Je n’avais qu’une douzaine d’années lorsque, un peu par hasard, j’ai lu en français The Sword in the Stone, le premier tome, et le plus léger, de The Once and Future King. J’en ai beaucoup apprécié l’humour, et ai été marqué par le personnage de Merlin vivant le temps en sens inverse. Je n’ai lu que beaucoup plus tard les autres livres de la série, et notamment The Queen of Air and Darkness, dans lequel figure la scène tragi-comique de la chasse à la licorne.
T.H. White maîtrisait son sujet, au point de publier, quelques années plus tard, sa traduction complète d’un bestiaire latin. Moraliste désabusé, revendiquant les valeurs chrétiennes mais moquant volontiers la religion, T.H. White reprend la chasse à la licorne des bestiaires chrétiens dans un contexte naturaliste, factuel, d’où toute l’allégorie chrétienne a été effacée. Le récit est comique lorsque la reine Morgause tient le rôle de la vierge pour une chasse à la licorne avec des chevaliers arthuriens quelque peu ridicules, Pellinore, Grunmore et Palamède. Il tourne vite au tragique lorsque ses quatre fils, Gawaine, Agravaine, Gaheris, et Gareth, parviennent à leurs fins, utilisant une jeune servante comme appât. La licorne est tuée, et sa tête tranchée apportée à la reine.
“What were you thinking?”
“Oh, it was not anything. I was thinking about Kay learning to be a knight.”
“And well you may grieve,” exclaimed Merlyn hotly. “A lot of brainless unicorns swaggering about and calling themselves educated just because they can push each other off a horse with a bit of stick! It makes me tired. Why, I believe Sir Ector would have been gladder to get a by-our-lady tilting blue for your tutor, that swings himself along on his knuckles like an anthropoid ape, rather than a magician of known probity and international reputation with first-class honours from every European university. The trouble with the Norman Aristocracy is that they are games-mad, that is what it is, games-mad.”
He broke off indignantly and deliberately made the sergeant’s ears flap slowly twice, in unison.
“I was not thinking quite about that,” said the Wart. “As a matter of fact, I was thinking how nice it would be to be a knight, like Kay.”
“Well, you will be one soon enough, won’t you?” asked the old man, impatiently.
Wart did not answer.
“Won’t you?”
Merlyn turned round and looked closely at the boy through his spectacles.
“What is the matter now?” he enquired nastily. His inspection had shown him that his pupil was trying not to cry, and if he spoke in a kind voice he would break down and do it.
“I shall not be a knight,” replied the Wart coldly. Merlyn’s trick had worked and he no longer wanted to weep: he wanted to kick Merlyn. “I shall not be a knight because I am not a proper son of Sir Ector’s. They will knight Kay, and I shall be his squire.”
Merlyn’s back was turned again, but his eyes were bright behind his spectacles. “Too bad,” he said, without commiseration.
Another thing was the riot. It was all very well for the crack hunts in practically artificial forests like those at Windsor, where the King hunted, but it was a different thing in the Forest Sauvage. Suppose His Majesty’s famous hounds were to go runnin’ riot after a unicorn or something? Everybody knew that you could never catch a unicorn without a young virgin for bait (in which case the unicorn meekly laid its white head and mother-of-pearl horn in her lap) and so the puppies would go chargin’ off into the forest for leagues and leagues, and never catch it, and get lost, and then what would Sir Ector say to his sovereign? It was not only unicorns. There was the Beast Glatisant that everybody had heard so much about. If you had the head of a serpent, the body of a leopard, the haunches of a lion, and were footed like a hart, and especially if you made a noise like thirty couple of hounds questin’, it stood to reason that you would account for an excessive number of royal puppies before they pulled you down. Serve them right too. And what would King Pellinore say if Master William Twyti did succeed in killing his beast? Then there were the small dragons which lived under stones and hissed like kettles—dangerous varmints, very. Or suppose they were to come across one of the really big dragons? Suppose they was to run into a griffin?
Sir Ector considered the prospect moodily for some time, then began to feel better. It would be a jolly good thing, he concluded, if Master Twyti and his beastly dogs did meet the Questing Beast, yes, and get eaten up by it too, every one.
