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  And had not Merlin soon remembered to transform the king’s robes into a perfect representation of Gorlois’s clothing, the figure before him would have been ludicrous, with the crown supported only by the little ears like unto a squirrel’s and the ermine piled high around the feet.

  “God’s body!” cried Uther Pendragon in a foul oath, staring at his altered visage in a looking-glass, “what an ugly toad is Gorlois and now, perforce, am I as well!” Then suddenly a terrible grimace did ugly his features further, and he grasped himself at the privy parts. But soon his brow cleared and he did grunt in an amazement that began as pleasurable but was shortly colored with wry reflection. “Either thou hast allowed me to retain mine own virility, Merlin, or” (and here he frowned in a certain envy) “there is substantial reason why the fair Ygraine hath ever been a loyal wife.”

  But Merlin diplomatically assured his sovereign that the former was rather the case, though in fact he had transformed him into the duke of Cornwall in every wise.

  Thereupon old Ulfin was summoned, and Merlin changed him in a trice into the image of Sir Jordan, Gorlois’s loyal retainer, and then Merlin transformed the day into the night, for the king was impatient to set out for Tintagel. But before they started for Cornwall, Uther Pendragon sent old Ulfin out of earshot and he spake privily to Merlin. And his voice was now that of Gorlois and of a thin and reedy quality foreign to his natural throat, the usual sounds from which were as of the drums of war (and when in his normal person he sought to whisper, the silken walls of his pavilion would tremble as in a tempest).

  But as the duke he could scarce be heard until the magician came to his very stirrup.

  “I have me the peculiarity,” said the king in this weak voice, “with a woman I have long desired, to tup her so often with the tool of the mind that when it comes to close buttocks my actual meat will not stand. It is as if a malignant spell hath been put upon it.”

  “’Tis but the shock of reality (which always hath a touch of squalor) as opposed to the perfection of the fancied,” said Merlin. “But be you now at ease, Sire. I myself shall accompany you in the guise of Sir Bertel, another of the duke’s close retinue, and be assured you will be a stranger to this trouble, against which I can provide counterspells.”

  Then having taken on the mirror-image of Sir Bertel, a very fat knight with a mustache like unto the horns of an ox, Merlin was bored with the prospect of a journey of some leagues, and therefore he transported himself, the king, and old Ulfin instantly, through magical means, to the great ironbound gate of lofty Tintagel on its eminence overlooking the sea which was so far below that the surf could not be heard in its furious dash against the base of the precipice.

  “Ho!” cried Sir Ulfin at the lancet window of the porter’s lodge, within which all was dark, and “Ho!” thrice again, and then finally a feeble light did flicker within and at last a guttering taper was thrust into the window, the which served only to illuminate the turnip-nose of him who held it.

  “Who stands without? And to what purpose? Speak, else I shall call the guard and loose the mastiffs.”

  “His Grace the duke of Cornwall!” cried old Ulfin.

  And the candle did disappear and soon the huge bolts that secured the gate did squeak and groan and the ponderous counterweights were lowered and the great gate did lift.

  “Your Grace,” said the porter, bowing with his torch of pitch and tow.

  Now Uther Pendragon was occupied with his lascivious anticipations, and he stared aloft among the many towers as if to identify that which would contain the fair Ygraine. But Merlin, in the guise of Sir Bertel, spake.

  “Doth the main gate of Tintagel go unwatched except by thee, sleeping, in time of war?”

  “Sir my lord Bertel,” said the porter, “’twas not this unworthy creature who made that arrangement but rather Her Grace, who did send the guard to bed and me as well, and the mastiffs would seem ailing or sopped, for they lie quiet in the kennels.” The porter shook his head in the torchlight. “Indeed, had you not been the duke and his retinue, but rather the warlike Uther and his host, I fear Tintagel would have been easily overwhelmed and Her Grace most vilely mishandled by that most goatish of monarchs.”

