The Once and Future King (26 page)

Mother Morlan’s house in the Out Isles was hardly bigger than a large dog kennel – but it was comfortable and full of interesting things. There were two horse—shoes nailed on the door – five statues bought from pilgrims, with the used—up rosaries wound round them – for beads break, if one is a good prayer – several bunches of fairy—flax laid on top of the salt—box – some scapulars wound round the poker – twenty bottles of mountain dew, all empty but one – about a bushel of withered palm, relic of Palm Sundays for the past seventy years – and plenty of woollen thread for tying round the cow’s tail when she was calving. There was also a large scythe blade which the old lady hoped to use on a burglar – if ever one was foolish enough to come that way – and, in the chimney, there were hung some ash—rungs which her deceased husband had been intending to use for
flails, together with eel skins and strips of horse leather as hangings to them. Under the eel skins was an enormous bottle of holy water, and in front of the turf fire sat one of the Irish Saints who lived in the beehive cells of the outer islands, with a glass of water—of—life in his hand. He was a relapsed saint, who had fallen into the Pelagian heresy of Celestius, and he believed that the soul was capable of its own salvation. He was busy saving it with Mother Morlan and the usquebaugh.

‘God and Mary to you, Mother Morlan,’ said Gawaine. ‘We have come for a story, ma’am, about the shee.’

‘God and Mary and Andrew to you,’ exclaimed the beldame. ‘And you asking me for a story, whateffer, with his reverence here among the ashes!’

‘Good evening, St Toirdealbhach, we did not notice you because of the dark.’

‘The blessing of God to you.’

‘The same blessing to you yourself.’

‘It must be about murders,’ said Agravaine. ‘About murders and some corbies which peck out your eyes.’

‘No, no,’ cried Gareth. ‘It must be about a mysterious girl who marries a man because he has stolen the giant’s magic horse.’

‘Glory be to God,’ remarked St Toirdealbhach. ‘It does be a strange story yer after wanting entirely.’

‘Come now, St Toirdealbhach, tell us one yourself.’

‘Tell us about Ireland.’

‘Tell us about Queen Maeve, who desired the bull.’

‘Or dance us one of the jigs.’

‘Maircy on the puir bairns, to think of his holiness dancing a jig!’

The four representatives of the upper classes sat down wherever they could – there were only two stools – and stared at the holy man in receptive silence.

‘Is it a moral tale yer after?’

‘No, no. No morals. We like a story about fighting. Come, St Toirdealbhach, what about the time you broke the Bishop’s head?’

The saint drank a big gulp of his white whisky and spat in the fire.

‘There was a king in it one time,’ said he, and the whole audience made a rustling noise with their rumps, as they settled down.

‘There was a king in it, one time,’ said St Toirdealbhach, ‘and this king, what do you think, was called King Conor Mac Nessa. He was a whale of a man who lived with his relations at a place called Tara of the Kings. It was not long before this king had to go to battle against thim bloody O’Haras, and he got shot in the conflict with a magic ball. You are to understand that the ancient heroes were after making themselves bullets out of the brains of their adversaries – which they would roll between the palms of their hands in little pieces, and leave them to dry in the sun. I suppose they must have shot them out of the arquebus, you know, as if they were sling—shot or bolts. Well, and if they did, this old King was shot in the temples with one of thim same bullets, and it lodging against the bone of the skull, at the critical point whatever. “I’m a fine man now,” says the King, and he sends for the brehons and those to advise with them about the obstetrics. The first brehon says, “You’re a dead man, King Conor. This ball is at the lobe of the brain.” So said all the medical gintlemen, widout respect of person nor creed. “Oh, what’ll I do at all,” cries the King of Ireland. “It’s a hard fortune evidently, when a man can’t be fighting a little bit unless he comes to the end of his days.” “None of yer prate, now,” says the surgeons, “there’s wan thing which can be done, and that same thing is to keep from all unnatural excitement from this time forward.” “For that matter,” says they, “ye must keep from all natural excitement also, or otherwise the bullet will cause a rupture, and the rupture rising to a flux, and the flux to a conflammation, will occasion an absolute abruption in the vital functions at all. It’s yer only hope, King Conor, or otherwise ye will lie compunctually as the worms made ye.” Well, begor, it was a fine state of business, as you may imagine. There was that poor Conor in his castle, and he not able to laugh nor fight nor take any small sup of
spirited water nor to look upon a white colleen anyhow, for fear that his brains would burst. The ball stood in his temples, half in, half out, and that was the sorrow with him, from that day forward.’