It was Christmas night, the eve of the Boxing Day Meet. You must remember that this was in the old Merry England of Gramarye, when the rosy barons ate with their fingers, and had peacocks served before them with all their tail feathers streaming, or boars’ heads with the tusks stuck in again—when there was no unemployment because there were too few people to be unemployed—when the forests rang with knights walloping each other on the helm, and the unicorns in the wintry moonlight stamped with their silver feet and snorted their noble breaths of blue upon the frozen air. Such marvels were great and comfortable ones. But in the Old England there was a greater marvel still. The weather behaved itself.
On top of this, there was a trouble which distressed the children in particular. Queen Morgause had set her cap at the visitors.
“What was our mother at doing,” asked Gawaine, as they made their way toward St. Toirdealbhach’s cell one morning, “with the knights on the mountain?”
Gaheris answered with some difficulty, after a long pause: “They were at hunting a unicorn.”
“How do you do that?”
“There must be a virgin to attract it.”
“Our mother,” said Agravaine, who also knew the details, “went on a unicorn hunt, and she was the virgin for them.”
His voice sounded strange as he made this announcement.
Gareth protested: “I did not know she was wanting a unicorn. She has never said so.”
Agravaine looked at him sideways, cleared his throat and quoted: “Half a word is sufficient to the wise man.”
“How do you know this?” asked Gawaine.
“We listened.”
They had a way of listening on the spiral stairs, during the times when they were excluded from their mother’s interest.
Gaheris explained, with unusual freedom since he was a taciturn boy:
“She told Sir Grummore that this King’s lovesick melancholy could be dispelled by interesting him in his old pursuits. They were at saying that this King is in the habit of hunting a Beast which has become lost. So she said that they were to hunt a unicorn instead, and she would be the virgin for them. They were surprised, I think.”
The boys sat round the door without surprise, waiting for something else to happen. They considered in their minds the questions of wells, witches, unicorns and the practices of mothers.
“I make this proposition,” said Gareth unexpectedly, “my heroes, that we have a unicorn hunt of our own!”
They looked at him.
“It would be better than not having anything. We have not seen our Mammy for one week.”
“She has forgotten us,” said Agravaine bitterly.
“She has not so. You are not to speak in that way of our mother.”
“It is true. We have not been to serve at dinner even.”
“It is because she has a necessity to be hospitable to these knights.”
“No, it is not.”
“What is it, then?”
“I will not say.”
“If we could do a unicorn hunt,” said Gareth, “and bring this unicorn which she requires, perhaps we would be allowed to serve?”
They considered the idea with a beginning of hope.
“St. Toirdealbhach,” they shouted, “come out again! We want to catch a unicorn.”
The saint put his head out of the hole and examined them suspiciously.
“What is a unicorn? What are they like? How do you catch them?”
He nodded the head solemnly and vanished for the second time, to return on all fours in a few moments with a learned volume, the only secular work in his possession. Like most saints, he made his living by copying manuscripts and drawing pictures for them.
“You need a maid for bait,” they told him.
“We have goleor of maids,” said Gareth. “We could take any of the maids, or cook.”
“They would not come.”
“We could take the kitchenmaid. We could make her to come.”
“And then, when we have caught the unicorn which is wanted, we will bring it home in triumph and give it to our mother! We will serve at supper every night!”
“She will be pleased.”
“Perhaps after supper, whatever the event.”
“And Sir Grummore will knight us. He will say, ‘Never has such a doughty deed been done, by my halidome!'”
St. Toirdealbhach laid the precious book on the grass outside his hole. The grass was sandy and had empty snail shells scattered over it, small yellowish shells with a purple spiral. He opened the book, which was a Bestiary called Liber de Natura Quorundam Animalium, and showed that it had pictures on every page.