  “Insolent knave,” said Merlin. “Dost criticize the duchess of Cornwall? Thou shalt be whipped.” But his false anger served to conceal his true amusement, and to himself he said, that cunning baggage! For not even Merlin, with all his arts, could divine the ways of women. And then he did wonder how she could have known the king would come this night, and he learned from the porter subsequently that these orders had been in effect since the duke had left Tintagel to be besieged in Terrabil at the very outset of the war, now a fortnight in progress.

  But Uther Pendragon meanwhile did not await for the arrival of the grooms to dismount but rather flung his reins to old Ulfin, leaped afoot, and with lustful impatience hastened through the courtyard and hurled open the portal of the keep, which was unlocked and unguarded as well, and penetrating the darkness of the great entry hall, so lost himself, making a clangor amidst the shields hung upon the walls there.

  “Ho!” cried the king. “A light! A light!” And at length a steward appeared in nightdress, carrying a dripping candle and rubbing his sleepy eyes with his knuckles.

  “Your Grace!” cried he in amazement, freeing Uther Pendragon from entanglement in the straps of a shield. “We were told by Her Grace that Your Grace had been slain in the war with the king and to expect your return nevermore.”

  Now Uther Pendragon was most pleased to hear this, but he nevertheless remembered to serve his imposture, and he said gruffly as he could in the duke’s thin voice, “No more of thy prattle. Where is thy lady?”

  “Surely in her bedchamber, Your Grace,” said the steward, and he bowed, spattering tallow on the stones of the floor. “She hath not gone elsewhere since your departure.”

  “Give me that light,” said the king, “and begone.” But no sooner had the steward obeyed this order and gone away than Uther Pendragon realized that he knew not the route to the fair Ygraine’s bedchamber, and he feared that he might spend the night in a vain search through the vast corridors of lofty Tintagel.

  But meanwhile Merlin had come in from the courtyard, and he now undertook to guide the king to the private quarters of the duchess of Cornwall, the situation of which he knew exactly though never having been in this castle before. And soon this pair, monarch and wizard, in the guises of duke and knight, arrived before an arch framing a door upholstered in red silk onto which a golden dragon had been worked in cunning applique.

  Now Uther Pendragon could not forbear from swearing vilely, “God’s blood! The traitorous Gorlois doth privily usurp my device. I’ll have his ugly head for that—after having swyved his beautiful wife.”

  But Merlin spake in a whisper. “Methinks that is the work of the fair Ygraine and unbeknown to the duke, whose head she doth expect you will have already taken. But soft now, Sire. She waits within.” And the magician went to turn the handle of the door, but the king delayed him with a statement of great intensity.

  “Thou hast done thy service, Merlin, and may retire.”

  “But was it not you yourself, Sire, who applied to me for aid? Think on your habitual peculiarity arising from passionate anticipation.”

  “Wouldst climb into bed along with me?” asked the king. “Art thou unnatural in this as in thine other modes of life?”

  “As you wish, Sire. I shall await without until you need my craft,” said Merlin.

  “I command that thou go away altogether!” said Uther Pendragon. “I assure thee that having seen my dragon upon this very door I shall never know my old peculiarity once I am within.” So saying he threw the door handle and plunged into the chamber beyond.

  Now this proved to be but an anteroom, and he did hurl himself through it emerging in a chamber of which the walls were hung with silken tapestries, these illuminated by a fire which cast its glow as well on a bed upon which la
y, under a robe of white fur, the most beautiful woman in Christendom, the fair Ygraine, her hair flowing down the velvet pillow like unto streams of molten gold.

  And she had been in a slumber, but the clamor of Uther Pendragon’s arrival (he whose stride was unruly by reason of his concupiscence conjoined with the duke’s borrowed shanks, to which he was not yet used to walking with) caused her blue eyes to open and display their sapphire stars.

  But recognizing her husband’s mean figure she did corrupt her beauty with a grimace and say in ill-humor, “Gorlois! How in heaven’s name—” But seeing him begin to divest himself of his clothing she left off the expression of disagreeable amazement at his return alive, and she hastened to inform him of the sickness that had claimed her on his departure this fortnight, which surely was the pestilence, association with which would kill him quickly as it was killing her by degrees.

  Saying the which she swathed herself tightly within the white robe, making an impenetrable mummy-wrapping like unto those of the kings of Egypt who when living bed their own sisters and have skins as black as night.