‘Wurra the doctors,’ said Mother Morlan. ‘Hoots, but they’re na canny.’

‘What happened him?’ asked Gawaine. ‘Did he live long in this dark room?’

‘What happened him? I was now coming to that. Wan day there was a slashing thunderstorm in it, and the castle walls shook like a long—net, and a great part of the bailey fell upon them. It was the worst storm that was known in those parts for whiles, and King Conor rushed out into the element to seek advice. He found wan of his brehons standing there whatever, and axed him what could it be. This brehon was a learned man, and he told King Conor. He said how our Saviour had been hanged on a tree in Jewry that day, and how the storm was broken on account of it, and he spoke to King Conor about the gospel of God. Then, what do you think, King Conor of Ireland ran back into his palace for to seek his sword in righteous passion, and he ran out with it throughout the tempest to defend his Saviour – and that was how he died.’

‘He was dead?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well!’

‘What a nice way to do it,’ said Gareth. ‘It was no good to him, but it was grand!’

Agravaine said, ‘If I was told by my doctors to be careful, I would not lose my temper over nothing. I should think what was happening, whatever.’

‘But it was chivalrous?’

Gawaine began to fidget with his toes.

‘It was silly,’ he said eventually. ‘It did no good.’

‘But he was trying to do good.’

‘It was not for his family,’ said Gawaine. ‘I do not know why he was so excited at all.’

‘Of course it was for his family. It was for God, who is the
family of every person. King Conor went out on the side of right, and gave his life to help it.’

Agravaine moved his stern in the soft, rusty ashes of the turf impatiently. He considered that Gareth was a fool.

‘Tell us the story,’ he said, to change the subject, ‘about how pigs were made.’

‘Or the one,’ said Gawaine, ‘about the great Conan who was enchanted to a chair. He was stuck on it, whatever, and they could not get him off. So they pulled him from it by force, and then there was a necessity on them to graft a piece of skin on his bottom – but it was sheepskin, and from thence the stockings worn by the Fianna were made from the wool which grew on Conan!’

‘No, do not,’ said Gareth. ‘Let there be no stories. Let us sit and talk wisely, my heroes, on deep matters. Let us talk about our father, who is away to the wars.’

St Toirdealbhach took a deep draught of his mountain dew, and spat in the fire.

‘Isn’t war the grand thing?’ he observed reminiscently. ‘I did be going to wars a great deal wan time, before I was sainted. Only I got tired on them.’

Gawaine said: ‘I cannot see how people ever get tired of wars. I am sure I will not. After all, it is a gentleman’s occupation. I mean, it would be like getting tired of hunting, or of hawks.’

‘War,’ said Toirdealbhach, ‘be’s a good thing if there doesn’t be too many in it. When there’s too many fighting, how would you know what you are fighting about at all? There did be fine wars in Old Ireland, but it would be about a bull or something, and every man had his heart in it from the start.’

‘Why did you get tired of wars?’

‘’Twas thim same numbers had thim destroyed altogether. Who would want to be killing a mortal for what he didn’t understand, or for nothing? I took up with the single combats instead.’

‘That must have been a long time ago.’

‘Aye,’ said the saint regretfully. ‘Thim bullets I was telling ye about, now: the brains didn’t be much good widout they
were taken in single combat. It was the virtue of them.’

‘I incline my agreement with Toirdealbhach,’ said Gareth. ‘After all, what is the good of killing poor kerns who do not know anything? It would be much better for the people who are angry to fight each other themselves, knight against knight.’

‘But you could not have any wars at all, like that,’ exclaimed Gaheris.

‘It would be absurd,’ said Gawaine. ‘You must have people, galore of people, in a war.’

‘Otherwise you could not kill them,’ explained Agravaine.

The saint helped himself to a fresh dose of whisky, hummed a few bars of
Poteen, Good Luck to Ye, Dear,
and glanced at Mother Morlan. He was feeling a new heresy coming over him, possibly as a result of the spirits, and it had something to do with the celibacy of the clergy. He had one already about the shape of his tonsure, and the usual one about the date of Easter, as well as his own Pelagian business – but the latest was beginning to make him feel as if the presence of children was unnecessary.

