Kitabı oku: «The Once and Future King», sayfa 5
‘Look,’ said the Wart, ‘it is the poor swan with the deformed leg. It can only paddle with one leg, and the other side of it is hunched.’
‘Nonsense,’ said the swan snappily, putting its head into the water and giving them a frown with its black nares. ‘Swans like to rest in this position, and you can keep your fishy sympathy to yourself, so there.’ It continued to glare at them from above, like a white snake suddenly let down through the ceiling, until they were out of sight.
‘You swim along,’ said the tench, ‘as if there was nothing to be afraid of in the world. Don’t you see that this place is exactly like the forest which you had to come through to find me?’
‘Is it?’
The Wart looked, and at first saw nothing. Then he saw a small translucent shape hanging motionless near the surface. It was just outside the shadow of a water-lily and was evidently enjoying the sun. It was a baby pike, absolutely rigid and probably asleep, and it looked like a pipe stem or a seahorse stretched out flat. It would be a brigand when it grew up.
‘I am taking you to see one of those,’ said the tench, ‘the Emperor of these purlieus. As a doctor I have immunity, and I dare say he will respect you as my companion as well – but you had better keep your tail bent in case he is feeling tyrannical.’
‘Is he the King of the Moat?’
‘He is. Old Jack they call him, and some call him Black Peter, but for the most part they do not mention him by name at all. They just call him Mr P. You will see what it is to be a king.’
The Wart began to hang behind his conductor a little, and perhaps it was as well that he did, for they were almost on top of their destination before he noticed it. When he did see the old despot he started back in horror, for Mr P. was four feet long, his weight incalculable. The great body, shadowy and almost invisible among the stems, ended in a face which had been ravaged by all the passions of an absolute monarch – by cruelty, sorrow, age, pride, selfishness, loneliness and thoughts too strong for individual brains. There he hung or hoved, his vast ironic mouth permanently drawn downward in a kind of melancholy, his lean clean-shaven chops giving him an American expression, like that of Uncle Sam. He was remorseless, disillusioned, logical, predatory, fierce, pitiless – but his great jewel of an eye was that of a stricken deer, large, fearful, sensitive and full of griefs. He made no movement, but looked upon them with his bitter eye.
The Wart thought to himself that he did not care for Mr P.
‘Lord,’ said Merlyn, not paying attention to his nervousness, ‘I have brought a young professor who would learn to profess.’
‘To profess what?’ asked the King of the Moat slowly, hardly opening his jaws and speaking through his nose.
‘Power,’ said the tench.
‘Let him speak for himself.’
‘Please,’ said the Wart, ‘I don’t know what I ought to ask.’
‘There is nothing,’ said the monarch, ‘except the power which you pretend to seek: power to grind and power to digest, power to seek and power to find, power to await and power to claim, all power and pitilessness springing from the nape of the neck.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Love is a trick played on us by the forces of evolution. Pleasure is the bait laid down by the same. There is only power. Power is of the individual mind, but the mind’s power is not enough. Power of the body decides everything in the end, and only Might is Right.
‘Now I think it is time that you should go away, young master, for I find this conversation uninteresting and exhausting. I think you ought to go away really almost at once, in case my disillusioned mouth should suddenly determine to introduce you to my great gills, which have teeth in them also. Yes, I really think you might be wise to go away this moment. Indeed, I think you ought to put your back into it. And so, a long farewell to all my greatness.’
The Wart had found himself almost hypnotized by the big words, and hardly noticed that the tight mouth was coming closer and closer to him. It came imperceptibly, as the lecture distracted his attention, and suddenly it was looming within an inch of his nose. On the last sentence it opened, horrible and vast, the skin stretching ravenously from bone to bone and tooth to tooth. Inside there seemed to be nothing but teeth, sharp teeth like thorns in rows and ridges everywhere, like the nails in labourers’ boots, and it was only at the last second that he was able to regain his own will, to pull himself together, to recollect his instructions and to escape. All those teeth clashed behind him at the tip of his tail, as he gave the heartiest jack-knife he had ever given.
In a second he was on dry land once again, standing beside Merlyn on the piping drawbridge, panting in his stuffy clothes.