  But if the king heard these exceptions to his purpose he gave no answer, being occupied, damnably, with the to him foreign fastenings of the duke’s garb, which did defy his fingers, and soon in frenzy he abandoned all restraint and tore himself altogether naked, dropping the tatters where they fell, and then he vaulted onto the bed, discovered the fair Ygraine within the white robe as lackeys unroll a carpet, and then he closed with her alabaster body as a ram doth address an ewe.

  Now the fire had dwindled to powdery ash before Uther Pendragon did unjoin himself, though now much against the will of the fair Ygraine, but as after much killing even a king must rest, so in love, and he did stretch his limbs and cool himself and clear his throat and then, thrusting his tongue into the cavern of his cheek, he spake as follows.

  “My dear Ygraine, I confess to thee that I am greatly relieved to find that thou hast been faithful to me—for no appetite that had been fed within the last fortnight could yet be so keen as thine.”

  “Methinks,” said the fair Ygraine, “that absence hath also done thee a world of good, my dear Gorlois.”

  And Uther Pendragon grimaced sternly to repress his gloat, and elevating himself upon one of the duke’s sharp elbows he said, “I never liked the gleam in the king’s eye which fell upon thee at the Easter festival at London.”

  “The king, my lord?” asked the fair Ygraine, a faint flush introducing itself into her snowy forehead.

  “The mighty and most puissant Uther of the Lion’s Head,” said himself. “Terror of the Paynims, Defender of the Faith, King of all Britain—”

  “And most luxurious man, by reputation,” said the fair Ygraine. “Thief of Maidenheads, Ravisher of Chastity, Scepterer of Subjects—”

  “Be thou not too severe upon thy sovereign,” said Uther, “whom we call Sire with respect to his divinely appointed role as father of his people. In submitting to him, a woman doth serve God.”

  “Thy wife as well, Gorlois?” asked the fair Ygraine with a peculiar flare of flawless nostril and stare of starry eye.

  “Naturally!” roared Uther Pendragon, for an instant forgetting he was in the guise of the duke, and then with the quick wit which in combination with his keen sword had made him king, he said, “Naturally I should not assent to mine own cuckolding, not even by my king, to whom in all else I am a loyal vassal. But there are extraordinary situations of great extremity, enterprises of moment, pitch, pith—”

  “In thine hot desire thou hast acquired a stammer,” said Ygraine in chiding affection, and she did cordially place her long white fingers upon the summit of his belly, which was the duke’s and as pale of wispy hair as the king’s own was black and bristly as the back of a boar.

  “Prithee, one moment more,” said Uther Pendragon though he stirred at once. “Didst thou not enjoy the king’s look upon thee? Didst thou not sip from the cup he sent around to thee at table? Didst never nibble at the dainties he took from his own plate for thee? These were marks of high favor, my girl!” And transported by remembrance, he reached across and slapped the smooth globe of her damask bottom.

  “My lord,” cried the fair Ygraine, recoiling. “Thou liest with the duchess of Cornwall, not with the great gross wench of the cook’s.”

  “And by God I am the king!” roared Uther Pendragon. “That is, the duke, of course, the loyal vassal of the king.... I was merely putting myself in his place for a moment. With his eyes I seemed to see an answering light in thine own, there at Easter table. Methinks I saw good reason why when thine husband detected as much—that is, when I did—he led thee away from the festival without asking the king’s leave, making the great insult which occasioned this war.”

  “One could not very well spit upon a titbit offered by a king,” said the fair Ygraine, soothing with her white hand her now rubicund ham. “One could not very well scowl into the smiling face of one’s sovereign, though his ultimate purpose were base lechery.”

  “This was then but courtesy?”

  “No more than,” said Ygraine. “But as much as I could manage, what with the utter revulsion inspired in me by that great hairy brute of a king.”

  Now Uther Pendragon, who had continued to stir from the effect of her soft touch, did wither instantaneously and he would surely, if called upon to perform, have suffered from the old peculiarity to which he had made Merlin privy.

