Part 17 (1/2)
Presently the king said: ”Weasel, false and double-tongued weasel, did I not choose you to be my chiefest and most secret counsellor? Did you not know everything? Did I not consult you on every occasion, and were you not promoted to high honour and dignity? And you have repaid me by plotting against my throne, and against my life; the gnat has told me everything, and it is of no avail for you to deny it. You double traitor, false to me and false to those other traitors who met in this very place to conspire against me. It is true you were not among them in person, but why were you not among them? Do you suppose that I am to be deceived for a moment? Wretch that you are. You set them on to plot against me while you kept out of it with clean paws, that you might seize the throne so soon as I was slain. Wretch that you are.”
Here the weasel could not endure it any longer, but crawling to the foot of the tree, besought the king with tears in his eyes to do what he would--to order him to instant execution, but not to reproach him with these enormities, which cut him to the very soul. But the more he pleaded, the more angry Kapchack became, and heaped such epithets upon the crouching wretch, and so bitterly upbraided him that at last the weasel could bear it no more, but driven as it were into a corner, turned to bay, and faced the enraged monarch.
He sat up, and looking Kapchack straight in the face, as none but so hardened a reprobate could have done, he said, in a low but very distinct voice: ”You have no right to say these things to me, any more than you have to wear the crown! I do not believe you are Kapchack at all--you are an impostor!”
At these words Kapchack became as pale as death, and could not keep his perch upon the pollard, but fluttered down to the ground beside the weasel. He was so overcome that for a moment or two he could not speak.
When he found breath, he turned to the weasel and asked him what he meant. The weasel, who had now regained his spirits, said boldly enough that he meant what he said; he did not believe that the king was really Kapchack.
”But I am Kapchack,” said the king, trembling, and not knowing how much the weasel knew.
In truth the weasel knew very little, but had only shot a bolt at random from the bow of his suspicions, but he had still a sharper shaft to shoot, and he said: ”You are an impostor, for you told La Schach, who has jilted you, that you were not so old as you looked.”
”The false creature!” said Kapchack, quite beside himself with rage. In his jealousy of Prince Tchack-tchack, who was so much younger, and had two eyes, he had said this, and now he bitterly repented his vanity.
”The false creature!” he screamed, ”where is she? I will have her torn to pieces! She shall be pecked limb from limb! Where is she?” he shrieked. ”She left the palace yesterday evening, and I have not seen her since.”
”She went to the firs with the jay,” said the weasel. ”He is her old lover, you know. Did you not see how merry he was just now, at the council?”
Then Kapchack pecked up the ground with his beak, and tore at it with his claws, and gave way to his impotent anger.
”There shall not be a feather of her left!” he said. ”I will have her utterly destroyed! She shall be nailed to a tree!”
”Nothing of the kind,” said the weasel, with a sneer. ”She is too beautiful. As soon as you see her, you will kiss her and forgive her.”
”It is true,” said Kapchack, becoming calmer. ”She is so beautiful, she must be forgiven. Weasel, in consideration of important services rendered to the state in former days, upon this one occasion you shall be pardoned. Of course the condition is that what has pa.s.sed between us this day is kept strictly private, and that you do not breathe a word of it.”
”Not a word of it,” said the weasel.
”And you must disabuse your mind of that extraordinary illusion as to my ident.i.ty of which you spoke just now. You must dismiss so absurd an idea from your mind.”
”Certainly,” said the weasel, ”it is dismissed entirely. But, your majesty, with your permission, I would go further. I would endeavour to explain to you, that although my conduct was indiscreet, and so far open to misconstruction, there was really nothing more in it than an ill-directed zeal in your service. It is really true, your majesty, that all the birds and animals are leagued against me, and that is why I have been afraid to stir abroad. I was invited to the secret council, of which you have heard from the gnat, and because I did not attend it, they have one and all agreed to vilify me to your majesty.
”But in fact I, for once, with the service of your majesty in view, descended (repugnant as it was to my feelings) to play the eavesdropper, and I overheard all that was said, and I can convince your majesty that there are far greater traitors in your dominions than you ever supposed me to be. The gnat does not know half that took place at the council, for he only had it second-hand from that villain, the fox, who is, I believe, secretly bent on your destruction. But I can tell you not only all that went on--I can also relate to you the designs of Kauc, the crow, who conferred with Cloctaw in private, after the meeting was over.
And I can also give you good reasons for suspecting Ki Ki, the hawk, whom you have just nominated to the command of your forces, of the intention of making a bargain with Choo Hoo, and of handing you over to him a prisoner.”
Now this last was a pure invention of the weasel's out of envy, since Ki Ki had obtained such distinction. Kapchack, much alarmed at these words, ordered him to relate everything in order, and the weasel told him all that had been said at the council, all that Kauc, the crow, had said to Cloctaw, and a hundred other matters which he made up himself. When Kapchack heard these things he was quite confounded, and exclaimed that he was surrounded with traitors, and that he did not see which way to turn. He hopped a little way off, in order the better to consider by himself, and leant his head upon one side.
First he thought to himself: ”I must take the command from Ki Ki, but I cannot do that suddenly, lest he should go over to Choo Hoo. I will therefore do it gradually. I will countermand the order for an immediate attack; that will give me time to arrange. Who is to take Ki Ki's place?
Clearly the weasel, for though he is an archtraitor, yet he is in the same boat with me; for I know it to be perfectly true that all of them are bitter against him.”
So he went back to the weasel, and told him that he should give him the chief command of the forces, on the third day following, and meantime told him to come early in the evening to the drain which pa.s.sed under the orchard, where his palace was, so that he could concert the details of this great state business in secret with him.
The weasel, beyond measure delighted at the turn things had taken, and rejoicing extremely at the impending fall of Ki Ki, whom he hated, thanked Kapchack with all his might, till Kapchack, enjoining on him the necessity of secrecy, said ”Good-afternoon”; and flew away towards the firs, where his guard was waiting for him. Then the weasel, puffed up and treading the ground proudly, went back to his cave in the elm, and Bevis, seeing that there was nothing more going on that day, stole back to the raspberry canes.
None of them had noticed, not even the cunning weasel, that the mole, when the council broke up, had not left with the rest: indeed, being under the surface of the earth, they easily overlooked him. Now the mole, who hated the weasel beyond all, had waited to have the pleasure of hearing King Kapchack upbraid the traitor, and presently consign him to execution. Fancy then his feelings when, after all, the weasel was received into the highest favour, and promised the supreme command of the army, while he himself was not even noticed, though he was a clever engineer, and could mine and countermine, and carry on siege operations better than any of them.
He listened to all that was said attentively, and then, so soon as Kapchack had flown away, and the weasel had gone to his hole, and Bevis to the raspberries, he drove a tunnel to the edge of the copse, and there calling a fly, sent him with a message to the hawk, asking Ki Ki to meet him beside the leaning stone in the field (which Bevis had once pa.s.sed), because he had a secret to communicate which would brook no delay. At the same time, as Kapchack was flying to the firs where his guards were waiting, it occurred to him that, although he had no alternative, it was dangerous in the extreme to trust the army to the weasel, who, perhaps, just as there was an opportunity of victory, would retire, and leave him to be destroyed. Thinking about this, he perched on a low hawthorn bush, and asked himself whether it was worth while to attempt to defend a kingdom held under such precarious tenure. Would it not be better to make terms with Choo Hoo, who was not unreasonable, and to divide the territory, and thus reign in peace and safety over half at least,--making it, of course, a condition of the compact that Choo Hoo should help him to put down all domestic traitors?