A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur\'s Court, Part 8. - Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT
by
MARK TWAIN
(Samuel L. Clemens)
Part 8.
CHAPTER XXXVI
AN ENCOUNTER IN THE DARK
London--to a slave--was a sufficiently interesting place. It was
merely a great big village; and mainly mud and thatch. The streets
were muddy, crooked, unpaved. The populace was an ever flocking
and drifting swarm of rags, and splendors, of nodding plumes and
shining armor. The king had a palace there; he saw the outside
of it. It made him sigh; yes, and swear a little, in a poor
juvenile sixth century way. We saw knights and grandees whom
we knew, but they didn't know us in our rags and dirt and raw
welts and bruises, and wouldn't have recognized us if we had hailed
them, nor stopped to answer, either, it being unlawful to speak
with slaves on a chain. Sandy passed within ten yards of me on
a mule--hunting for me, I imagined. But the thing which clean
broke my heart was something which happened in front of our old
barrack in a square, while we were enduring the spectacle of a man
being boiled to death in oil for counterfeiting pennies. It was
the sight of a newsboy--and I couldn't get at him! Still, I had
one comfort--here was proof that Clarence was still alive and
banging away. I meant to be with him before long; the thought was
full of cheer.
I had one little glimpse of another thing, one day, which gave me
a great uplift. It was a wire stretching from housetop to housetop.
Telegraph or telephone, sure. I did very much wish I had a little
piece of it. It was just what I needed, in order to carry out my
project of escape. My idea was to get loose some night, along with
the king, then gag and bind our master, change clothes with him,
batter him into the aspect of a stranger, hitch him to the slave-chain,
assume possession of the property, march to Camelot, and--
But you get my idea; you see what a stunning dramatic surprise
I would wind up with at the palace. It was all feasible, if
I could only get hold of a slender piece of iron which I could
shape into a lock-pick. I could then undo the lumbering padlocks
with which our chains were fastened, whenever I might choose.
But I never had any luck; no such thing ever happened to fall
in my way. However, my chance came at last. A gentleman who
had come twice before to dicker for me, without result, or indeed
any approach to a result, came again. I was far from expecting
ever to belong to him, for the price asked for me from the time
I was first enslaved was exorbitant, and always provoked either
anger or derision, yet my master stuck stubbornly to it--twenty-two
dollars. He wouldn't bate a cent. The king was greatly admired,
because of his grand physique, but his kingly style was against
him, and he wasn't salable; nobody wanted that kind of a slave.
I considered myself safe from parting from him because of my
extravagant price. No, I was not expecting to ever belong to
this gentleman whom I have spoken of, but he had something which
I expected would belong to me eventually, if he would but visit
us often enough. It was a steel thing with a long pin to it, with
which his long cloth outside garment was fastened together in
front. There were three of them. He had disappointed me twice,
because he did not come quite close enough to me to make my project
entirely safe; but this time I succeeded; I captured the lower
clasp of the three, and when he missed it he thought he had lost
it on the way.
I had a chance to be glad about a minute, then straightway a chance
to be sad again. For when the purchase was about to fail, as usual,
the master suddenly spoke up and said what would be worded thus
--in modern English:
"I'll tell you what I'll do. I'm tired supporting these two for
no good. Give me twenty-two dollars for this one, and I'll throw
the other one in."
The king couldn't get his breath, he was in such a fury. He began
to choke and gag, and meantime the master and the gentleman moved
away discussing.
"An ye will keep the offer open--"
"'Tis open till the morrow at this hour."
"Then I will answer you at that time," said the gentleman, and
disappeared, the master following him.
I had a time of it to cool the king down, but I managed it.
I whispered in his ear, to this effect:
"Your grace _will_ go for nothing, but after another fashion. And
so shall I. To-night we shall both be free."
"Ah! How is that?"
"With this thing which I have stolen, I will unlock these locks
and cast off these chains to-night. When he comes about nine-thirty
to inspect us for the night, we will seize him, gag him, batter
him, and early in the morning we will march out of this town,
proprietors of this caravan of slaves."
That was as far as I went, but the king was charmed and satisfied.
