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‘Come any time,’ said Marian, ‘if you are feeling bored. You only have to follow the glades. And you, Wart, be careful of that collar bone for a few days.’
‘I will send some men with you to the edge of the chase,’ said Robin. ‘After that you must go by yourselves. I expect the Dog Boy can carry the griffin’s head.’
‘Good-bye,’ said Kay.
‘Good-bye,’ said Robin.
‘Good-bye,’ said Wart.
‘Good-bye,’ said Marian, smiling.
‘Good-bye,’ cried all the outlaws, waving their bows.
And Kay and the Wart and the Dog Boy and Wat and Cavall and their escort set off on the long track home.
They had an immense reception. The return on the previous day of all the hounds, except Cavall and the Dog Boy, and in the evening the failure to return of Kay and Wart, had set the household in an uproar. Their nurse had gone into hysterics. Hob had stayed out till midnight scouring the purlieus of the forest – the cooks had burned the joint for dinner – and the sergeant-at-arms had polished all the armour twice and sharpened all the swords and axes to a razor blade in case of invasion. At last somebody had thought of consulting Merlyn, whom they had found in the middle of his third nap. The magician, for the sake of peace and quietness to go on with his rest, had used his insight to tell Sir Ector exactly what the boys were doing, where they were, and when they might be expected back. He had prophesied their return to the minute.
So, when the small procession of returning warriors came within sight of the drawbridge, they were greeted by the whole household. Sir Ector was standing in the middle with a thick walking-stick with which he proposed to whack them for going out of bounds and causing so much trouble; the nurse had insisted on bringing out a banner which used to be put up when Sir Ector came home for the holidays, as a small boy, and this said Welcome Home; Hob had forgotten about his beloved hawks and was standing on one side, shading his eagle eyes to get the first view; the cooks and all the kitchen staff were banging pots and pans, singing ‘Will Ye No Come Back Again?’ or some such music, out of tune; the kitchen cat was yowling; the hounds had escaped from the kennel because there was nobody to look after them, and were preparing to chase the kitchen cat; the sergeant-at-arms was blowing out his chest with pleasure so far that he looked as if he might burst at any moment, and was commanding everybody in an important voice to get ready to cheer when he said, ‘One, Two!’
‘One, Two!’ cried the sergeant.
‘Huzza!’ cried everybody obediently, including Sir Ector.
‘Look what I have got,’ shouted Kay. ‘I have shot a griffin and the Wart has been wounded.’
‘Yow-yow-yow!’ barked all the hounds, and poured over the Dog Boy, licking his face, scratching his chest, sniffing him all over to see what he had been up to, and looking hopefully at the griffin’s head which the Dog Boy held high in the air so that they could not eat it.
‘Bless my soul!’ exclaimed Sir Ector.
‘Alas, the poor Phillip Sparrow,’ cried the nurse, dropping her banner. ‘Pity his poor arm all to-brast in a green sling, God bless us!’
‘It is all right,’ said the Wart. ‘Ah, don’t catch hold of me. It hurts.’
‘May I have it stuffed?’ asked Kay.
‘Well, I be dommed,’ said Hob. ‘Be’nt thick wold chappie our Wat, that erst run lunatical?’
‘My dear, dear boys,’ said Sir Ector. ‘I am so glad to see you back.’
‘Wold chuckle-head,’ exclaimed the nurse triumphantly. ‘Where be the girt cudgel now?’
‘Hem!’ said Sir Ector. ‘How dare you go out of bounds and put us all to this anxiety?’
‘It is a real griffin,’ said Kay, who knew there was nothing to be afraid of. ‘I shot dozens of them. Wart broke his collar bone. We rescued the Dog Boy and Wat.’
‘That comes of teaching the young Hidea ’ow to shoot,’ said the sergeant proudly.
Sir Ector kissed both boys and commanded the griffin to be displayed before him.
‘Well!’ he exclaimed. ‘What a monster! We’ll have him stuffed in the dinin’ hall. What did you say his measurements were?’
‘Eighty-two inches from ear to ear. Robin said it might be a record.’
‘We shall have to get it chronicled.’
‘It is rather a good one, isn’t it?’ remarked Kay with studied calm.
‘I shall have it set up by Sir Rowland Ward,’ Sir Ector went on in high delight, ‘with a little ivory card with KAY’S FIRST GRIFFIN on it in black letters, and the date.’
‘Arrah, leave thy childishness,’ exclaimed the nurse. ‘Now, Master Art, my innocence, be off with thee to thy bed upon the instant. And thou, Sir Ector, let thee think shame to be playing with monsters’ heads like a godwit when the poor child stays upon the point of death. Now, sergeant, leave puffing of thy chest. Stir, man, and take horse to Cardoyle for the chirurgeon.’
She waved her apron at the sergeant, who collapsed his chest and retreated like a shoo’d chicken.
‘It is all right,’ said the Wart, ‘I tell you. It is only a broken collar bone, and Robin set it for me last night. It does not hurt a bit.’
