‘Stunned,’ said Merlyn, ‘I should think.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said the Wart. ‘Ought we to get down and help them?’
‘We could pour water on their heads,’ said Merlyn reflectively, ‘if there was any water. But I don’t suppose they would thank us for making their armour rusty. They will be all right. Besides, it is time that we were home.’
‘But they might be dead!’
‘They are not dead, I know. In a minute or two they will come round and go off home to dinner.’
‘Poor King Pellinore has not got a home.’
‘Then Sir Grummore will invite him to stay the night. They will be the best of friends when they come to. They always are.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘My dear boy, I know so. Shut your eyes and we will be off.’
The Wart gave in to Merlyn’s superior knowledge. ‘Do you think,’ he asked with his eyes shut, ‘that Sir Grummore has a feather bed?’
‘Probably.’
‘Good,’ said the Wart. ‘That will be nice for King Pellinore, even if he was stunned.’
The Latin words were spoken and the secret passes made. The funnel of whistling noise and space received them. In two seconds they were lying under the grandstand, and the sergeant’s voice was calling from the opposite side of the tilting ground, ‘Nah then, Master Art, nah then. You’ve been a-snoozing there long enough. Come aht into the sunlight ’ere with Master Kay, one-two, one-two, and see some real tilting.’
It was a cold wet evening, such as may happen even toward the end of August, and the Wart did not know how to bear himself indoors. He spent some time in the kennels talking to Cavall, then wandered off to help them turn the spit in the kitchen. But there it was too hot. He was forced to stay indoors because of the rain, by his female supervisors, as happens too frequently to the unhappy children of our generation, but the mere wetness and dreariness in the open discouraged him from going out. He hated everybody.
‘Confound the boy,’ said Sir Ector. ‘For goodness’ sake stop mopin’ by that window there, and go and find your tutor. When I was a boy we always used to study on wet days, yes, and eddicate our minds.’
‘Wart is stupid,’ said Kay.
‘Ah, run along, my duck,’ said their old nurse. ‘I han’t got time to attend to thy mopseys now, what with all this sorbent washing.’
‘Now then, my young master,’ said Hob. ‘Let thee run off to thy quarters, and stop confusing they fowls.’
‘Nah, nah,’ said the sergeant. ‘You ’op orf art of ’ere. I got enough to do a-polishing of this ber-lady harmour.’
Even the Dog Boy barked at him when he went back to the kennels.
Wart draggled off to the tower room, where Merlyn was busy knitting himself a woollen night-cap for the winter.
‘I cast off now together at every other line,’ said the magician, ‘but for some reason it seems to end too sharply. Like an onion. It is the turning of the heel that does one, every time.’
‘I think I ought to have some eddication,’ said the Wart. ‘I can’t think of anything to do.’
‘You think that education is something which ought to be done when all else fails?’ inquired Merlyn nastily, for he was in a bad mood too.
‘Well,’ said the Wart, ‘some sorts of education.’
‘Mine?’ asked the magician with flashing eyes.
‘Oh, Merlyn,’ exclaimed the Wart without answering, ‘please give me something to do, because I feel so miserable. Nobody wants me for anything today, and I just don’t know how to be sensible. It rains so.’
‘You should learn to knit.’
‘Could I go out and be something, a fish or anything like that?’
‘You have been a fish,’ said Merlyn. ‘Nobody with any go needs to do their education twice.’
‘Well, could I be a bird?’
‘If you knew anything at all,’ said Merlyn, ‘which you do not, you would know that a bird does not like to fly in the rain because it wets its feathers and makes them stick together. They get bedraggled.’
‘I could be a hawk in Hob’s mews,’ said the Wart stoutly. ‘Then I should be indoors and not get wet.’
‘That is pretty ambitious,’ said the old man, ‘to want to be a hawk.’
‘You know you will turn me into a hawk when you want to,’ shouted the Wart, ‘but you like to plague me because it is wet. I won’t have it.’
‘Hoity-toity!’
‘Please,’ said the Wart, ‘dear Merlyn, turn me into a hawk. If you don’t do that I shall do something. I don’t know what.’
Merlyn put down his knitting and looked at his pupil over the top of his spectacles. ‘My boy,’ he said, ‘you shall be everything in the world, animal, vegetable, mineral, protista or virus, for all I care – before I have done with you – but you will have to trust to my superior backsight. The time is not yet ripe for you to be a hawk – for one thing Hob is still in the mews feeding them – so you may as well sit down for the moment and learn to be a human being.’
‘Very well,’ said the Wart, ‘if that’s a go.’ And he sat down.
After several minutes he said, ‘Is one allowed to speak as a human being, or does the thing about being seen and not heard have to apply?’
‘Everybody can speak.’
‘That’s good, because I wanted to mention that you have been knitting your beard into the night-cap for three rows now.’
‘Well, I’ll be …’
‘I should think the best thing would be to cut off the end of your beard. Shall I fetch some scissors?’
‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’
‘I wanted to see what would happen.’
‘You run a grave risk, my boy,’ said the magician, ‘of being turned into a piece of bread, and toasted.’
With this he slowly began to unpick his beard, muttering to himself meanwhile and taking the greatest precaution not to drop a stitch.
‘Will it be as difficult to fly,’ asked the Wart when he thought his tutor had calmed down, ‘as it was to swim?’
‘You will not need to fly. I don’t mean to turn you into a loose hawk, but only to set you in the mews for the night, so that you can talk to the others. That is the way to learn, by listening to the experts.’
‘Will they talk?’
‘They talk every night, deep into the darkness.