Chapter VI
One Thursday afternoon the boys were doing their archery as usual. There were two straw targets fifty yards apart, and when they had shot their arrows at one, they had only to go to it, collect them, and shoot back at the other, after facing about. It was still the loveliest summer weather, and there had been chicken for dinner, so that Merlyn had gone off to the edge of their shooting-ground and sat down under a tree. What with the warmth and the chicken and the cream he had poured over his pudding and the continual repassing of the boys and the tock of the arrows in the targets – which was as sleepy to listen to as the noise of a lawn-mower or of a village cricket match – and what with the dance of the egg-shaped sun-spots between the leaves of his tree, the aged man was soon fast asleep.
Archery was a serious occupation in those days. It had not yet been turned over to Indians and small boys. When you were shooting badly you got into a bad temper, just as the wealthy pheasant shooters do today. Kay was shooting badly. He was trying too hard and plucking on his loose, instead of leaving it to the bow.
‘Oh, come on,’ he said. ‘I am sick of these beastly targets. Let’s have a shot at the popinjay.’
They left the targets and had several shots at the popinjay – which was a large, bright-coloured artificial bird stuck on the top of a stick, like a parrot – and Kay missed these also. First he had the feeling of, ‘Well, I will hit the filthy thing, even if I have to go without my tea until I do it.’ Then he merely became bored.
The Wart said, ‘Let’s play Rovers then. We can come back in half an hour and wake Merlyn up.’
What they called Rovers, consisted in going for a walk with their bows and shooting one arrow each at any agreed mark which they came across. Sometimes it would be a molehill, sometimes a clump of rushes, sometimes a big thistle almost at their feet. They varied the distance at which they chose these objects, sometimes picking a target as much as 120 yards away – which was about as far as these boys’ bows could carry – and sometimes having to aim actually below a close thistle because the arrow always leaps up a foot or two as it leaves the bow. They counted five for a hit, and one if the arrow was within a bow’s length, and they added up their scores at the end.
On this Thursday they chose their targets wisely. Besides, the grass of the big field had been lately cut, so that they never had to search for their arrows for long, which nearly always happens, as in golf, if you shoot ill-advisedly near hedges or in rough places. The result was that they strayed further than usual and found themselves near the edge of the savage forest where Cully had been lost.
‘I vote,’ said Kay, ‘that we go to those burrows in the chase, and see if we can get a rabbit. It would be more fun than shooting at these hummocks.’
They did this. They chose two trees about a hundred yards apart, and each boy stood under one of them waiting for the conies to come out again. They stood still, with their bows already raised and arrows fitted, so that they would make the least possible movement to disturb the creatures when they did appear. It was not difficult for either of them to stand thus, for the first test which they had had to pass in archery was standing with the bow at arm’s length for half an hour. They had six arrows each and would be able to fire and mark them all before they needed to frighten the rabbits back by walking about to collect. An arrow does not make enough noise to upset more than the particular rabbit that it is shot at.
At the fifth shot Kay was lucky. He allowed just the right amount for wind and distance, and his point took a young coney square in the head. It had been standing up on end to look at him, wondering what he was.
‘Oh, well shot!’ cried the Wart, as they ran to pick it up. It was the first rabbit they had ever hit, and luckily they had killed it dead.
When they had carefully gutted it with the hunting knife which Merlyn had given – to keep it fresh – and passed one of its hind legs through the other at the hock, for convenience in carrying, the two boys prepared to go home with their prize. But before they had unstrung their bows they used to observe a ceremony. Every Thursday afternoon, after the last serious arrow had been shot, they were allowed to fit one more nock to their strings and to shoot the arrow straight up into the air. It was partly a gesture of farewell, partly of triumph, and it was beautiful. They did it now as salute to their first prey.
The Wart watched his arrow go up. The sun was already westing toward evening, and the trees where they were had plunged them into a partial shade. So, as the arrow topped the trees and climbed into sunlight, it began to burn against the evening like the sun itself. Up and up it went, not weaving as it would have done with a snatching loose, but soaring, swimming, aspiring to heaven, steady, golden and superb. Just as it had spent its force, just as its ambition had been dimmed by destiny and it was preparing to faint, to turn over, to pour back into the bosom of its mother earth, a portent happened. A gore-crow came flapping wearily before the approaching night. It came, it did not waver, it took the arrow. It flew away, heavy and hoisting, with the arrow in its beak.
Kay was frightened by this, but the Wart was furious. He had loved his arrow’s movement, its burning ambition in the sunlight, and, besides, it was his best one. It was the only one which was perfectly balanced, sharp, tight-feathered, clean-nocked, and neither warped nor scraped.