‘Leave the boy, nurse,’ commanded Sir Ector, taking sides with the men against the women, anxious to re-establish his superiority after the matter of the cudgel. ‘Merlyn will see to him if he needs it, no doubt. Who is this Robin?’
‘Robin Wood,’ cried the boys together.
‘Never heard of him.’
‘You call him Robin Hood,’ explained Kay in a superior tone. ‘But it is Wood really, like the Wood that he is the spirit of.’
‘Well, well, well, so you’ve been foragin’ with that rascal! Come in to breakfast, boys, and tell me all about him.’
‘We have had breakfast,’ said the Wart, ‘hours ago. May I please take Wat with me to see Merlyn?’
‘Why, it’s the old man who went wild and started rootin’ in the forest. Wherever did you get hold of him?’
‘The Good People had captured him with the Dog Boy and Cavall.’
‘But we shot the griffin,’ Kay put in. ‘I shot it myself.’
‘So now I want to see if Merlyn can restore him to his wits.’
‘Master Art,’ said the nurse sternly. She had been breathless up to now on account of Sir Ector’s rebuke. ‘Master Art, thy room and thy bed is where thou art tending to, and that this instant. Wold fools may be wold fools, whether by yea or by nay, but I ha’n’t served the Family for fifty year without a-learning of my duty. A flibberty-gibbeting about wi’ a lot of want-wits, when thy own arm may be dropping to the floor!
‘Yes, thou wold turkey-cock,’ she added, turning fiercely upon Sir Ector, ‘and thou canst keep thy magician away from the poor mite’s room till he be rested, that thou canst!
‘A wantoning wi’ monsters and lunaticals,’ continued the victor as she led her helpless captive from the stricken field. ‘I never heard the like.’
‘Please, someone tell Merlyn to look after Wat,’ cried the victim over his shoulder, in diminishing tones.
He woke up in his cool bed, feeling better. The old fire-eater who looked after him had covered the windows with a curtain, so that the room was dark and comfortable, and he could tell by the one ray of golden sunlight which shot across the floor that it was late afternoon. He not only felt better. He felt very well, so well that it was not possible to stay in bed. He moved quickly to throw back the sheet, but stopped with a hiss at the creak or scratch of his shoulder, which he had forgotten in his sleep. Then he got out more carefully by sliding down the bed and pushing himself upright with one hand, shoved his bare feet into a pair of slippers, and managed to wrap a dressing-gown round him more or less. He padded off through the stone passages up the worn circular stairs to find Merlyn.
When he reached the schoolroom, he found that Kay was continuing his First Rate Eddication. He was doing dictation, for as Wart opened the door he heard Merlyn pronouncing in measured tones the famous medieval mnemonic: ‘Barabara Celarent Darii Ferioque Prioris,’ and Kay saying, ‘Wait a bit. My pen has gone all squee-gee.’
‘You will catch it,’ remarked Kay, when they saw him. ‘You are supposed to be in bed, dying of gangrene or something.’
‘Merlyn,’ said the Wart. ‘What have you done with Wat?’
‘You should try to speak without assonances,’ said the wizard. ‘For instance. “The beer is never clear near here, dear,” is unfortunate, even as an assonance. And then again, your sentence is ambiguous to say the least of it. “What what?” I might reply, taking it to be a conundrum, or if I were King Pellinore, “What what, what?” Nobody can be too careful about their habits of speech.’
Kay had evidently been doing his dictation well and the old gentleman was in a good humour.
‘You know what I mean,’ said the Wart. ‘What have you done with the old man with no nose?’
‘He has cured him,’ said Kay.
‘Well,’ said Merlyn, ‘you might call it that, and then again you might not. Of course, when one has lived in the world as long as I have, and backwards at that, one does learn to know a thing or two about pathology. The wonders of analytical psychology and plastic surgery are, I am afraid, to this generation but a closed book.’
‘What did you do to him?’
‘Oh, I just psycho-analysed him,’ replied the magician grandly. ‘That, and of course I sewed on a new nose on both of them.’
‘What kind of nose?’ asked the Wart.
‘It is too funny,’ said Kay. ‘He wanted to have the griffin’s nose for one, but I would not let him. So then he took the noses off the young pigs which we are going to have for supper, and used those. Personally I think they will grunt.’
‘A ticklish operation,’ said Merlyn, ‘but a successful one.’
‘Well,’ said the Wart, doubtfully. ‘I hope it will be all right. What did they do then?’
‘They went off to the kennels. Old Wat is very sorry for what he did to the Dog Boy, but he says he can’t remember having done it. He says that suddenly everything went black, when they were throwing stones once, and he can’t remember anything since. The Dog Boy forgave him and said he did not mind a bit. They are going to work together in the kennels in future, and not think of what is past any more. The Dog Boy says that the old man was good to him while they were prisoners of the Fairy Queen, and that he knows he ought not to have thrown stones at him in the first place. He says he often thought about that when other boys were throwing stones at him.’