They made him turn the vellum quickly, with its lovely Gothic manuscript, skipping the enchanting Griffins, Bonnacons, Cocodrills, Manticores, Chaladrii, Cinomulgi, Sirens, Peridexions, Dragons, and Aspidochelones. In vain for their eager glances did the Antalop rub its complicated horns against the tamarisk tree—thus, entangled, becoming a prey to its hunters—in vain did the Bonnacon emit its flatulence in order to baffle the pursuers. The Peridexions, sitting on trees which made them immune to dragons, sat unnoticed. The Panther blew out his fragrant breath, which attracted his prey, without interest for them. The Tigris, who could be deceived by throwing down a glass ball at its feet, in which, seeing itself reflected, it thought to see its own cubs—the Lion, who spared prostrate men or captives, was afraid of white cocks, and brushed out his own tracks with a foliated tail—the Ibex, who could bound down from mountains unharmed because he bounced upon his curly horns—the Yale, who could move his horns like ears—the She-Bear who was accustomed to bear her young as lumps of matter and lick them into whatever shape she fancied afterwards—the Chaladrius bird who, if facing you when it sat on your bedrail, showed that you were going to die—the Hedgehogs who collected grapes for their progeny by rolling on them, and brought them back on the end of their prickles—even the Aspidochelone, who was a large whale-like creature with seven fins and a sheepish expression, to whom you were liable to moor your boat in mistake for an island if you were not careful: even the Aspidochelone scarcely detained them. At last he found them the place at the Unicorn, called by the Greeks, Rhinoceros.
It seemed that the Unicorn was as swift and timid as the Antalop, and could only be captured in one way. You had to have a maid for bait, and, when the Unicorn perceived her alone, he would immediately come to lay his horn in her lap. There was a picture of an unreliable-looking virgin, holding the poor creature’s horn in one hand, while she beckoned to some spearmen with the other. Her expression of duplicity was balanced by the fatuous confidence with which the Unicorn regarded her.
Gawaine hurried off, as soon as the instructions had been read and the picture digested, to fetch the kitchenmaid without delay.
“Now then,” he said, “you have to come with us on the mountain, to catch a unicorn.”
“Oh, Master Gawaine,” cried the maid he had caught hold of, whose name was Meg.
“Yes, you have. You are to be the bait whatever. It will come and put its head in your lap.”
Meg began to weep.
“Now then, do not be silly.”
“Oh, Master Gawaine, I do not want a unicorn. I have been a decent girl, I have, and there is all the washing up to do, and if Mistress Truelove do catch me playing at truant I shall get stick, Master Gawaine, that I will.”
He took her firmly by the plaits and led her out.
In the clean bog-wind of the high tops, they discussed the hunt. Meg, who cried incessantly, was held by the hair to prevent her from running away, and occasionally passed from one boy to the other, if the one who was holding her happened to want both hands for gestures.
“Now then,” said Gawaine. “I am the captain. I am the oldest, so I am the captain.”
“I thought of it,” said Gareth.
“The question is, it says in the book that the bait must be left alone.”
“She will run away.”
“Will you run away, Meg?”
“Yes, please, Master Gawaine.”
“There.”
“Then she must be tied.”
“Oh, Master Gaheris, if it is your will, need I be tied?”
“Close your mouth. You are only a girl.”
“There is nothing to tie her with.”
“I am the captain, my heroes, and I command that Gareth runs back home to fetch some rope.”
“That I will not.”
“But you will destroy everything, if you do not do so.”
“I do not see why I should have to go. I thought of it.”
“Then I command our Agravaine to go.”
“Not I.”
“Let Gaheris go.”
“I will not.”
“Meg, you wicked girl, you are not to run away, do you hear?”
“Yes, Master Gawaine. But, oh, Master Gawaine…”
“If we could find a strong heather root,” said Agravaine, “we could tie her pigtails together, round the other side of it.”
“We will do that.”
“Oh, oh!”
After they had secured the virgin, the four boys stood round her, discussing the next stage. They had abstracted real boar-spears from the armoury, so they were properly armed.
“This girl,” said Agravaine, “is my mother. This is what our Mammy was at doing yesterday. And I am going to be Sir Grummore.”
“I will be Pellinore.”
“Agravaine can be Grummore if he wants to be, but the bait has got to be left alone. It says so in the book.”
“Oh, Master Gawaine, oh, Master Agravaine!”
“Stop howling. You will frighten the unicorn.”
“And then we must go away and hide. That is why our mother did not catch it, because the knights stayed with her.”
“I am going to be Finn MacCoul.”
“I shall be Sir Palomides.”
“Oh, Master Gawaine, pray do not leave me alone.”
“Hold in your noise,” said Gawaine. “You are silly. You ought to be proud to be the bait. Our mother was, yesterday.”
Gareth said, “Never mind, Meg, do not cry. We will not let it hurt you.”
