A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court Page 8

  CHAPTER V

  AN INSPIRATION

  I was so tired that even my fears were not able to keep me awake long.

  When I next came to myself, I seemed to have been asleep a verylong time. My first thought was, "Well, what an astonishing dreamI've had! I reckon I've waked only just in time to keep frombeing hanged or drowned or burned or something.... I'll nap againtill the whistle blows, and then I'll go down to the arms factoryand have it out with Hercules."

  But just then I heard the harsh music of rusty chains and bolts,a light flashed in my eyes, and that butterfly, Clarence, stoodbefore me! I gasped with surprise; my breath almost got away from me.

  "What!" I said, "you here yet? Go along with the rest ofthe dream! scatter!"

  But he only laughed, in his light-hearted way, and fell to makingfun of my sorry plight.

  "All right," I said resignedly, "let the dream go on; I'm in no hurry."

  "Prithee what dream?"

  "What dream? Why, the dream that I am in Arthur's court--a personwho never existed; and that I am talking to you, who are nothingbut a work of the imagination."

  "Oh, la, indeed! and is it a dream that you're to be burnedto-morrow? Ho-ho--answer me that!"

  The shock that went through me was distressing. I now beganto reason that my situation was in the last degree serious, dreamor no dream; for I knew by past experience of the lifelike intensityof dreams, that to be burned to death, even in a dream, would bevery far from being a jest, and was a thing to be avoided, by anymeans, fair or foul, that I could contrive. So I said beseechingly:

  "Ah, Clarence, good boy, only friend I've got,--for you _are_ myfriend, aren't you?--don't fail me; help me to devise some wayof escaping from this place!"

  "Now do but hear thyself! Escape? Why, man, the corridors arein guard and keep of men-at-arms."

  "No doubt, no doubt. But how many, Clarence? Not many, I hope?"

  "Full a score. One may not hope to escape." After a pause--hesitatingly: "and there be other reasons--and weightier."

  "Other ones? What are they?"

  "Well, they say--oh, but I daren't, indeed daren't!"

  "Why, poor lad, what is the matter? Why do you blench? Why doyou tremble so?"

  "Oh, in sooth, there is need! I do want to tell you, but--"

  "Come, come, be brave, be a man--speak out, there's a good lad!"

  He hesitated, pulled one way by desire, the other way by fear;then he stole to the door and peeped out, listening; and finallycrept close to me and put his mouth to my ear and told me hisfearful news in a whisper, and with all the cowering apprehensionof one who was venturing upon awful ground and speaking of thingswhose very mention might be freighted with death.

  "Merlin, in his malice, has woven a spell about this dungeon, andthere bides not the man in these kingdoms that would be desperateenough to essay to cross its lines with you! Now God pity me,I have told it! Ah, be kind to me, be merciful to a poor boy whomeans thee well; for an thou betray me I am lost!"

  I laughed the only really refreshing laugh I had had for some time;and shouted:

  "Merlin has wrought a spell! _Merlin_, forsooth! That cheap oldhumbug, that maundering old ass? Bosh, pure bosh, the silliest boshin the world! Why, it does seem to me that of all the childish,idiotic, chuckle-headed, chicken-livered superstitions that ev--oh, damn Merlin!"

  But Clarence had slumped to his knees before I had half finished,and he was like to go out of his mind with fright.

  "Oh, beware! These are awful words! Any moment these wallsmay crumble upon us if you say such things. Oh call them backbefore it is too late!"

  Now this strange exhibition gave me a good idea and set me tothinking. If everybody about here was so honestly and sincerelyafraid of Merlin's pretended magic as Clarence was, certainlya superior man like me ought to be shrewd enough to contrivesome way to take advantage of such a state of things. I wenton thinking, and worked out a plan. Then I said:

  "Get up. Pull yourself together; look me in the eye. Do youknow why I laughed?"

  "No--but for our blessed Lady's sake, do it no more."

  "Well, I'll tell you why I laughed. Because I'm a magician myself."

  "Thou!" The boy recoiled a step, and caught his breath, forthe thing hit him rather sudden; but the aspect which he tookon was very, very respectful. I took quick note of that; itindicated that a humbug didn't need to have a reputation in thisasylum; people stood ready to take him at his word, without that.I resumed.

