Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0128/01282.txt

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$Pretitle{}
$Title{(A) Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court
Chapter 16}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{king
soap
la
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sir
time
castle
curious
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$Date{1889}
$Log{}
Title:       (A) Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1889

Chapter 16

Morgan Le Fay

     If knights-errant were to be believed, not all castles were desirable
places to seek hospitality in.  As a matter of fact, knights-errant were not
persons to be believed - that is, measured by modern standards of veracity;
yet, measured by the standards of their own time, and scaled accordingly, you
got the truth.  It was very simple: you discounted a statement ninety-seven
percent; the rest was fact.  Now after making this allowance, the truth
remained that if I could find out something about a castle before ringing the
doorbell - I mean hailing the warders - it was the sensible thing to do.  So
I was pleased when I saw in the distance a horseman making the bottom turn of
the road that wound down from this castle.

     As we approached each other, I saw that he wore a plumed helmet, and
seemed to be otherwise clothed in steel, but bore a curious addition also - a
stiff square garment like a herald's tabard.  However, I had to smile at my
own forgetfulness when I got nearer and read this sign on his tabard:

"Persimmon's Soap - All The Prime-Donne Use It."

     That was a little idea of my own, and had several wholesome purposes in
view toward the civilizing and uplifting of this nation.  In the first place,
it was a furtive, underhand blow at this nonsense of knight errantry, though
nobody suspected that but me.  I had started a number of these people
out - the bravest knights I could get - each sandwiched between bulletin
boards bearing one device or another, and I judged that by and by when they
got to be numerous enough they would begin to look ridiculous; and then, even
the steel-clad ass that hadn't any board would himself begin to look
ridiculous because he was out of the fashion.

     Secondly, these missionaries would gradually, and without creating
suspicion or exciting alarm, introduce a rudimentary cleanliness among the
nobility, and from them it would work down to the people, if the priests
could be kept quiet.  This would undermine the Church.  I mean would be a
step toward that.  Next, education - next, freedom - and then she would begin
to crumble.  It being my conviction that any Established Church is an
established crime, an established slave pen, I had no scruples, but was
willing to assail it in any way or with any weapon that promised to hurt it.
Why, in my own former day - in remote centuries not yet stirring in the womb
of time - there were old Englishmen who imagined that they had been born in a
free country: a "free" country with the Corporation Act and the Test still in
force in it - timbers propped against men's liberties and dishonored
consciences to shore up an Established Anachronism with.

     My missionaries were taught to spell out the gilt signs on their tabards
- the showy gilding was a neat idea, I could have got the king to wear a
bulletin board for the sake of that barbaric splendor - they were to spell
out these signs and then explain to the lords and ladies what soap was; and
if the lords and ladies were afraid of it, get them to try it on a dog.  The
missionary's next move was to get the family together and try it on himself;
he was to stop at no experiment, however desperate, that could convince the
nobility that soap was harmless; if any final doubt remained, he must catch a
hermit - the woods were full of them; saints they called themselves, and
saints they were believed to be.  They were unspeakably holy, and worked
miracles, and everybody stood in awe of them.  If a hermit could survive a
wash, and that failed to convince a duke, give him up, let him alone.

     Whenever my missionaries overcame a knight errant on the road they
washed him, and when he got well they swore him to go and get a bulletin
board and disseminate soap and civilization the rest of his days.  As a
consequence the workers in the field were increasing by degrees, and the
reform was steadily spreading.  My soap factory felt the strain early.  At
first I had only two hands; but before I had left home I was already
employing fifteen, and running night and day; and the atmospheric result was
getting so pronounced that the king went sort of fainting and gasping around
and said he did not believe he could stand it much longer, and Sir Launcelot
got so that he did hardly anything but walk up and down the roof and swear,
although I told him it was worse up there than anywhere else, but he said he
wanted plenty of air; and he was always complaining that a palace was no
place for a soap factory, anyway, and said if a man was to start one in his
house he would be damned if he wouldn't strangle him.  There were ladies
present, too, but much these people ever cared for that; they would swear
before children, if the wind was their way when the factory was going.

     This missionary knight's name was La Cote Male Taile, and he said that
this castle was the abode of Morgan le Fay, sister of King Arthur, and wife
of King Uriens, monarch of a realm about as big as the District of
Columbia - you could stand in the middle of it and throw bricks into the next
kingdom.  "Kings" and "Kingdoms" were as thick in Britain as they had been in
little Palestine in Joshua's time, when people had to sleep with their knees
pulled up because they couldn't stretch out without a passport.

     La Cote was much depressed, for he had scored here the worst failure of
his campaign.  He had not worked off a cake; yet he had tried all the tricks
of the trade, even to the washing of a hermit; but the hermit died.  This was
indeed a bad failure, for this animal would now be dubbed a martyr, and would
take his place among the saints of the Roman calendar.  Thus made he his
moan, this poor Sir La Cote Male Taile, and sorrowed passing sore.  And so my
heart bled for him, and I was moved to comfort and stay him.  Wherefore I
said -

     "Forbear to grieve, fair knight, for this is not a defeat.  We have
brains, you and I; and for such as have brains there are no defeats, but only
victories.  Observe how we will turn this seeming disaster into an
advertisement; an advertisement for our soap; and the biggest one, to draw,
that was ever thought of; an advertisement that will transform that Mount
Washington defeat into a Matterhorn victory.  We will put on your bulletin
board, 'Patronized by the Elect.'  How does that strike you?"

     "Verily, it is wonderly bethought!"

     "Well, a body is bound to admit that for just a modest little one-line
ad, it's a corker."