That evening we waited patiently for our fellow-slaves to get
to sleep and signify it by the usual sign, for you must not take
many chances on those poor fellows if you can avoid it. It is
best to keep your own secrets. No doubt they fidgeted only about
as usual, but it didn't seem so to me. It seemed to me that they
were going to be forever getting down to their regular snoring.
As the time dragged on I got nervously afraid we shouldn't have
enough of it left for our needs; so I made several premature
attempts, and merely delayed things by it; for I couldn't seem
to touch a padlock, there in the dark, without starting a rattle
out of it which interrupted somebody's sleep and made him turn
over and wake some more of the gang.
But finally I did get my last iron off, and was a free man once
more. I took a good breath of relief, and reached for the king's
irons. Too late! in comes the master, with a light in one hand
and his heavy walking-staff in the other. I snuggled close among
the wallow of snorers, to conceal as nearly as possible that I was
naked of irons; and I kept a sharp lookout and prepared to spring
for my man the moment he should bend over me.
But he didn't approach. He stopped, gazed absently toward our
dusky mass a minute, evidently thinking about something else;
then set down his light, moved musingly toward the door, and before
a body could imagine what he was going to do, he was out of the
door and had closed it behind him.
"Quick!" said the king. "Fetch him back!"
Of course, it was the thing to do, and I was up and out in a
moment. But, dear me, there were no lamps in those days, and
it was a dark night. But I glimpsed a dim figure a few steps
away. I darted for it, threw myself upon it, and then there was
a state of things and lively! We fought and scuffled and struggled,
and drew a crowd in no time. They took an immense interest in
the fight and encouraged us all they could, and, in fact, couldn't
have been pleasanter or more cordial if it had been their own
fight. Then a tremendous row broke out behind us, and as much
as half of our audience left us, with a rush, to invest some
sympathy in that. Lanterns began to swing in all directions;
it was the watch gathering from far and near. Presently a halberd
fell across my back, as a reminder, and I knew what it meant.
I was in custody. So was my adversary. We were marched off toward
prison, one on each side of the watchman. Here was disaster,
here was a fine scheme gone to sudden destruction! I tried to
imagine what would happen when the master should discover that
it was I who had been fighting him; and what would happen if they
jailed us together in the general apartment for brawlers and petty
law-breakers, as was the custom; and what might--
Just then my antagonist turned his face around in my direction,
the freckled light from the watchman's tin lantern fell on it,
and, by George, he was the wrong man!
CHAPTER XXXVII
AN AWFUL PREDICAMENT
Sleep? It was impossible. It would naturally have been impossible
in that noisome cavern of a jail, with its mangy crowd of drunken,
quarrelsome, and song-singing rapscallions. But the thing that
made sleep all the more a thing not to be dreamed of, was my
racking impatience to get out of this place and find out the whole
size of what might have happened yonder in the slave-quarters
in consequence of that intolerable miscarriage of mine.
It was a long night, but the morning got around at last. I made
a full and frank explanation to the court. I said I was a slave,
the property of the great Earl Grip, who had arrived just after
dark at the Tabard inn in the village on the other side of the
water, and had stopped there over night, by compulsion, he being
taken deadly sick with a strange and sudden disorder. I had been
ordered to cross to the city in all haste and bring the best
physician; I was doing my best; naturally I was running with all
my might; the night was dark, I ran against this common person
here, who seized me by the throat and began to pummel me, although
I told him my errand, and implored him, for the sake of the great
earl my master's mortal peril--
The common person interrupted and said it was a lie; and was going
to explain how I rushed upon him and attacked him without a word--
"Silence, sirrah!" from the court. "Take him hence and give him
a few stripes whereby to teach him how to treat the servant of
a nobleman after a different fashion another time. Go!"
Then the court begged my pardon, and hoped I would not fail
to tell his lordship it was in no wise the court's fault that this
high-handed thing had happened. I said I would make it all right,
and so took my leave. Took it just in time, too; he was starting
to ask me why I didn't fetch out these facts the moment I was
arrested. I said I would if I had thought of it--which was true
--but that I was so battered by that man that all my wit was knocked
out of me--and so forth and so on, and got myself away, still
mumbling. I didn't wait for breakfast. No grass grew under my
feet. I was soon at the slave quarters. Empty--everybody gone!
