Arthur Rex Read Free

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