‘Wars,’ he said with disgust. ‘And how would kids like you be talking about them, will ye tell me, and you no bigger than sitting hens? Be off now, before I beget an ill wish toward ye.’

Saints, as the Old Ones knew very well, were a bad class of people to cross, so the children stood up hastily.

‘Och, now,’ they said. ‘Your Holiness, no offence, we are sure. We were only at wishing to make an exchange of ideas.’

‘Ideas!’ he exclaimed, reaching for the poker – and they were outside the low door in the twinkling of an eye, standing in the level rays of sunset on the sandy street, while his anathemas or whatever they may have been rumbled behind them from the dark interior.

In the street, there were two moth—eaten donkeys searching for weeds in the cracks of a stone wall. Their legs were tied together so that they could hardly hobble, and their hoofs were cruelly overgrown, so that they looked like rams’ horns or curly skates. The boys commandeered them at once, a new idea springing
fully armed from their heads as soon as they had seen the animals. They would stop hearing stories or discussing warfare, and they would take the donkeys to the little harbour beyond the sand—dunes, in case the men who had been out in their currachs should have made a catch. The donkeys would be useful for carrying the fish.

Gawaine and Gareth took turns with the fat ass, one of them whacking it while the other rode bareback. The ass gave a hop occasionally, but refused to trot. Agravaine and Gaheris both sat on the thin one, the former being mounted back to front so that he faced the creature’s behind – which he thrashed furiously with a thick root of seaweed. He beat it round the vent, to hurt it more.

It was a strange scene which they presented when they reached the sea – the thin children whose sharp noses had a drop on the end of each, and their bony wrists which had outgrown their coats – the donkeys scampering round in small circles, with an occasional frisk as the tangle bit into their grey quarters. It was strange because it was circumscribed, because it was concentrated on a single intention. They might have been a solar system of their own, with nothing else in space, as they went round and round among the dunes and coarse grass of the estuary. Probably the planets have few ideas in their heads, either.

The idea which the children had was to hurt the donkeys. Nobody had told them that it was cruel to hurt them, but then, nobody had told the donkeys either. On the rim of the world they knew too much about cruelty to be surprised by it. So the small circus was a unity – the beasts reluctant to move and the children vigorous to move them, the two parties bound together by the link of pain to which they both agreed without question. The pain itself was so much a matter of course that it had vanished out of the picture, as if by a process of cancellation. The animals did not seem to be suffering, and the children did not seem to be enjoying the suffering. The only difference was that the boys were violently animated while the donkeys were as static as possible.

Into this Eden—like scene, and almost before the memory of Mother Morlan’s interior had faded from their minds, there came a magic barge from over the water, a barge draped with white samite, mystic, wonderful, and it made a music of its own accord as its keel passed through the waves. Inside it there were three knights and a seasick brachet. Anything less suitable than these to the tradition of the Gaelic world, it would have been impossible to imagine.

‘I say,’ said the voice of one of the knights in the barge, while they were still far out, ‘there is a castle, isn’t it, what? I say, isn’t it a pretty one!’

‘Stop joggin’ the boat, my dear fellow,’ said the second, ‘or you will have us in the sea.’

King Pellinore’s enthusiasm evaporated at the rebuke, and he startled the petrified children by bursting into tears. They could bear his sobs, mingled with the lapping of the waves and with the music of the boat, as it drew near.

‘Oh, sea!’ he said. ‘I wish I was in you, what? I wish I was full of five fathoms, that I do. Woe, woe, oh, woe!’

‘It is no good saying Whoa, old boy. The thing will whoa when it wants to. It is a magic ‘un.’

‘I was not saying Whoa,’ retorted the King. ‘I was saying Woe.’

‘Well, it won’t whoa.’

‘I don’t care if it does or if it don’t. I said Woe!’

‘Well, whoa, then.’

And the magic barge whoaed, just where the currachs were usually drawn up. Three knights got out, and it could be seen that the third was a black man. He was a learned paynim or saracen, called Sir Palomides.

‘Happy landing,’ said Sir Palomides, ‘by golly!’