That is, everybody except one body--the slave-master's. It lay
there all battered to pulp; and all about were the evidences of
a terrific fight. There was a rude board coffin on a cart at
the door, and workmen, assisted by the police, were thinning a
road through the gaping crowd in order that they might bring it in.
I picked out a man humble enough in life to condescend to talk
with one so shabby as I, and got his account of the matter.
"There were sixteen slaves here. They rose against their master
in the night, and thou seest how it ended."
"Yes. How did it begin?"
"There was no witness but the slaves. They said the slave that
was most valuable got free of his bonds and escaped in some strange
way--by magic arts 'twas thought, by reason that he had no key,
and the locks were neither broke nor in any wise injured. When
the master discovered his loss, he was mad with despair, and threw
himself upon his people with his heavy stick, who resisted and
brake his back and in other and divers ways did give him hurts
that brought him swiftly to his end."
"This is dreadful. It will go hard with the slaves, no doubt,
upon the trial."
"Marry, the trial is over."
"Over!"
"Would they be a week, think you--and the matter so simple? They
were not the half of a quarter of an hour at it."
"Why, I don't see how they could determine which were the guilty
ones in so short a time."
"_Which_ ones? Indeed, they considered not particulars like to that.
They condemned them in a body. Wit ye not the law?--which men
say the Romans left behind them here when they went--that if one
slave killeth his master all the slaves of that man must die for it."
"True. I had forgotten. And when will these die?"
"Belike within a four and twenty hours; albeit some say they will
wait a pair of days more, if peradventure they may find the missing
one meantime."
The missing one! It made me feel uncomfortable.
"Is it likely they will find him?"
"Before the day is spent--yes. They seek him everywhere. They
stand at the gates of the town, with certain of the slaves who
will discover him to them if he cometh, and none can pass out
but he will be first examined."
"Might one see the place where the rest are confined?"
"The outside of it--yes. The inside of it--but ye will not want
to see that."
I took the address of that prison for future reference and then
sauntered off. At the first second-hand clothing shop I came to,
up a back street, I got a rough rig suitable for a common seaman
who might be going on a cold voyage, and bound up my face with
a liberal bandage, saying I had a toothache. This concealed my
worst bruises. It was a transformation. I no longer resembled my
former self. Then I struck out for that wire, found it and
followed it to its den. It was a little room over a butcher's
shop--which meant that business wasn't very brisk in the telegraphic
line. The young chap in charge was drowsing at his table. I locked
the door and put the vast key in my bosom. This alarmed the young
fellow, and he was going to make a noise; but I said:
"Save your wind; if you open your mouth you are dead, sure. Tackle
your instrument. Lively, now! Call Camelot."
"This doth amaze me! How should such as you know aught of such
matters as--"
"Call Camelot! I am a desperate man. Call Camelot, or get away
from the instrument and I will do it myself."
"What--you?"
"Yes--certainly. Stop gabbling. Call the palace."
He made the call.
"Now, then, call Clarence."
"Clarence _who_?"
"Never mind Clarence who. Say you want Clarence; you'll get
an answer."
He did so. We waited five nerve-straining minutes--ten minutes
--how long it did seem!--and then came a click that was as familiar
to me as a human voice; for Clarence had been my own pupil.
"Now, my lad, vacate! They would have known _my_ touch, maybe,
and so your call was surest; but I'm all right now."
He vacated the place and cocked his ear to listen--but it didn't
win. I used a cipher. I didn't waste any time in sociabilities
with Clarence, but squared away for business, straight-off--thus:
"The king is here and in danger. We were captured and brought
here as slaves. We should not be able to prove our identity
--and the fact is, I am not in a position to try. Send a telegram
for the palace here which will carry conviction with it."
His answer came straight back:
"They don't know anything about the telegraph; they haven't had
any experience yet, the line to London is so new. Better not
venture that. They might hang you. Think up something else."
Might hang us! Little he knew how closely he was crowding the
facts. I couldn't think up anything for the moment. Then an idea
struck me, and I started it along:
"Send five hundred picked knights with Launcelot in the lead; and
send them on the jump. Let them enter by the southwest gate, and
look out for the man with a white cloth around his right arm."
The answer was prompt:
"They shall start in half an hour."