“After all, it can only kill you,” said Agravaine brutally.
At this the unfortunate girl began to weep more than ever.
“Why did you say that?” asked Gawaine angrily. “You always try to frighten people. Now she is at howling more than before.”
“Look,” said Gareth. “Look, Meg. Poor Meg, do not cry. It will be with me to let you have some shots with my catapult, when we go home.”
“Oh, Master Gareth!”
“Ach, come your ways. We cannot bother with her.”
“There, there!”
“Oh, oh!”
“Meg,” said Gawaine, making a frightful face, “if you do not stop squealing, I will look at you like this.”
She dried her tears at once.
“Now,” he said, “when the unicorn comes, we must all rush out and stick it. Do you understand?”
“Must it be killed?”
“Yes, it must be killed dead.”
“I see.”
“I hope it will not hurt it,” said Gareth.
“That is the sort of foolish hope you would have,” said Agravaine.
“But I do not see why it should be killed.”
“So that we may take it home to our mother, you amadan.”
“Could we catch it,” asked Gareth, “and lead it to our mother, do you think? I mean, we could get Meg to lead it, if it was tame.”
Gawaine and Gaheris agreed to this.
“If it is tame,” they said, “it would be better to bring it back alive. That is the best kind of Big Game Hunting.”
“We could drive it,” said Agravaine. “We could hit it along with sticks.”
“We could hit Meg, too,” he added, as an afterthought.
Then they hid themselves in their ambush, and decided to keep silence. There was nothing to be heard except the gentle wind, the heather bees, the skylarks very high, and a few distant snuffles from Meg.
When the unicorn came, things were different from what had been expected. He was such a noble animal, to begin with, that he carried a beauty with him. It held all spellbound who were within sight.
The unicorn was white, with hoofs of silver and a graceful horn of pearl. He stepped daintily over the heather, scarcely seeming to press it with his airy trot, and the wind made waves in his long mane, which had been freshly combed. The glorious thing about him was his eye. There was a faint bluish furrow down each side of his nose, and this led up to the eye-sockets, and surrounded them in a pensive shade. The eyes, circled by this sad and beautiful darkness, were so sorrowful, lonely, gentle and nobly tragic, that they killed all other emotion except love.
The unicorn went up to Meg the kitchenmaid, and bowed his head in front of her. He arched his neck beautifully to do this, and the pearl horn pointed to the ground at her feet, and he scratched in the heather with his silver hoof to make a salute. Meg had forgotten her tears. She made a royal gesture of acknowledgment, and held her hand out to the animal.
“Come, unicorn,” she said. “Lay your head in my lap, if you like.”
The unicorn made a whinny, and pawed again with his hoof. Then, very carefully, he went down first on one knee and then on the other, till he was bowing in front of her. He looked up at her from this position, with his melting eyes, and at last laid his head upon her knee. He stroked his flat, white cheek against the smoothness of her dress, looking at her beseechingly. The whites of his eyes rolled with an upward flash. He settled his hind quarters coyly, and lay still, looking up. His eyes brimmed with trustfulness, and he lifted his near fore in a gesture of pawing. It was a movement in the air only, which said, “Now attend to me. Give me some love. Stroke my mane, will you, please?”
There was a choking noise from Agravaine in the ambush, and at once he was rushing toward the unicorn, with the sharp boar-spear in his hands. The other boys squatted upright on their heels, watching him.
Agravaine came to the unicorn, and began jabbing his spear into its quarters, into its slim belly, into its ribs. He squealed as he jabbed, and the unicorn looked to Meg in anguish. It leaped and moved suddenly, still looking at her reproachfully, and Meg took its horn in one hand. She seemed entranced, unable to help it. The unicorn did not seem able to move from the soft grip of her hand on its horn. The blood, caused by Agravaine’s spear, spurted out upon the blue-white coat of hair.
Gareth began running, with Gawaine close after him. Gaheris came last, stupid and not knowing what to do.
“Don’t!” cried Gareth. “Leave him alone. Don’t! Don’t!”
Gawaine came up, just as Agravaine’s spear went in under the fifth rib. The unicorn shuddered. He trembled in all his body, and stretched his hind legs out behind. They went out almost straight, as if he were doing his greatest leap—and then quivered, trembling in the agony of death. All the time his eyes were fixed on Meg’s eyes, and she still looked down at his.