‘It was a witch,’ said Kay.
Chapter VII
Tilting and horsemanship had two afternoons a week, because they were the most important branches of a gentleman’s education in those days. Merlyn grumbled about athletics, saying that nowadays people seemed to think that you were an educated man if you could knock another man off a horse and that the craze for games was the ruin of scholarship – nobody got scholarships like they used to do when he was a boy, and all the public schools had been forced to lower their standards – but Sir Ector, who was an old tilting blue, said that the battle of Crécy had been won upon the playing fields of Camelot. This made Merlyn so furious that he gave Sir Ector rheumatism two nights running before he relented. Tilting was a great art and needed practice. When two knights jousted they held their lances in their right hands, but they directed their horses at one another so that each man had his opponent on his near side. The base of the lance, in fact, was held on the opposite side of the body to the side at which the enemy was charging. This seems rather inside out to anybody who is in the habit, say, of opening gates with a hunting crop, but it had its reasons. For one thing, it meant that the shield was on the left arm, so that the opponents charged shield to shield, fully covered. It also meant that a man could be unhorsed with the side or edge of the lance, in a kind of horizontal swipe, if you did not feel sure of hitting him with your point. This was the humblest or least skilful blow in jousting.
A good jouster, like Lancelot or Tristram, always used the blow of the point, because, although it was liable to miss in unskilful hands, it made contact sooner. If one knight charged with his lance held rigidly sideways to sweep his opponent out of the saddle, the other knight with his lance held directly forward would knock him down a lance length before the sweep came into effect.
Then there was how to hold the lance for the point stroke. It was no good crouching in the saddle and clutching it in a rigid grip preparatory to the great shock, for if you held it inflexibly like this its point bucked up and down to every movement of your thundering mount and you were practically certain to miss the aim. On the contrary, you had to sit loosely in the saddle with the lance easy and balanced against the horse’s motion. It was not until the actual moment of striking that you clamped your knees into the horse’s sides, threw your weight forward in your seat, clutched the lance with the whole hand instead of with the finger and thumb, and hugged your right elbow to your side to support the butt.
There was the size of the spear. Obviously a man with a spear one hundred yards long would strike down an opponent with a spear of ten or twelve feet before the latter came anywhere near him. But it would have been impossible to make a spear one hundred yards long and, if made, impossible to carry it. The jouster had to find out the greatest length which he could manage with the greatest speed, and he had to stick to that. Sir Lancelot, who came some time after this part of the story, had several sizes of spear and would call for his Great Spear or his Lesser Spear as occasion demanded.
There were the places on which the enemy should be hit. In the armoury of The Castle of the Forest Sauvage there was a big picture of a knight in armour with circles round his vulnerable points. These varied with the style of armour, so that you had to study your opponent before the charge and select a point. The good armourers – the best lived in Warrington, and still live near there – were careful to make all the forward or entering sides of their suits convex, so that the spear point glanced off them. Curiously enough, the shields of Gothic suits were more inclined to be concave. It was better that a spear point should stay on the shield, rather than glance off upward or downward, and perhaps hit a more vulnerable point of the body armour. The best place of all for hitting people was on the very crest of the tilting helm, that is, if the person in question were vain enough to have a large metal crest in whose folds and ornaments the point would find a ready lodging. Many were vain enough to have these armorial crests with bears and dragons or even ships or castles on them, but Sir Lancelot always contented himself with a bare helmet, or a bunch of feathers which would not hold spears, or, on one occasion, a soft lady’s sleeve.
It would take too long to go into all the interesting details of proper tilting which the boys had to learn, for in those days you had to be a master of your craft from the bottom upward. You had to know what wood was best for spears, and why, and even how to turn them so that they would not splinter or warp. There were a thousand disputed questions about arms and armour, all of which had to be understood.