"All right, Clarence; now tell this lad here that I'm a friend
of yours and a dead-head; and that he must be discreet and say
nothing about this visit of mine."
The instrument began to talk to the youth and I hurried away.
I fell to ciphering. In half an hour it would be nine o'clock.
Knights and horses in heavy armor couldn't travel very fast.
These would make the best time they could, and now that the ground
was in good condition, and no snow or mud, they would probably
make a seven-mile gait; they would have to change horses a couple
of times; they would arrive about six, or a little after; it would
still be plenty light enough; they would see the white cloth which
I should tie around my right arm, and I would take command. We
would surround that prison and have the king out in no time.
It would be showy and picturesque enough, all things considered,
though I would have preferred noonday, on account of the more
theatrical aspect the thing would have.
Now, then, in order to increase the strings to my bow, I thought
I would look up some of those people whom I had formerly recognized,
and make myself known. That would help us out of our scrape,
without the knights. But I must proceed cautiously, for it was
a risky business. I must get into sumptuous raiment, and it
wouldn't do to run and jump into it. No, I must work up to it
by degrees, buying suit after suit of clothes, in shops wide apart,
and getting a little finer article with each change, until I should
finally reach silk and velvet, and be ready for my project. So
I started.
But the scheme fell through like scat! The first corner I turned,
I came plump upon one of our slaves, snooping around with a watchman.
I coughed at the moment, and he gave me a sudden look that bit right
into my marrow. I judge he thought he had heard that cough before.
I turned immediately into a shop and worked along down the counter,
pricing things and watching out of the corner of my eye. Those
people had stopped, and were talking together and looking in at
the door. I made up my mind to get out the back way, if there
was a back way, and I asked the shopwoman if I could step out
there and look for the escaped slave, who was believed to be in
hiding back there somewhere, and said I was an officer in disguise,
and my pard was yonder at the door with one of the murderers in
charge, and would she be good enough to step there and tell him
he needn't wait, but had better go at once to the further end of
the back alley and be ready to head him off when I rousted him out.
She was blazing with eagerness to see one of those already celebrated
murderers, and she started on the errand at once. I slipped out
the back way, locked the door behind me, put the key in my pocket
and started off, chuckling to myself and comfortable.
Well, I had gone and spoiled it again, made another mistake.
A double one, in fact. There were plenty of ways to get rid of
that officer by some simple and plausible device, but no, I must
pick out a picturesque one; it is the crying defect of my character.
And then, I had ordered my procedure upon what the officer, being
human, would _naturally_ do; whereas when you are least expecting it,
a man will now and then go and do the very thing which it's _not_
natural for him to do. The natural thing for the officer to do,
in this case, was to follow straight on my heels; he would find
a stout oaken door, securely locked, between him and me; before
he could break it down, I should be far away and engaged in slipping
into a succession of baffling disguises which would soon get me
into a sort of raiment which was a surer protection from meddling
law-dogs in Britain than any amount of mere innocence and purity
of character. But instead of doing the natural thing, the officer
took me at my word, and followed my instructions. And so, as I
came trotting out of that cul de sac, full of satisfaction with my
own cleverness, he turned the corner and I walked right into his
handcuffs. If I had known it was a cul de sac--however, there
isn't any excusing a blunder like that, let it go. Charge it up
to profit and loss.
Of course, I was indignant, and swore I had just come ashore from
a long voyage, and all that sort of thing--just to see, you know,
if it would deceive that slave. But it didn't. He knew me. Then
I reproached him for betraying me. He was more surprised than
hurt. He stretched his eyes wide, and said:
"What, wouldst have me let thee, of all men, escape and not hang
with us, when thou'rt the very _cause_ of our hanging? Go to!"
"Go to" was their way of saying "I should smile!" or "I like that!"
Queer talkers, those people.
Well, there was a sort of bastard justice in his view of the case,
and so I dropped the matter. When you can't cure a disaster by
argument, what is the use to argue? It isn't my way. So I only said:
"You're not going to be hanged. None of us are."
Both men laughed, and the slave said:
"Ye have not ranked as a fool--before. You might better keep
your reputation, seeing the strain would not be for long."
"It will stand it, I reckon. Before to-morrow we shall be out
of prison, and free to go where we will, besides."