“What are you doing?” shouted Gawaine. “Leave him alone. No harm at him.”
“Oh, Unicorn,” whispered Meg.
The unicorn’s legs stretched out horizontally behind him, and stopped trembling. His head dropped in Meg’s lap. After a last kick they became rigid, and the blue lids rose half over the eye. The creature lay still.
“What have you done?” cried Gareth. “You have killed him. He was beautiful.”
Agravaine bawled, “This girl is my mother. He put his head in her lap. He had to die.”
“We said we would keep him,” yelled Gawaine. “We said we would take him home, and be allowed to supper.”
“Poor unicorn,” said Meg.
“Look,” said Gaheris, “I am afraid he is dead.”
Gareth stood square in front of Agravaine, who was three years older than he was and could have knocked him down quite easily. “Why did you do it?” he demanded. “You are a murderer. It was a lovely unicorn. Why did you kill it?”
“His head was in our mother’s lap.”
“It did not mean any harm. Its hoofs were silver.”
“It was a unicorn, and it had to be killed. I ought to have killed Meg too.”
“You are a traitor,” said Gawaine. “We could have taken it home, and been allowed to serve at supper.”
“Anyway,” said Gaheris, “now it is dead.”
Meg bowed her head over the unicorn’s forelock of white, and once again began to sob.
Gareth began stroking the head. He had to turn away to hide his tears. By stroking it, he had found out how smooth and soft its coat was. He had seen a near view of its eye, now quickly fading, and this had brought the tragedy home to him.
“Well, it is dead now, whatever,” said Gaheris for the third time. “We had better take it home.”
“We managed to catch one,” said Gawaine, the wonder of their achievement beginning to dawn on him.
“It was a brute,” said Agravaine.
“We caught it! We of ourselves!”
“Sir Grummore did not catch one.”
“But we did.”
Gawaine had forgotten about his sorrow for the unicorn. He began to dance round the body, waving his boar-spear and uttering horrible shrieks.
“We must have a gralloch,” said Gaheris. “We must do the matter properly, and cut its insides out, and sling it over a pony, and take it home to the castle, like proper hunters.”
“And then she will be pleased!”
“She will say, God’s Feet, but my sons are of mickle might!”
“We shall be allowed to be like Sir Grummore and King Pellinore. Everything will go well with us from now.”
“How must we set about the gralloch?”
“We cut out its guts,” said Agravaine.
Gareth got up and began to go away into the heather. He said, “I do not want to help cut him. Do you, Meg?”
Meg, who was feeling ill inside herself, made no answer. Gareth untied her hair—and suddenly she was off, running for all she was worth away from the tragedy, toward the castle. Gareth ran after her.
“Meg, Meg!” he called. “Wait for me. Do not run.”
But Meg continued to run, as swiftly as an antalop, with her bare feet twinkling behind her, and Gareth gave it up. He flung himself down in the heather and began to cry in earnest—he did not know why.
At the gralloch, the three remaining huntsmen were in trouble. They had begun to slit at the skin of the belly, but they did not know how to do it properly and so they had perforated the intestines. Everything had begun to be horrible, and the once beautiful animal was spoiled and repulsive. All three of them loved the unicorn in their various ways, Agravaine in the most twisted one, and, in proportion as they became responsible for spoiling its beauty, so they began to hate it for their guilt. Gawaine particularly began to hate the body. He hated it for being dead, for having been beautiful, for making him feel a beast. He had loved it and helped to trap it, so now there was nothing to be done except to vent his shame and hatred of himself upon the corpse. He hacked and cut and felt like crying too.
“We shall not ever get it done,” they panted. “How can we ever carry it down, even if we manage the gralloch?”
“But we must,” said Gaheris. “We must. If we do not, what will be the good? We must take it home.”
“We cannot carry it.”
“We have not a pony.”
“At a gralloch, they sling the beast over a pony.”
“We must cut his head off,” said Agravaine. “We must cut its head off somehow, and carry that. It would be enough if we took the head. We could carry it between us.”
So they set to work, hating their work, at the horrid business of hacking through its neck.
When the grisly spine was severed, the head was too heavy to carry. They got themselves in a mess, trying to lift it. Then Gawaine suggested that it had better be dragged with rope. There was none.