Just outside Sir Ector’s castle there was a jousting field for tournaments, although there had been no tournaments in it since Kay was born. It was a green meadow, kept short, with a broad grassy bank raised round it on which pavilions could be erected. There was an old wooden grandstand at one side, lifted on stilts for the ladies. At present the field was only used as a practice-ground for tilting, so a quintain had been erected at one end and a ring at the other. The quintain was a wooden Saracen on a pole. He was painted with a bright blue face and red beard and glaring eyes. He had a shield in his left hand and a flat wooden sword in his right. If you hit him in the middle of his forehead all was well, but if your lance struck him on the shield or on any part to left or right of the middle line, then he spun round with great rapidity, and usually caught you a wallop with his sword as you galloped by, ducking. His paint was somewhat scratched and the wood picked up over his right eye. The ring was just an ordinary iron ring tied to a kind of gallows by a thread. If you managed to put your point through the ring, the thread broke, and you could canter off proudly with the ring round your spear.
The day was cooler than it had been for some time, for the autumn was almost within sight, and the two boys were in the tilting yard with the master armourer and Merlyn. The master armourer, or sergeant-at-arms, was a stiff, pale, bouncy gentleman with waxed moustaches. He always marched about with his chest stuck out like a pouter pigeon, and he called out ‘On the word One –’ on every possible occasion. He took great pains to keep his stomach in, and often tripped over his feet because he could not see them over his chest. He was generally making his muscles ripple, which annoyed Merlyn.
Wart lay beside Merlyn in the shade of the grandstand and scratched himself for harvest bugs. The saw-like sickles had only lately been put away, and the wheat stood in stooks of eight among the tall stubble of those times. The Wart still itched. He was also sore about the shoulders and had a burning ear, from making bosh shots at the quintain – for, of course, practice tilting was done without armour. Wart was pleased that it was Kay’s turn to go through it now and he lay drowsily in the shade, snoozing, scratching, twitching like a dog and partly attending to the fun.
Merlyn, sitting with his back to all the athleticism, was practising a spell which he had forgotten. It was a spell to make the sergeant’s moustaches uncurl, but at present it only uncurled one of them, and the sergeant had not noticed it. He absentmindedly curled it up again every time Merlyn did the spell, and Merlyn said, ‘Drat it!’ and began again. Once he made the sergeant’s ears flap by mistake, and the latter gave a startled look at the sky.
From far off at the other side of the tilting ground the sergeant’s voice came floating on the still air.
‘Nah, Nah, Master Kay, that ain’t it at all. Has you were. Has you were. The spear should be ’eld between the thumb and forefinger of the right ‘and, with the shield in line with the seam of the trahser leg …’
The Wart rubbed his sore ear and sighed.
‘What are you grieving about?’
‘I was not grieving; I was thinking.’
‘What were you thinking?’
‘Oh, it was not anything. I was thinking about Kay learning to be a knight.’
‘And well you may grieve,’ exclaimed Merlyn hotly. ‘A lot of brainless unicorns swaggering about and calling themselves educated just because they can push each other off a horse with a bit of stick! It makes me tired. Why, I believe Sir Ector would have been gladder to get a by-our-lady tilting blue for your tutor, that swings himself along on his knuckles like an anthropoid ape, rather than a magician of known probity and international reputation with first-class honours from every European university. The trouble with the Norman Aristocracy is that they are games-mad, that is what it is, games-mad.’
He broke off indignantly and deliberately made the sergeant’s ears flap slowly twice, in unison.
‘I was not thinking quite about that,’ said the Wart. ‘As a matter of fact, I was thinking how nice it would be to be a knight, like Kay.’
‘Well, you will be one soon enough, won’t you?’ asked the old man, impatiently.
Wart did not answer.
‘Won’t you?’
Merlyn turned round and looked closely at the boy through his spectacles.
‘What is the matter now?’ he enquired nastily. His inspection had shown him that his pupil was trying not to cry, and if he spoke in a kind voice he would break down and do it.
‘I shall not be a knight,’ replied the Wart coldly. Merlyn’s trick had worked and he no longer wanted to weep: he wanted to kick Merlyn. ‘I shall not be a knight because I am not a proper son of Sir Ector’s. They will knight Kay, and I shall be his squire.’
Merlyn’s back was turned again, but his eyes were bright behind his spectacles. ‘Too bad,’ he said without commiseration.
The Wart burst out with all his thoughts aloud. ‘Oh,’ he cried, ‘but I should have liked to be born with a proper father and mother, so that I could be a knight errant.’
‘What would you have done?’
