like a lost mariner searching for land, and exclaimed, “Ah – hah; whom have we heah, what what?”
“Please,” said the Wart, “I am a boy whose guardian is Sir Ector.”
“Charming fellah,” said the Knight. “Charming fellah. Never met him in my life.”
“Can you tell me the way back to his castle?”
“Faintest ideah,” said the Knight. “Faintest ideah. Stranger in these parts meself.”
“I have got lost,” said the Wart.
“Funny thing that. Funny thing that, what? Now Ay have been lost for seventeen years.
“Name of King Pellinore,” continued the Knight. “May have heard of me, what?” Here the visor shut with a pop, like an echo to the What, but was opened again immediately. “Seventeen years ago, come Michaelmas, and been after the Questing Beast ever since. Boring, very.”
“I should think it would be,” said the Wart, who had never heard of King Pellinore, or the Questing Beast, but felt that this was the safest thing to say in the circumstances.
“It is the burden of the Pellinores,” said the Knight proudly. “Only a Pellinore can catch it; that is, of course, or his next of kin. Train all the Pellinores with that ideah in mind. Limited eddication, rather. Fewmets, and all that.”
“I know what fewmets are,” said the Wart with interest. “They are the droppings of the beast pursued. The harbourer keeps them in his horn, to show to his master, and can tell by them whether it is a warrantable beast or otherwise, and what state it is in.”
“Intelligent child,” remarked King Pellinore. “Very. Now Ay carry fewmets about with me practically all the time.
“Insanitary habit,” added the King, beginning to look rather dejected, “and quite pointless. Only one Questing Beast, you know, what, so there can’t be any question whether it is warrantable or not.”
Here his visor began to droop so much that the Wart decided he had better forget his own troubles and try to cheer his companion up, by asking questions on the one subject about which King Pellinore seemed qualified to speak. Even talking to a lost royalty was better than being alone in the wood.
“What does the Questing Beast look like?”
“Ah, we call it the Beast Glatisant, you know,” replied the monarch, assuming a learned air and beginning to speak quite volubly. “Now the Beast Glatisant, or, as we say in English, the Questing Beast – you may call it either,” he added graciously, – “this Beast has the head of a serpent, ah, and the body of a libbard, the haunches of a lion, and he is footed like a hart. Wherever this beast goes he makes a noise in his belly as it had been the noise of thirty couples of hounds questing.
“Except when he is drinking, of course,” added the King severely, as if he had rather shocked himself by leaving this out.
“It must be a dreadful kind of monster,” said the Wart, looking at him anxiously.
“A dreadful monster,” repeated the other complacently. “It is the Beast Glatisant, you know.”
“And how do you follow it?”
This seemed to be the wrong kind of question, for King Pellinore immediately began to look much more depressed than ever, and glanced over his shoulder so hurriedly that his visor shut down altogether.
“Ay have a brachet,” said King Pellinore sadly, as soon as he had restored himself. “There she is, over theah.”
The Wart looked in the direction which had been indicated with a despondent thumb, and saw a lot of rope wound round a tree. The other end of the rope was tied to King Pellinore’s saddle.
“I don’t see her very well.”
“Wound herself round the other side of the tree, Ay dare say,” said the King, without looking round. “She always goes the opposite way to me.”
The Wart went over to the tree and found a large white dog scratching herself for fleas. As soon as she saw the Wart, she began wagging her whole body, grinning vacuously, and panting in her efforts to lick his face in spite of the cord. She was too tangled up to move.
“It’s quite a good brachet,” said King Pellinore, “only it pants so, and gets wound round things, and goes the opposite way. What with that and the visor, what, Ay sometimes don’t know which way to turn.”
“Why don’t you let her loose?” asked the Wart. “She would follow the Beast just as well like that.”
“She just goes right away then, you know, and Ay don’t see her sometimes for a week.
“Gets a bit lonely without her,” added the King wistfully, “following this Beast about, what, and never knowing where one is. Makes a bit of company, you know.”
“She seems to have a friendly nature,” said the Wart.
“Too friendly. Sometimes Ay doubt whether she is really after the Beast at all.”
“What does she do when she sees it?”
“Nothing,” said King Pellinore.
“Oh, well,” said the Wart, “I dare say she will get to be interested in it after a time.”
“It’s eight months anyway since Ay saw the Beast at all.”
King Pellinore’s voice had got sadder and sadder since the beginning of the conversation, and now he definitely began to sniffle. “It’s the curse of the Pellinores,” he exclaimed. “Always mollocking about after that beastly Beast. What on earth use is it, anyway? First you have to stop to unwind the brachet, then your visor falls down, then you can’t see through your spectacles. Nowhere to sleep, never know where you are. Rheumatism in the winter, sunstroke in the summer. All this beastly armour takes hours to put on. When it is on it’s either frying or freezing, and it gets rusty. You have to sit up all night polishing the stuff. Oh, how Ay do wish Ay had a nice house of my own to live in, a house with beds in it and real pillows and sheets. If Ay was rich that’s what Ay would buy. A nice bed with a nice pillow and a nice sheet that you could lie in, and then Ay would put this beastly horse in a meadow and tell that beastly brachet to run away and play, and throw all this beastly armour out of the window, and let the beastly Beast go and chase itself, that Ay would.”
“If you could only show me the way home,” said the Wart craftily, “I am sure Sir Ector would put you up in a bed for the night.”
“Do you really mean it?” cried King Pellinore. “In a bed?”
“A feather bed,” said the Wart firmly.
King Pellinore’s eyes grew as round as saucers.
“A feather bed!” he repeated slowly. “Would it have pillows?”
“Down pillows.”
“Down pillows!” whispered the King, holding his breath. And then, letting it all out in a rush. “What a lovely house your guardian must have!”
“I don’t think it is more than two hours away,” said the Wart, following up his advantage.
“And did this gentleman really send you out to invite me in?” inquired the King wonderingly. (He had forgotten all about the Wart being lost.) “How nice of him, how very nice of him, Ay do think, what?”
“He will be very pleased to see us,” said the Wart, quite truthfully.
“Oh, how nice of him,” exclaimed the King again, beginning to bustle about his various trappings. “And what a lovely gentleman he must be, to have a feather bed!
“Ay suppose Ay should have to share it with somebody?” he added doubtfully.
“You could have one of your very own.”