. It is not bad to have a bit of company when you are getting on in life, especially when you have been chasing the Questing Beast all the time, what? It gets a bit lonely in the Forest. Not that the Questing Beast wasn’t company in her way – so far as she went. Only you couldn’t talk things over with her, not like with Piggy. And she couldn’t cook. I don’t know why I am boring you fellows with all this talk, but really sometimes one feels as if one could hardly carry on. It is not as if Piggy were a flapper, you see. I really did love her, Grummore, really, and if only she would have answered my letters it would have been ever so nice.’

‘Poor old Pellinore,’ they said.

‘I saw seven maggot pies today, Palomides. They were flying along like frying pans.’

‘One for sorrow,’ explained the King. ‘Two for joy, three for a marriage, and four for a boy. So seven ought to be four boys, ought it, what?’

‘Bound to be,’ said Sir Grummore.

‘They were going to be called Aglovale, Percivale, and Lamorak, and then there was one with a funny name which I can’t remember. That’s all off now. Still, I must say I would have liked to have had a son called Dornar.’

‘Look here, Pellinore, you must learn to let bygones be bygones. You will only wear yourself out. Why don’t you be a brave chap and catch your Beast for instance?’

‘I suppose I must.’

That’s it. Take your mind off things.’

‘It is eighteen years since I have been after it,’ said the King pensively. ‘It would be a change to catch it. I wonder where the brachet is?’

‘Ah, Pellinore! Now you’re talking!’

‘Suppose our honoured monarch were to start at once?’

‘What? This evening, Palomides? In the dark?’

Sir Palomides nudged Sir Grummore secretly. ‘Administer blows to iron,’ he whispered, ‘while at high temperature.’

‘I see what you mean.’

‘I don’t suppose it matters,’ said the King. ‘Nothing does, really.’

‘Very well, then,’ cried Sir Grummore, taking control of the situation. ‘That is what we will do. We will put old Pellinore at one end of the cliffs this very night, in an ambush, and then we two will drive the place methodically toward him. The Beast is bound to be there, as it was seen only this afternoon.’

‘Don’t you think,’ he inquired, as they were dressing up in the darkness, ‘that it was clever, the way I explained about our bein’ here, I mean to drive the animal?’

‘An inspiration,’ said Sir Palomides. ‘Is my head on straight?’

‘My dear chap, I can’t see an inch.’

The Saracen’s voice sounded uneasy.

‘This darkness,’ he said, ‘seems jolly palpable.’

‘Never mind,’ said Sir Grummore. ‘It will hide any little faults in our make-up. Perhaps the moon will come out later.’

‘Thank goodness his sword is generally blunt.’

‘Oh, come now, Palomides, you mustn’t get cold feet. I can’t think why it is, but I feel perfectly splendid. Perhaps it was those bumpers. I am goin’ to prance and bay tonight, I can tell you.’

‘You are a buttoning yourself to me, Sir Grummore. Those are the wrong buttons.’

‘Beg pardon, Palomides.’

‘Would it be enough if you were to wave your tail in the air, instead of prancing? There is a certain discomfort for the forequarters during the prance.’

‘I shall wave my tail as well as prance,’ said Sir Grummore firmly.

‘Just as you say.’

‘Take your hoof off my tail for a moment, Palomides.’

‘Could you carry your tail over your arm for the first part of the journey?’

‘It would hardly be natural.’

‘No.’

‘And now,’ added Sir Palomides bitterly, ‘it is going to rain. Come to think of it, nearly always does rain in these parts.’

He thrust his brown hand out of the serpent’s mouth and felt the drops on the back of it. They drummed on the canvas like hail.

‘Dear old forequarters,’ said Sir Grummore cheerfully, for he had plenty of whisky, ‘it was you who thought of this expedition in the first place. Cheer up, old blackamoor. It will be much worse for Pellinore, waitin’ for us to come. After all, he has not got a canvas hide with spots on it, to shelter under.’

‘Perhaps it will stop.’

‘Of course it will stop. That’s the ticket, old pagan. Now then, are we ready?’

‘Yes.’

‘Give the step then.’

‘Left! Right!’

‘Don’t forget the Tantivvy!’

‘Left! Right! Tantivvy! Tantivvy! I beg your pardon?’

‘I was only bayin’.’

‘Tantivvy! Tantivvy!’

‘Now for the prance!’

‘Oh dear, Sir Grummore!’

‘Sorry, Palomides.’

‘Yours truly will hardly be able to sit down.’

Under the dripping cliffs King Pellinore stood stock still, looking vaguely in front of him. His brachet, on a long string, was wound round him several times. He was in full armour, which was getting rusty, and the rain came in at five places. It ran down both shins and both forearms, but the worst place was his visor. 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. It let the rain in through the nostrils, however, and the water ran down in front in a steady trickle which tickled his chest. The King was thinking.

Well, he thought, he supposed this would keep them quiet. It was not very nice in all this rain and everything, but the dear fellows seemed keen on it. It would be difficult to find anybody kinder than old Grum, and Palomides seemed a friendly chap, though he was a paynim. If they wanted to have a lark like this, it was only decent to humour them. Besides, it was nice for the brachet to have an outing. It was a pity that it could never keep unwound, but there, you could not interfere with nature. He would have to spend all tomorrow scrubbing his armour.

