Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0126/01268.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob01268}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{(A) Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court
Chapter 2}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{time
didn't
never
now
right
say
boy
come
friends
king}
$Date{1889}
$Log{}
Title:       (A) Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1889

Chapter 2

King Arthur's Court

     The moment I got a chance I slipped aside privately and touched an
ancient common looking man on the shoulder and said, in an insinuating,
confidential way -

     "Friend, do me a kindness.  Do you belong to the asylum, or are you just
here on a visit or something like that?"

     He looked me over stupidly, and said -

     "Marry, fair, sir, me seemeth -"

     "That will do," I said; "I reckon you are a patient."

     I moved away, cogitating, and at the same time keeping an eye out for
any chance passenger in his right mind that might come along and give me some
light.  I judged I had found one, presently; so I drew him aside and said in
his ear -

     "If I could see the head keeper a minute - only just a minute -"

     "Prithee do not let me."

     "Let you what?"

     "Hinder me, then, if the word please thee better."  Then he went on to
say he was an undercook and could not stop to gossip, though he would like it
another time; for it would comfort his very liver to know where I got my
clothes.  As he started away he pointed and said yonder was one who was idle
enough for my purpose, and was seeking me besides, no doubt.  This was an
airy slim boy in shrimp-colored tights that made him look like a forked
carrot; the rest of his gear was blue silk and dainty laces and ruffles; and
he had long yellow curls, and wore a plumed pink satin cap tilted
complacently over his ear.  By his look, he was good-natured; by his gait, he
was satisfied with himself.  He was pretty enough to frame.  He arrived,
looked me over with a smiling and impudent curiosity; said he had come for
me, and informed me that he was a page.

     "Go 'long," I said; "you ain't more than a paragraph."

     It was pretty severe, but I was nettled.  However, it never phazed him;
he didn't appear to know he was hurt.  He began to talk and laugh, in happy,
thoughtless, boyish fashion, as we walked along, and made himself old friends
with me at once; asked me all sorts of questions about myself and about my
clothes, but never waited for an answer - always chattered straight ahead, as
if he didn't know he had asked a question and wasn't expecting any reply,
until at last he happened to mention that he was born in the beginning of the
year 513.

     It made the cold chills creep over me!  I stopped, and said, a little
faintly:

     "Maybe I didn't hear you just right.  Say it again - and say it slow.
What year was it?"

     "Five thirteen."

     "Five thirteen!  You don't look it!  Come, my boy, I am a stranger and
friendless: be honest and honorable with me.  Are you in your right mind?"

     He said he was.

     "Are these other people in their right minds?"

     He said they were.

     "And this isn't an asylum?  I mean, it isn't a place where they cure
crazy people?"

     He said it wasn't.

     "Well, then," I said, "either I am a lunatic, or something just as awful
has happened.  Now tell me, honest and true, where am I?"

     "In King Arthur's Court."

     I waited a minute, to let that idea shudder its way home, and then said:

     "And according to your notions, what year is it now?"

     "Five twenty-eight - nineteenth of June."

     I felt a mournful sinking at the heart, and muttered: "I shall never see
my friends again - never, never again.  They will not be born for more than
thirteen hundred years yet."

     I seemed to believe the boy, I didn't know why.  Something in me seemed
to believe him - my consciousness, as you may say; but my reason didn't.  My
reason straightway began to clamor; that was natural.  I didn't know how to
go about satisfying it, because I knew that the testimony of men wouldn't
serve - my reason would say they were lunatics, and throw out their evidence.
But all of a sudden I stumbled on the very thing, just by luck.  I knew that
the only total eclipse of the sun in the first half of the sixth century
occurred on the twenty-first of June, A.D. 528 O. S., and began at three
minutes after twelve noon.  I also knew that no total eclipse of the sun was
due in what to me was the present year - i.e., 1879.  So, if I could keep my
anxiety and curiosity from eating the heart out of me for forty-eight hours,
I should then find out for certain whether this boy was telling me the truth
or not.

     Wherefore, being a practical Connecticut man, I now shoved this whole
problem clear out of my mind till its appointed day and hour should come, in
order that I might turn all my attention to the circumstances of the present
moment, and be alert and ready to make the most out of them that could be
made.  One thing at a time, is my motto - and just play that thing for all it
is worth, even if it's only two pair and a jack.  I made up my mind to two
things; if it was still the nineteenth century and I was among lunatics and
couldn't get away, I would presently boss that asylum or know the reason why;
and if on the other hand it was really the sixth century, all right, I didn't
want any softer thing: I would boss the whole country inside of three months;
for I judged I would have the start of the best-educated man in the kingdom
by a matter of thirteen hundred years and upwards.  I'm not a man to waste
time after my mind's made up and there's work on hand; so I said to the page -

     "Now, Clarence, my boy - if that might happen to be your name - I'll get
you to post me up a little if you don't mind.  What is the name of that
apparition that brought me here?"