“We could drag it by the horn,” said Gareth. “At any rate we could drag and push it like that, so long as it was downhill.”
Only one of them at a time could get a good hold of the horn, so they took it in turns to do the hauling, while the others pushed behind when the head got snagged in a heather root or a drain. It was heavy for them, even in this way, so that they had to stop every twenty yards or so, to change over.
“When we get to the castle,” panted Gawaine, “we will prop it up in the seat in the garden. Our mother is bound to walk past there, when she goes for her walk before supper. Then we will stand in front of it until she is ready, and all will suddenly step back at once, and there it will be.”
“She will be surprised,” said Gaheris.
When they had at last got it down from the sloping ground, there was another hitch. They found that it was no longer possible to drag it on the flat land, because the horn did not give enough purchase.
In this emergency, for it was getting near to suppertime, Gareth voluntarily ran ahead to fetch a rope. The rope was tied round what remained of the head, and thus at last, with eyes ruined, flesh bruised and separating from the bones, the muddy, bloody, heather-mangled exhibit was conveyed on its last stage to the herb garden. They heaved it to the seat, and arranged its mane as well as they could. Gareth particularly tried to prop it up so that it would give a little idea of the beauty which he remembered.
The magic queen came punctually on her walk, conversing with Sir Grummore and followed by her lap dogs: Tray, Blanche and Sweetheart. She did not notice her four sons, lined up in front of the seat. They stood respectfully in a row, dirty, excited, their breasts beating with hope.
“Now!” cried Gawaine, and they stood aside.
Queen Morgause did not see the unicorn. Her mind was busy with other things. With Sir Grummore she passed by.
“Mother!” cried Gareth in a strange voice, and he ran after her, plucking at her skirt.
“Yes, my white one? What do you want?”
“Oh, Mother. We have got you a unicorn.”
“How amusing they are, Sir Grummore,” she said. “Well, my doves, you must run along and ask for your milk.”
“But, Mammy….”
“Yes, yes,” she said in a low voice. “Another time.”
And the Queen passed on with the puzzled knight of the Forest Sauvage, electrical and quiet. She had not noticed that her children’s clothes were ruined: had not even scolded them about that. When she found out about the unicorn later in the evening she had them whipped for it, for she had spent an unsuccessful day with the English knights.
All the saints came out of their beehives to see them off. All the Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha de Danaan, Old People and others waved to them without the least suspicion from cliffs, currachs, mountains, bogs and shell-mounds. All the red deer and unicorns lined the high tops to bid good-bye. The terns came with their forked tails from the estuary, squeaking away as if intent upon imitating an embarkation scene on the wireless—the white-bottomed wheatears and pipits flitted along beside them from whin to whin—the eagles, peregrines, ravens and chuffs made circles over them in the air—the peat smoke followed them as if anxious to make one last curl in the tips of their nostrils—the ogham stones and souterrains and promontory forts exhibited their prehistoric masonry in a blaze of sunlight—the sea-trout and salmon put their gleaming heads out of the water—the glens, mountains and heather-shoulders of the most beautiful country in the world joined the general chorus—and the soul of the Gaelic world said to the boys in the loudest of fairy voices: Remember Us!
“Gareth,” said the King.
The young man knelt down and took the King’s hand. He held it as if it were a banister or a life-line. He looked at Arthur with dull eyes, and did not cry.
“My mother is dead,” said Gareth.
“Who killed her?” asked the King, as if it were the natural question.
“My brother Agravaine.”
“What!”
The exclamation was from Lancelot.
“My brother has killed our mother, because he found her sleeping with a man.”
“Keep quiet, Lancelot, please,” said the King. Then to Gareth: “What did they do to Sir Lamorak?”
But Gareth had not finished the first part of his story.
“Agravaine cut off her head,” he said. “Like the unicorn.”
“The unicorn?”
“Please, Lancelot.”
“He killed our mother in her blood.”
“I am sorry.”
“I always knew he would,” said Gareth.
“Are you sure the news is true?”
“It is true. It is true. It was Agravaine who killed the unicorn.”
“Was Lamorak the unicorn?” asked the King gently. He did not know what his nephew was talking about, but he was anxious to help. “Is Lamorak dead?”