It would give him something to do, reflected the King miserably, which was better than wandering about all the time, with his eternal sorrow gnawing at his heart. And he fell to thinking about Piggy.

The nice thing about the Queen of Flanders’ daughter had been that she did not laugh at him. A lot of people laughed at you when you went after the Questing Beast – and never caught it – but Piggy never laughed. She seemed to understand at once how interesting it was, and made several sensible suggestions about the way to trap it. Naturally one did not pretend to be clever or anything, but it was nice not to be laughed at. One was doing one’s best.

And then the dreadful day had come when that cursed boat had floated to the shore. They had got into it, because knights must always accept adventure, and it had sailed away at once. They had waved to Piggy ever so, and the Beast had put its head out of the wood and waded out to sea after them, looking most upset. But the boat had gone on and on, and the small figures on the shore had dwindled till they could hardly see the kerchief which Piggy was waving, and then the brachet had been sick.

From every port he had written to her. He had given letters to the innkeepers everywhere, and they had promised like anything to send them on. But she had never sent a syllable in reply.

It was because he was unworthy, decided the King. He was vague and not clever and always getting in a muddle. Why should the daughter of the Queen of Flanders write to a person like that, especially when he had gone and got into a magic boat and sailed away? It was like deserting her, and of course she was right to be angry. Meanwhile it would keep raining, and the water did trickle so, and now that brachet was sneezing. The armour would be rusty, and there was a sort of draught down the back of his neck where the helmet screwed on. It was dark and horrible. Some sticky stuff was dripping off the cliffs.

‘Excuse me, Sir Grummore, but is that you snuffling in my ear?’

‘No, no, my dear fellow. Go on, go on. I am only doin’ my bayin’ as well as I can.’

‘It is not the baying I refer to, Sir Grummore, but a kind of breathing noise of a husky nature.’

‘My dear chap, it’s no good askin’ me. All you can hear in here is a kind of creakin’, like a bellows.’

‘Yours truly thinks the rain is going to stop. Do you mind if we stop, too?’

‘Well, Palomides, if you must stop, you must. But if we don’t get this over quickly, I shall get my stitch again. What do you want to stop for?’

‘I wish it was not so dark.’

‘But you can’t stop just because it is dark.’

‘No. One appreciates that.’

‘Go on, then, old boy. Left! Right! That’s the ticket.’

‘I say, Grummore,’ said Sir Palomides later. ‘There it is again.’

‘What is?’

‘The puffing, Sir Grummore.’

‘Are you sure it is not me?’ inquired Sir Grummore.

‘Positive. It is a menacing or amorous puff, similar to the grampus. This paynim sincerely wishes that it were not so dark.’

‘Ah, well, we can’t have everythin’. Now march on, Palomides, there’s a good fellow, do.’

After a bit, Sir Grummore said sepulchrally:

‘Dear old boy, can’t you stop bumpin’ all the time?’

‘But I am not bumping, Sir Grummore.’

‘Well, what is, then?’

‘Yours faithfully can feel no bumps.’

‘Somethin’ keeps bumpin’ me behind.’

‘Is it your tail, perhaps?’

‘No. I have that wound round me.’

‘In any case it would be impossible to bump you from the back, because the forelegs are in front.’

‘There it is again!’

‘What?’

‘The bump! It was a definite assault. Palomides, we are bein’ attacked!’

‘No, no, Sir Grummore. You are imagining things.’

‘Palomides, we must turn round!’

‘What for, Sir Grummore?’

‘To see what is bumping me behind.’

‘Yours truly can see nothing, Sir Grummore. It is too dark.’

‘Put your hand out of your mouth, and see what you can feel.’

‘I can feel a sort of round thing.’

‘That is me, Sir Palomides. That is me, from the back.’

‘Sincere apologies, Sir Grummore.’

‘Not at all, my dear chap, not at all. What else can you feel?’

The kindly Saracen’s voice began to falter.

‘Something cold,’ he said, ‘and – slippery.’

‘Does it move, Palomides?’

‘It moves, and – it snuffles!’

‘Snuffles?’

‘Snuffles!’

At this moment the moon came out.

‘Merciful powers!’ cried Sir Palomides, in a high squealing voice, as he peered out of his mouth. ‘Run, Grummore, run! Left, right! Quick march! Double march! Faster, faster! Keep in step! Oh, my poor heels! Oh, my God! Oh, my hat!’

It was no good, decided the King. Probably they had got lost, or wandered off somewhere to amuse themselves. It was beastly wet, as it nearly always was in Lothian, and really he had done his best to fall in with their plans. Now they had wandered off – one might almost say inconsiderately – and left him with his wretched brachet to get rusty. It was too bad.

With a determined motion he marched away to bed, heaving the brachet along behind him.

Half-way up a fissure in one of the steepest cliffs, with most of its buttons burst, the counterfeit Beast was arguing with its stomach.

‘But my dear knight, how could yours truly foresee a calamity of this nature?’

‘You thought of it,’ replied the stomach furiously. ‘You made us dress up. It is your fault.’

At the foot of the cliff the Questing Beast herself, in a sentimental attitude, waited in the romantic moonlight for her better half. Behind her was a background of the silver sea. In various parts of the landscape several dozens of bent and distorted Old Ones were intently examining the situation from the concealment of rocks, sandhills, shell-mounds, igloos and so forth – still vainly trying to fathom the subtle secrets of the English.