     "My master and thine?  That is the good knight and great lord Sir Kay
the Seneschal, foster brother to our liege the king."

     "Very good; go on, tell me everything."

     He made a long story of it; but the part that had immediate interest for
me was this.  He said I was Sir Kay's prisoner, and that in the due course of
custom I would be flung into a dungeon and left there on scant commons until
my friends ransomed me - unless I chanced to rot, first.  I saw that the last
chance had the best show, but I didn't waste any bother about that; time was
too precious.  The page said, further, that dinner was about ended in the
great hall by this time, and that as soon as the sociability and the heavy
drinking should begin, Sir Kay would have me in and exhibit me before King
Arthur and his illustrious knights seated at the Table Round, and would brag
about his exploit in capturing me, and would probably exaggerate the facts a
little, but it wouldn't be good form for me to correct him, and not over safe,
either; and when I was done being exhibited, then ho for the dungeon; but he,
Clarence, would find a way to come and see me every now and then, and cheer
me up, and help me get word to my friends.

     Get word to my friends!  I thanked him; I couldn't do less; and about
this time a lackey came to say I was wanted; so Clarence led me in and took
me off to one side and sat down by me.

     Well, it was a curious kind of spectacle, and interesting.  It was an
immense place, and rather naked - yes, and full of loud contrasts.  It was
very, very lofty; so lofty that the banners depending from the arched beams
and girders away up there floated in a sort of twilight; there was a
stone-railed gallery at each end, high up, with musicians in the one, and
women, clothed in stunning colors, in the other.  The floor was of big stone
flags laid in black and white squares, rather battered by age and use, and
needing repair.  As to ornament, there wasn't any, strictly speaking; though
on the walls hung some huge tapestries which were probably taxed as works of
art; battle pieces, they were, with horses shaped like those which children
cut out of paper or create in gingerbread; with men on them in scale armor
whose scales are represented by round holes - so that the man's coat looks as
if it had been done with a biscuit punch.  There was a fireplace big enough
to camp in; and its projecting sides and hood, of carved and pillared
stonework, had the look of a cathedral door.  Along the walls stood
men-at-arms, in breastplate and morion, with halberds for their only weapon -
rigid as statues; and that is what they looked like.

     In the middle of this groined and vaulted public square was an oaken
table which they called the Table Round.  It was as large as a circus ring;
and around it sat a great company of men dressed in such various and splendid
colors that it hurt one's eyes to look at them.  They wore their plumed hats,
right along, except that whenever one addressed himself directly to the king,
he lifted his hat a trifle just as he was beginning his remark.

     Mainly they were drinking - from entire ox horns; but a few were still
munching bread or gnawing beef bones.  There was about an average of two dogs
to one man; and these sat in expectant attitudes till a spent bone was flung
to them, and then they went for it by brigades and divisions, with a rush,
and there ensued a fight which filled the prospect with a tumultuous chaos of
plunging heads and bodies and flashing tails, and the storm of howlings and
barkings deafened all speech for the time; but that was no matter, for the
dogfight was always a bigger interest anyway; the men rose, sometimes, to
observe it the better and bet on it, and the ladies and the musicians
stretched themselves out over their balusters with the same object; and all
broke into delighted ejaculations from time to time.  In the end, the winning
dog stretched himself out comfortably with his bone between his paws, and
proceeded to growl over it, and gnaw it, and grease the floor with it, just
as fifty others were already doing; and the rest of the court resumed their
previous industries and entertainments.

     As a rule the speech and behavior of these people were gracious and
courtly; and I noticed that they were good and serious listeners when anybody
was telling anything - I mean in a dogfightless interval.  And plainly, too,
they were a childlike and innocent lot; telling lies of the stateliest
pattern with a most gentle and winning naivety, and ready and willing to
listen to anybody else's lie, and believe it, too.  It was hard to associate
them with anything cruel or dreadful; and yet they dealt in tales of blood
and suffering with a guileless relish that made me almost forget to shudder.

     I was not the only prisoner present.  There were twenty or more.  Poor
devils, many of them were maimed, hacked, carved, in a frightful way; and
their hair, their faces, their clothing, were caked with black and stiffened
drenchings of blood.  They were suffering sharp physical pain, of course; and
weariness, and hunger and thirst, no doubt; and at least none had given them
the comfort of a wash, or even the poor charity of a lotion for their wounds;
yet you never heard them utter a moan or a groan, or saw them show any sign
of restlessness, or any disposition to complain.  The thought was forced upon
me: "The rascals - they have served other people so in their day; it being
their own turn, now, they were not expecting any better treatment than this;
so their philosophical bearing is not an outcome of mental training,
intellectual fortitude, reasoning; it is mere animal training; they are white
Indians."