‘Well,’ said the Wart, ‘I am glad it has all turned out for the best. Do you think I could go and visit them?’
‘For heaven’s sake, don’t do anything to annoy your nurse,’ exclaimed Merlyn, looking about him anxiously. ‘That old woman hit me with a broom when I came to see you this forenoon, and broke my spectacles. Could you not wait until tomorrow?’
On the morrow Wat and the Dog Boy were the firmest of friends. Their common experiences of being stoned by the mob and then tied to columns of pork by Morgan le Fay served as a bond and a topic of reminiscence, as they lay among the dogs at night, for the rest of their lives. Also, by the morning, they had both pulled off the noses Merlyn had kindly given them. They explained that they had got used to having no noses, now, and anyway they preferred to live with the dogs.
Chapter XIII (#ulink_977c770c-b05a-5ec0-9b50-f4c0a3190955)
In spite of his protest, the unhappy invalid was confined to his chamber for three mortal days. He was alone except at bedtime, when Kay came, and Merlyn was reduced to shouting his eddication through the key-hole, at times when the nurse was known to be busy with her washing.
The boy’s only amusement was the ant-nests – the ones between glass plates which had been brought when he first came from Merlyn’s cottage in the forest.
‘Can’t you,’ he howled miserably under the door, ‘turn me into something while I’m locked up like this?’
‘I can’t get the spells through the key-hole.’
‘Through the what?’
‘The KEY-HOLE.’
‘Oh!’
‘Are you there?’
‘Yes.’
‘What?’
‘What?’
‘Confusion take this shouting!’ exclaimed the magician, stamping on his hat. ‘May Castor and Pollux … No, not again. God bless my blood pressure …’
‘Could you turn me into an ant?’
‘A what?’
‘An ANT! It would be a small spell for ants, wouldn’t it? It would go through the key-hole?’
‘I don’t think we ought to.’
‘Why?’
‘They are dangerous.’
‘You could watch with your insight, and turn me back again if it got too bad. Please turn me into something, or I shall go weak in the head.’
‘The ants are not our Norman ones, dear boy. They come from the Afric shore. They are belligerent.’
‘I don’t know what belligerent is.’
There was a long silence behind the door.
‘Well,’ said Merlyn eventually. ‘It is far too soon in your education. But you would have had to do it some time. Let me see. Are there two nests in that contraption?’
‘There are two pairs of plates.’
‘Take a rush from the floor and lean it between the two nests, like a bridge. Have you done that?’
‘Yes.’
The place where he was seemed like a great field of boulders, with a flattened fortress at one end of it – between the glass plates. The fortress was entered by tunnels in the rock, and, over the entrance to each tunnel, there was a notice which said:
EVERYTHING NOT FORBIDDEN IS COMPULSORY
He read the notice with dislike, though he did not understand its meaning. He thought to himself: I will explore a little, before going in. For some reason the notice gave him a reluctance to go, making the rough tunnel look sinister.
He waved his antennae carefully, considering the notice, assuring himself of his new senses, planting his feet squarely in the insect world as if to brace himself in it. He cleaned his antennae with his forefeet, frisking and smoothing them so that he looked like a Victorian villain twirling his moustachios. He yawned – for ants do yawn – and stretch themselves too, like human beings. Then he became conscious of something which had been waiting to be noticed – that there was a noise in his head which was articulate. It was either a noise or a complicated smell, and the easiest way to explain it is to say that it was like a wireless broadcast. It came through his antennae.
The music had a monotonous rhythm like a pulse, and the words which went with it were about June – moon – noon – spoon, or Mammy – mammy – mammy, or Ever – never, or Blue – true – you. He liked them at first, especially the ones about Love – dove – above, until he found that they did not vary. As soon as they had been finished once, they were begun again. After an hour or two, they began to make him feel sick inside.
There was a voice in his head also, during the pauses of the music, which seemed to be giving directions. ‘All two-day-olds will be moved to the West Aisle,’ it would say, or ‘Number 210397/WD will report to the soup squad, in replacement for 333105/WD who has fallen off the nest.’ It was a fruity voice, but it seemed to be somehow impersonal – as if its charm were an accomplishment that had been practised, like a circus trick. It was dead.
The boy, or perhaps we ought to say the ant, walked away from the fortress as soon as he was prepared to walk about. He began exploring the desert of boulders uneasily, reluctant to visit the place from which the orders were coming, yet bored with the narrow view. He found small pathways among the boulders, wandering tracks both aimless and purposeful, which led toward the grain store, and also in various other directions which he could not understand. One of these paths ended at a clod with a natural hollow underneath it. In the hollow – again with the strange appearance of aimless purpose – he found two dead ants. They were laid there tidily but yet untidily, as if a very tidy person had taken them to the place, but had forgotten the reason when he got there. They were curled up, and did not seem to be either glad or sorry to be dead. They were there, like a couple of chairs.