  But as it happened at the next moment a thunderous knocking was heard upon the door of the antechamber and calling, “Sire, Sire!” someone continued to knock.

  And the king leapt from the bed, saying, “’Tis a courtier, with an impedimented speech, crying ‘Fire!’ Remain where thou art, in safety, whilst I go to see what burns.”

  And he strode into the anteroom in his gross nakedness, flung open the outer door, and seeing old Ulfin, with a torch and no longer in the guise of Sir Jordan, he gave him a great wink and said, in false annoyance, “Villain, how dare you knock me up?”

  And Ulfin said, “Sire, the duke of Cornwall is dead.”

  “Is he now?” said Uther Pendragon.

  “Having received an intelligence that you had left the field, Gorlois issued forth from Terrabil leading a host, the which, after a most bloody passage at arms, were defeated by your forces, Gorlois himself being among the fallen. Fleet courtiers have brought these news, and his head as well, which”—and here Ulfin did show his yellow old tusks in mirth—“is the spit and image of that which you do currently wear upon your shoulders, Majesty.”

  “Indeed,” said Uther Pendragon in distaste. “Go thou and bring Merlin to transform me into my proper person.”

  “Sire,” said Merlin, materializing from the shadows beyond Ulfin’s light. And in the next instant the king felt himself swell and widen, and warm with his own pelt of black hair on head, cheeks, ears, nose, chest, reins, and even shoulder-caps and small-of-back. And only then did he know modesty, concealing his massy groin behind two hands, saying, “Death to him who looketh upon his king’s nakedness.”

  And Merlin and Ulfin did go away, and Uther Pendragon returned to the bedchamber, expecting the fair Ygraine to demonstrate her astonishment, but seeing rather that she did not.

  “My dragon!” she cried instead, and uncovered herself from the white robe, and it was not until a long time later that Uther Pendragon was able to satisfy his curiosity as to her lack of wonder at his appearance as himself.

  And when that time came, along with the first light of morning, he asked, “Didst thou know me from the first though in the mean form of thine husband?”

  “I do not pretend to know how thou earnest by that guise,” replied the fair Ygraine. “But I did not recognize the manner as that of the late duke. ...Forgive me, I beg of thee, for failing to show more complaisance at the Easter feast, but Gorlois was a jealous man—though craving more for page-boys for his bed than me, but such is often the case.”

  “O vile man!” cried Uthe
r Pendragon. “Nothing is more loathsome than the crime of sodomy. This is evidence that he treacherously leagued himself in secret with the Saxons, for ’tis a notorious German practice. I shall have his head mounted atop Lud’s Gate at London for the populace to jeer at. But enough of this unnatural felon. Thou art now queen of Britain, or shall be when the archbishop of Canterbury solemnizes this arrangement.”

  Now, in his happiness the king forgot altogether what Merlin had told him of the child he would plant this night, and next morning he and the fair Ygraine, accompanied by a great host (for all of the knights of the late Gorlois now swore fealty to Uther), traveled to London, a journey of many days which brought about the devastation of countless villages along the route, though they were friendly and British, owing to the need of such a vast army for food. Nor was a maidenhead spared above the age of eleven, though none was, for once, taken by Uther Pendragon, who was most satiated with the fair Ygraine.

  And arriving at his capital city Uther Pendragon was good as his word. Having mounted Gorlois’s head atop Lud’s Gate, with the legend TRAITOR AND SOD beneath the ragged neck, he forthwith had the old archbishop summoned from Canterbury to marry him to the fair Ygraine and crown her as his queen.

  Now, as was his wont, the archbishop used this occasion to speak at length on the necessity to wage war upon the remaining pagans on the British island and to deplore any mercy that might be shown towards them as an heretical practice that might well bring the pope’s excommunication of the offenders. Uther Pendragon thereafter went northwards with a vast host for to exterminate the savage Picts and the barbarous Scots, who were threatening to come across Hadrian’s Wall and do the same to the Britons.

  Thus the king was away when the fair Ygraine began to thicken at her white belly and grow more abundant of pap and to acquire addictions such as cutlet of griffin and roc’s eggs.