“Does your guardian get up in time for breakfast?” inquired the King, a momentary doubt striking him.
“Never,” said the Wart.
“Fleas in the bed?” asked the King suspiciously.
“Not one.”
“Well!” said King Pellinore. “It does sound too nice for words, Ay must say. A feather bed and none of those beastly fewmets for ever so long. How long did you say it would take us to get there?”
“Two hours,” said the Wart; but he had to shout the second of these words, for the sounds were drowned in his mouth by a dreadful noise which had that moment arisen close beside them.
“What was that?” exclaimed the Wart.
“Hark!” cried the King.
“Oh, mercy!” wailed the Wart.
“It’s the Beast!” shouted the King.
And immediately the loving huntsman had forgotten everything else, but was busied about his task. He wiped his spectacles upon the seat of his trousers, the only accessible piece of cloth about him, while the belling and bloody cry arose all round; balanced them on the end of his long nose, just before the visor automatically clapped to; clutched his jousting lance in his right hand, and galloped off in the direction of the noise. He was brought up short by the rope which was wound round the tree – the vacuous brachet meanwhile giving a melancholy yelp – and fell off his horse with a tremendous clang. In a second he was up again – the Wart was convinced that his spectacles must be broken – and hopping round the white horse with one foot in the stirrup. The girths stood the test and he was in the saddle somehow, with his jousting lance between his legs, and then he was galloping round and round the tree, in the opposite direction to that in which the brachet had wound herself up. He went round three times too often, the brachet meanwhile running and yelping in the opposite direction, and then, after four or five back casts, they were both free of the obstruction. “Yoicks, what!” cried King Pellinore, waving his lance in the air, and swaying excitedly in the saddle. Then he disappeared completely into the gloom of the forest, with the unfortunate brachet trailing and howling behind him at the other end of the string.
The Wart slept well in the woodland nest where he had laid himself down, in that kind of thin but refreshing sleep which people have when they first lie out of doors. At first he only dipped below the surface of sleep, and skimmed along like a salmon in shallow water, so close to the surface that he fancied himself in the air. He thought himself awake when he was already asleep. He saw the stars above his face, whirling round on their silent and sleepless axis, and the leaves of the trees rustling against them, and heard small changes in the grass. These little noises of footsteps and soft-fringed wing-beats and stealthy bellies drawn over the grass blades or rattling against the bracken at first frightened or interested him, so that he moved to see what they were (but never saw), then soothed him, so that he no longer cared to see what they were but trusted them to be themselves, and finally left him altogether as he swam down deeper and deeper, nuzzling his nose into the scented turf, into the warm ground, into the unending waters under the earth.
It had been difficult to go to sleep in the bright summer moonlight, but once he was there it was not difficult to stay. The sun came early, causing him to turn over in protest, but in going to sleep he had learnt to vanquish light, and now the light could not rewake him. It was nine o’clock, five hours after daylight, before he rolled over, opened his eyes, and was awake at once. He was hungry.
The Wart had heard about people who lived on berries, but this did not seem practical at the moment because it was July, and there were none. He found two wild strawberries and ate them greedily. They tasted nicer than anything, so he wished there were more. Then he wished it was April, so that he could find some birds’ eggs and eat those, or that he had not lost his goshawk Cully, so that the bird could catch him a rabbit which he would cook by rubbing two sticks together like the base Indian. But he had lost Cully, or he would not have lost himself, and probably the sticks would not have lit in any case. He decided that he could not have gone more than three or four miles from home, so the best thing he could do would be to sit still and listen. Then he might hear the noise of the haymakers, if he was lucky with the wind, and could hearken his way home by that.
What he did hear was a faint clanking noise, which made him think that King Pellinore must be after the Questing Beast again, close by. Only the noise was so regular and single in intention that it made him think of King Pellinore doing some special action with great patience and concentration, trying to scratch his back without taking off his armour, for instance. He went towards the noise.
There was a clearing in the forest, and in this clearing there was a snug little cottage built of stone. It was a cottage, although the Wart could not notice this at the time, which was divided into two bits. The main bit was the hall or every-purpose room, which was high because it extended from floor to roof, and this room had a fire on the floor whose smoke issued eventually out of a hole in the thatch of the roof. The other half of the cottage was divided into two rooms by a horizontal floor which made the top half into a bedroom and study, while the bottom half served for a larder, store-room, stable and barn. A white donkey lived in this downstairs room, and a ladder led to the one upstairs.
There was a well in front of the cottage, and the metallic noise which the Wart had heard was caused by a very old gentleman who was drawing water out of it by means of a handle and chain.
Clank, clank, clank, said the chain, until the bucket hit the lip of the well, and “Oh, drat the whole thing,” said the old gentleman. You would think that after all these years of study one could do better for oneself than a by-our-lady well with a by-our-lady bucket, whatever the by-our-lady cost.
“I wish to goodness,” added the old gentleman, heaving his bucket out of the well with a malevolent glance, “that I was only on the electric light and company’s water, drat it.”
The old gentleman that the Wart saw was a singular spectacle. He was dressed in a flowing gown with fur tippets which had the signs of the zodiac embroidered all over it, together with various cabalistic signs, as of triangles with eyes in them, queer crosses, leaves of trees, bones and birds and animals and a planetarium whose stars shone like bits of looking glass with the sun on them. He had a pointed hat like a dunce’s cap, or like the headgear worn by ladies of that time, except that the ladies were accustomed to have a bit of veil floating from the top of it. He also had a wand of lignum vitae, which he had laid down in the grass beside him, and a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles like those of King Pellinore. They were extraordinary spectacles, being without earpieces, but shaped rather like scissors or the the antennae of the tarantula wasp.
“Excuse me, sir,” said the Wart, “but can you tell me the way to Sir Ector’s castle, if you don’t mind?”
The aged gentleman put down his bucket and looked at the Wart.
“Your name would be Wart,” he said.
“Yes, sir, please, sir,” said the Wart.
“My name,” said the aged gentleman, “is Merlyn.”
“How do you do?” said the Wart.
“How do you do?” said Merlyn. “It is clement weather, is it not?”
“It is,” said the Wart, “for the time of the year.”
When these formalities had been concluded, the Wart had leisure to examine his new acquaintance more closely. The aged gentleman was staring at him with a kind of unwinking and benevolent curiosity which made him feel