‘I should have had a splendid suit of armour and dozens of spears and a black horse standing eighteen hands, and I should have called myself The Black Knight. And I should have hoved at a well or a ford or something and made all true knights that came that way to joust with me for the honour of their ladies, and I should have spared them all after I had given them a great fall. And I should live out of doors all the year round in a pavilion, and never do anything but joust and go on quests and bear away the prize at tournaments, and I should not ever tell anybody my name.’
‘Your wife will scarcely enjoy the life.’
‘Oh, I am not going to have a wife. I think they are stupid.
‘I shall have to have a lady-love, though,’ added the future knight uncomfortably, ‘so that I can wear her favour in my helm, and do deeds in her honour.’
A humblebee came zooming between them, under the grandstand and out into the sunlight.
‘Would you like to see some real knights errant?’ asked the magician slowly. ‘Now, for the sake of your education?’
‘Oh, I would! We have never even had a tournament since I was here.’
‘I suppose it could be managed.’
‘Oh, please do. You could take me to some like you did to the fish.’
‘I suppose it is educational, in a way.’
‘It is very educational,’ said the Wart. ‘I can’t think of anything more educational than to see some real knights fighting. Oh, won’t you please do it?’
‘Do you prefer any particular knight?’
‘King Pellinore,’ he said immediately. He had a weakness for this gentleman since their strange encounter in the Forest.
Merlyn said, ‘That will do very well. Put your hands to your sides and relax your muscles. Cabricias arci thurum, catalamus, singulariter, nominativa, haec musa. Shut your eyes and keep them shut. Bonus, Bona, Bonum. Here we go. Deus Sanctus, est-ne aratio Latinas? Etiam, oui, quare? Pourquoi? Quai substantivo et adjectivum concordat in generi, numerum et casus. Here we are.’
While this incantation was going on, the patient felt some queer sensations. First he could hear the sergeant calling out to Kay, ‘Nah, then, nah then, keep the ’eels dahn and swing the body from the ’ips.’ Then the words got smaller and smaller, as if he were looking at his feet through the wrong end of a telescope, and began to swirl round in a cone, as if they were at the pointed bottom end of a whirlpool which was sucking him into the air. Then there was nothing but a loud rotating roaring and hissing noise which rose to such a tornado that he felt that he could not stand it any more. Finally there was utter silence and Merlyn saying, ‘Here we are.’ All this happened in about the time that it would take a sixpenny rocket to start off with its fiery swish, bend down from its climax and disperse itself in thunder and coloured stars. He opened his eyes just at the moment when one would have heard the invisible stick hitting the ground.
They were lying under a beech tree in the Forest Sauvage.
‘Here we are,’ said Merlyn. ‘Get up and dust your clothes.
‘And there, I think,’ continued the magician, in a tone of satisfaction because his spells had worked for once without a hitch, ‘is your friend, King Pellinore, pricking toward us o’er the plain.’
‘Hallo, hallo,’ cried King Pellinore, popping his visor up and down. ‘It’s the young boy with the feather bed, isn’t it, I say, what?’
‘Yes, it is,’ said the Wart. ‘And I am very glad to see you. Did you manage to catch the Beast?’
‘No,’ said King Pellinore. ‘Didn’t catch the beast. Oh, do come here, you brachet, and leave that bush alone. Tcha! Tcha! Naughty, naughty! She runs riot, you know, what. Very keen on rabbits. I tell you there’s nothing in it, you beastly dog. Tcha! Tcha! Leave it, leave it! Oh, do come to heel, like I tell you.
‘She never does come to heel,’ he added.
At this the dog put a cock pheasant out of the bush, which rocketed off with a tremendous clatter, and the dog became so excited that it ran round its master three or four times at the end of its rope, panting hoarsely as if it had asthma. King Pellinore’s horse stood patiently while the rope was wound round its legs, and Merlyn and the Wart had to catch the brachet and unwind it before the conversation could go on.
‘I say,’ said King Pellinore. ‘Thank you very much. I must say. Won’t you introduce me to your friend, what?’
This is my tutor Merlyn, a great magician.’
‘How-de-do,’ said the King. ‘Always like to meet magicians. In fact I always like to meet anybody. It passes the time away, what, on a quest.’
‘Hail,’ said Merlyn, in his most mysterious manner.
‘Hail,’ replied the King, anxious to make a good impression.
They shook hands.
‘Did you say Hail?’ inquired the King, looking about him nervously. ‘I thought it was going to be fine, myself.’
‘He meant How-do-you-do,’ explained the Wart.