     So the poor colporteur's griefs vanished away.  He was a brave fellow,
and had done mighty feats of arms in his time.  His chief celebrity rested
upon the events of an excursion like this one of mine, which he had once made
with a damsel named Maledisant, who was as handy with her tongue as was
Sandy, though in a different way, for her tongue churned forth only railings
and insult, whereas Sandy's music was of a kindlier sort.  I knew his story
well, and so I knew how to interpret the compassion that was in his face when
he bade me farewell.  He supposed I was having a bitter hard time of it.

     Sandy and I discussed his story, as we rode along, and she said that La
Cote's bad luck had begun with the very beginning of that trip; for the
king's fool had overthrown him on the first day, and in such cases it was
customary for the girl to desert to the conqueror, but Maledisant didn't do
it; and also persisted afterward in sticking to him, after all his defeats.
But, said I, suppose the victor should decline to accept his spoil?  She said
that that wouldn't answer - he must.  He couldn't decline; it wouldn't be
regular.  I made a note of that.  If Sandy's music got to be too burdensome,
sometime I would let a knight defeat me, on the chance that she would desert
to him.

     In due time we were challenged by the warders, from the castle walls,
and after a parley admitted.  I have nothing pleasant to tell about that
visit.  But it was not a disappointment, for I knew Mrs. le Fay by
reputation, and was not expecting anything pleasant.  She was held in awe by
the whole realm, for she had made everybody believe she was a great
sorceress.  All her ways were wicked, all her instincts devilish.  She was
loaded to the eyelids with cold malice.  All her history was black with
crime; and among her crimes murder was common.  I was most curious to see
her; as curious as I could have been to see Satan.  To my surprise she was
beautiful; black thoughts had failed to make her expression repulsive, age
had failed to wrinkle her satin skin or mar its bloomy freshness.  She could
have passed for old Uriens's granddaughter, she could have been mistaken for
sister to her own son.

     As soon as we were fairly within the castle gates we were ordered into
her presence.  King Uriens was there, a kind-faced old man with a subdued
look; and also the son, Sir Uwaine le Blanchemains, in whom I was of course
interested on account of the tradition that he had once done battle with
thirty knights, and also on account of his trip with Sir Gawaine and Sir
Marhaus, which Sandy had been aging me with.  But Morgan was the main
attraction, the conspicuous personality here; she was head chief of this
household, that was plain.  She caused us to be seated, and then she began,
with all manner of pretty graces and graciousnesses, to ask me questions.
Dear me, it was like a bird or a flute, or something, talking.  I felt
persuaded that this woman must have been misrepresented, lied about.  She
trilled along, and trilled along, and presently a handsome young page,
clothed like the rainbow, and as easy and undulatory of movement as a wave,
came with something on a golden salver, and kneeling to present it to her,
overdid his graces and lost his balance, and so fell lightly against her
knee.  She slipped a dirk into him in as matter-of-course a way as another
person would have harpooned a rat!

     Poor child, he slumped to the floor, twisted his silken limbs in one
great straining contortion of pain, and was dead.  Out of the old king was
wrung an involuntary "O-h!" of compassion.  The look he got, made him cut it
suddenly short and not put any more hyphens in it.  Sir Uwaine, at a sign
from his mother, went to the anteroom and called some servants, and meanwhile
madame went rippling sweetly along with her talk.

     I saw that she was a good housekeeper, for while she talked she kept a
corner of her eye on the servants to see that they made no balks in handling
the body and getting it out; when they came with fresh clean towels, she sent
back for the other kind; and when they had finished wiping the floor and were
going, she indicated a crimson fleck the size of a tear which their duller
eyes had overlooked.  It was plain to me that La Cote Male Taile had failed
to see the mistress of the house.  Often, how louder and clearer than any
tongue, does dumb circumstantial evidence speak.

     Morgan le Fay rippled along as musically as ever.  Marvelous woman.  And
what a glance she had: when it fell in reproof upon those servants, they
shrunk and quailed as timid people do when the lightning flashes out of a
cloud.  I could have got the habit myself.  It was the same with that poor
old Brer Uriens; he was always on the ragged edge of apprehension; she could
not even turn towards him but he winced.

     In the midst of the talk I let drop a complimentary word about King
Arthur, forgetting for the moment how this woman hated her brother.  That one
little compliment was enough.  She clouded up like a storm; she called for
her guards, and said -

     "Hale me these varlets to the dungeons!"

     That struck cold on my ears, for her dungeons had a reputation.  Nothing
occurred to me to say - or do.  But not so with Sandy.  As the guard laid a
hand upon me, she piped up with the tranquilest confidence, and said -

     "God's wownds, dost thou covet destruction, thou maniac?  It is The
Boss!"

     Now what a happy idea that was - and so simple; yet it would never have
occurred to me.  I was born modest; not all over, but in spots; and this was
one of the spots.

     The effect upon madame was electrical.  It cleared her countenance and
brought back her smiles and all her persuasive graces and blandishments; but
nevertheless she was not able to entirely cover up with them the fact that
she was in a ghastly fright.  She said:

     "La, but do list to thine handmaid!  As if one gifted with powers like to
mine might say the thing which I have said unto one who has vanquished Merlin,
and not be jesting.  By mine enchantments I foresaw your coming, and by them I
knew you when you entered here.  I did but play this little jest with hope to
surprise you into some display of your art, as not doubting you would blast
the guards with occult fires, consuming them to ashes on the spot, a marvel
much beyond mine own ability, yet one which I have long been childishly
curious to see."

     The guards were less curious, and got out as soon as they got permission.