The witty officer lifted at his left ear with his thumb, made
a rasping noise in his throat, and said:
"Out of prison--yes--ye say true. And free likewise to go where
ye will, so ye wander not out of his grace the Devil's sultry realm."
I kept my temper, and said, indifferently:
"Now I suppose you really think we are going to hang within
a day or two."
"I thought it not many minutes ago, for so the thing was decided
and proclaimed."
"Ah, then you've changed your mind, is that it?"
"Even that. I only _thought_, then; I _know_, now."
I felt sarcastical, so I said:
"Oh, sapient servant of the law, condescend to tell us, then,
what you _know_."
"That ye will all be hanged _to-day_, at mid-afternoon! Oho! that
shot hit home! Lean upon me."
The fact is I did need to lean upon somebody. My knights couldn't
arrive in time. They would be as much as three hours too late.
Nothing in the world could save the King of England; nor me, which
was more important. More important, not merely to me, but to
the nation--the only nation on earth standing ready to blossom
into civilization. I was sick. I said no more, there wasn't
anything to say. I knew what the man meant; that if the missing
slave was found, the postponement would be revoked, the execution
take place to-day. Well, the missing slave was found.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
SIR LAUNCELOT AND KNIGHTS TO THE RESCUE
Nearing four in the afternoon. The scene was just outside the
walls of London. A cool, comfortable, superb day, with a brilliant
sun; the kind of day to make one want to live, not die. The
multitude was prodigious and far-reaching; and yet we fifteen
poor devils hadn't a friend in it. There was something painful
in that thought, look at it how you might. There we sat, on our
tall scaffold, the butt of the hate and mockery of all those
enemies. We were being made a holiday spectacle. They had built
a sort of grand stand for the nobility and gentry, and these were
there in full force, with their ladies. We recognized a good
many of them.
The crowd got a brief and unexpected dash of diversion out of
the king. The moment we were freed of our bonds he sprang up,
in his fantastic rags, with face bruised out of all recognition, and
proclaimed himself Arthur, King of Britain, and denounced the
awful penalties of treason upon every soul there present if hair
of his sacred head were touched. It startled and surprised him
to hear them break into a vast roar of laughter. It wounded his
dignity, and he locked himself up in silence. Then, although
the crowd begged him to go on, and tried to provoke him to it
by catcalls, jeers, and shouts of:
"Let him speak! The king! The king! his humble subjects hunger
and thirst for words of wisdom out of the mouth of their master
his Serene and Sacred Raggedness!"
But it went for nothing. He put on all his majesty and sat under
this rain of contempt and insult unmoved. He certainly was great
in his way. Absently, I had taken off my white bandage and wound
it about my right arm. When the crowd noticed this, they began
upon me. They said:
"Doubtless this sailor-man is his minister--observe his costly
badge of office!"
I let them go on until they got tired, and then I said:
"Yes, I am his minister, The Boss; and to-morrow you will hear
that from Camelot which--"
I got no further. They drowned me out with joyous derision. But
presently there was silence; for the sheriffs of London, in their
official robes, with their subordinates, began to make a stir which
indicated that business was about to begin. In the hush which
followed, our crime was recited, the death warrant read, then
everybody uncovered while a priest uttered a prayer.
Then a slave was blindfolded; the hangman unslung his rope. There
lay the smooth road below us, we upon one side of it, the banked
multitude wailing its other side--a good clear road, and kept free
by the police--how good it would be to see my five hundred horsemen
come tearing down it! But no, it was out of the possibilities.
I followed its receding thread out into the distance--not a horseman
on it, or sign of one.
There was a jerk, and the slave hung dangling; dangling and hideously
squirming, for his limbs were not tied.
A second rope was unslung, in a moment another slave was dangling.
In a minute a third slave was struggling in the air. It was
dreadful. I turned away my head a moment, and when I turned back
I missed the king! They were blindfolding him! I was paralyzed;
I couldn't move, I was choking, my tongue was petrified. They
finished blindfolding him, they led him under the rope. I couldn't
shake off that clinging impotence. But when I saw them put the
noose around his neck, then everything let go in me and I made
a spring to the rescue--and as I made it I shot one more glance
abroad--by George! here they came, a-tilting!--five hundred mailed
and belted knights on bicycles!