‘Ah, yes, How-de-do?’
They shook hands again.
‘Good afternoon’ said King Pellinore. ‘What do you think the weather looks like now?’
‘I think it looks like an anti-cyclone.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said the King. ‘An anti-cyclone. Well, I suppose I ought to be getting along.’
At this the King trembled very much, opened and shut his visor several times, coughed, wove his reins into a knot, exclaimed, ‘I beg your pardon?’ and showed signs of cantering away.
‘He is a white magician,’ said the Wart. ‘You need not be afraid of him. He is my best friend, your majesty, and in any case he generally gets his spells muddled up.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said King Pellinore. ‘A white magician, what? How small the world is, is it not? How-de-do?’
‘Hail’ said Merlyn.
‘Hail,’ said King Pellinore.
They shook hands for the third time.
‘I should not go away,’ said the wizard, ‘if I were you. Sir Grummore Grummursum is on the way to challenge you to a joust.’
‘No, you don’t say? Sir What-you-may-call-it coming here to challenge me to a joust?’
‘Assuredly.’
‘Good handicap man?’
‘I should think it would be an even match.’
‘Well, I must say,’ exclaimed the King, ‘it never hails but it pours.’
‘Hail,’ said Merlyn.
‘Hail,’ said King Pellinore.
‘Hail,’ said the Wart.
‘Now I really won’t shake hands with anybody else,’ announced the monarch. ‘We must assume that we have all met before.’
‘Is Sir Grummore really coming,’ inquired the Wart, hastily changing the subject, ‘to challenge King Pellinore to a battle?’
‘Look yonder,’ said Merlyn, and both of them looked in the direction of his outstretched finger.
Sir Grummore Grummursum was cantering up the clearing in full panoply of war. Instead of his ordinary helmet with a visor he was wearing the proper tilting-helm, which looked like a large coal-scuttle, and as he cantered he clanged.
He was singing his old school song:
We’ll tilt together.
Steady from crupper to poll,
And nothin’ in life shall sever
Our love for the dear old coll.
Follow-up, follow-up, follow-up, follow-up, follow-up,
Till the shield ring again and again
With the clanks of the clanky true men.
‘Goodness,’ exclaimed King Pellinore. ‘It’s about two months since I had a proper tilt, and last winter they put me up to eighteen. That was when they had the new handicaps.’
Sir Grummore had arrived while he was speaking, and had recognized the Wart.
‘Mornin’,’ said Sir Grummore. ‘You’re Sir Ector’s boy, ain’t you? And who’s that chap in the comic hat?’
‘That is my tutor,’ said the Wart hurriedly. ‘Merlyn, the magician.’
Sir Grummore looked at Merlyn – magicians were considered rather middle-class by the true jousting set in those days – and said distantly, ‘Ah, a magician. How-de-do?’
‘And this is King Pellinore,’ said the Wart. ‘Sir Grummore Grummursum – King Pellinore.’
‘How-de-do?’ inquired Sir Grummore.
‘Hail,’ said King Pellinore. ‘No, I mean it won’t hail, will it?’
‘Nice day,’ said Sir Grummore.
‘Yes, it is nice, isn’t it, what?’
‘Been questin’ today?’
‘Oh, yes, thank you. Always am questing, you know. After the Questing Beast.’
‘Interestin’ job, that, very.’
‘Yes, it is interesting. Would you like to see some fewmets?’
‘By Jove, yes. Like to see some fewmets.’
‘I have some better ones at home, but these are quite good, really.’
‘Bless my soul. So these are her fewmets.’
‘Yes, these are her fewmets.’
‘Interestin’ fewmets.’
‘Yes, they are interesting, aren’t they? Only you get tired of them,’ added King Pellinore.
‘Well, well. It’s a fine day, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it is rather fine.’
‘Suppose we’d better have a joust, eh, what?’
‘Yes, I suppose we had better,’ said King Pellinore, ‘really.’
‘What shall we have it for?’
‘Oh, the usual, I suppose. Would one of you kindly help me on with my helm?’
They all three had to help him on eventually, for, what with the unscrewing of screws and the easing of nuts and bolts which the King had clumsily set on the wrong thread when getting up in a hurry that morning, it was quite a feat of engineering to get him out of his helmet and into his helm. The helm was an enormous thing like an oil drum, padded inside with two thicknesses of leather and three inches of straw.