  "I've known Merlin seven hundred years, and he--"

  "Seven hun--"

  "Don't interrupt me. He has died and come alive again thirteentimes, and traveled under a new name every time: Smith, Jones,Robinson, Jackson, Peters, Haskins, Merlin--a new alias everytime he turns up. I knew him in Egypt three hundred years ago;I knew him in India five hundred years ago--he is always bletheringaround in my way, everywhere I go; he makes me tired. He don'tamount to shucks, as a magician; knows some of the old commontricks, but has never got beyond the rudiments, and never will.He is well enough for the provinces--one-night stands and thatsort of thing, you know--but dear me, _he_ oughtn't to set up foran expert--anyway not where there's a real artist. Now look here,Clarence, I am going to stand your friend, right along, and inreturn you must be mine. I want you to do me a favor. I wantyou to get word to the king that I am a magician myself--and theSupreme Grand High-yu-Muck-amuck and head of the tribe, at that;and I want him to be made to understand that I am just quietlyarranging a little calamity here that will make the fur fly in theserealms if Sir Kay's project is carried out and any harm comesto me. Will you get that to the king for me?"

  The poor boy was in such a state that he could hardly answer me.It was pitiful to see a creature so terrified, so unnerved, sodemoralized. But he promised everything; and on my side he mademe promise over and over again that I would remain his friend, andnever turn against him or cast any enchantments upon him. Thenhe worked his way out, staying himself with his hand along thewall, like a sick person.

  Presently this thought occurred to me: how heedless I have been!When the boy gets calm, he will wonder why a great magician like meshould have begged a boy like him to help me get out of this place;he will put this and that together, and will see that I am a humbug.

  I worried over that heedless blunder for an hour, and called myselfa great many hard names, meantime. But finally it occurred to meall of a sudden that these animals didn't reason; that _they_ neverput this and that together; that all their talk showed that theydidn't know a discrepancy when they saw it. I was at rest, then.

  But as soon as one is at rest, in this world, off he goes onsomething else to worry about. It occurred to me that I had madeanother blunder: I had sent the boy off to alarm his betters witha threat--I intending to invent a calamity at my leisure; nowthe people who are the readiest and eagerest and willingest toswallow miracles are the very ones who are hungriest to see youperform them; suppose I should be called on for a sample? SupposeI should be asked to name my calamity? Yes, I had made a blunder;I ought to have invented my calamity first. "What shall I do?what can I say, to gain a little time?" I was in trouble again;in the deepest kind of trouble...

  "There's a footstep!--they're coming. If I had only just a momentto think.... Good, I've got it. I'm all right."

  You see, it was the eclipse. It came into my mind in the nickof time, how Columbus, or Cortez, or one of those people, playedan eclipse as a saving trump once, on some savages, and I saw mychance. I could play it myself, now, and it wouldn't be anyplagiarism, either, because I should get it in nearly a thousandyears ahead of those parties.

  Clarence came in, subdued, distressed, and said:

  "I hasted the message to our liege the king, and straightway hehad me to his presence. He was frighted even to the marrow,and was minded to give order for your instant enlargement, andthat you be clothed in fine raiment and lodged as befitted one sogreat; but then came Merlin and spoiled a
ll; for he persuadedthe king that you are mad, and know not whereof you speak; andsaid your threat is but foolishness and idle vaporing. Theydisputed long, but in the end, Merlin, scoffing, said, 'Whereforehath he not _named_ his brave calamity? Verily it is because hecannot.' This thrust did in a most sudden sort close the king'smouth, and he could offer naught to turn the argument; and so,reluctant, and full loth to do you the discourtesy, he yet prayethyou to consider his perplexed case, as noting how the matter stands,and name the calamity--if so be you have determined the natureof it and the time of its coming. Oh, prithee delay not; to delayat such a time were to double and treble the perils that alreadycompass thee about. Oh, be thou wise--name the calamity!"

  I allowed silence to accumulate while I got my impressivenesstogether, and then said:

  "How long have I been shut up in this hole?"

  "Ye were shut up when yesterday was well spent. It is 9 ofthe morning now."

  "No! Then I have slept well, sure enough. Nine in the morningnow! And yet it is the very complexion of midnight, to a shade.This is the 20th, then?"

  "The 20th--yes."

  "And I am to be burned alive to-morrow." The boy shuddered.

  "At what hour?"

  "At high noon."

  "Now then, I will tell you what to say." I paused, and stood overthat cowering lad a whole minute in awful silence; then, in a voicedeep, measured, charged with doom, I began, and rose by dramaticallygraded stages to my colossal climax, which I delivered in as sublimeand noble a way as ever I did such a thing in my life: "Go backand tell the king that at that hour I will smother the whole worldin the dead blackness of midnight; I will blot out the sun, and heshall never shine again; the fruits of the earth shall rot for lackof light and warmth, and the peoples of the earth shall famishand die, to the last man!"

  I had to carry the boy out myself, he sunk into such a collapse.I handed him over to the soldiers, and went back.