James Branch Cabell
The Silver Stallion
THE
SILVER STALLION
A Comedy of Redemption
BY
JAMES BRANCH CABELL
NEW YORK
ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1926, 1918,
BY JAMES BRANCH CABELL
FIRST PUBLISHED,
APRIL 1926
[First Impression]
“Now, the redemption which we as yet await (continued Imlac), will be that of Kalki, who will come as a Silver Stallion: all evils and every sort of folly will perish at the coming of this Kalki: true righteousness will be restored, and the minds of men will be made clear as crystal.”
To
CARL VAN DOREN
Could but one luring dream rest dead forever
As dreamers rest at last, with all dreams done,
Redeemers need not be, and faith need never
Lease, for the faithful, homes beyond the sun.
Victoriously that dream—above the sorrow
And subterfuge of living,—still lets fail
No heart to heed its soothing lure. . . . To-morrow
Dreams will be true, and faith and right prevail.
Out of the bright—and, no, not vacant!—heavens
Redeemers will be coming by and by,
En route to make our sixes and our sevens
Neat as a trivet or an apple-pie.
In this volume the text of Bulg has not been followed over-scrupulously: but it is hoped that, in a book intended for general circulation, none will deplore such excisions and euphemisms, nor even such slight additions, as seemed to make for coherence and clarity and decorum.
The curious arc referred to the pages of Poictesme en Chanson et Legende for a discussion of the sources of The Silver Stallion; and may decide for themselves whether or not Bulg has, in Codman’s phrase, “shown these legends to be spurious compositions of 17th century origin.” For myself, I here confess to finding the evidence educed, alike, a bit inadequate and, as far as goes my purpose, wholly immaterial. These chronicles, such as they are, present the only known record of the latter days of champions whose youthful exploits have long since been made familiar to English readers of Lcwistam’s Popular Tales of Poictesme: authentic or not, and irrespective of whether such legends cannot be quite definitely proved to have existed earlier than 1651, here is the sole account we have anywhere, or are now likely ever to receive, of the changes that followed in Poictesme after the passing of Manuel the Redeemer.
It is as such an account—which for my purpose was a desideratum,—that I have put The Silver Stallion into English.
Table of Contents
THE LORDS THAT POICTESME HAD IN DOM MANUEL’S TIME
BOOK ONE
THE LAST SIEGE OF THE FELLOWSHIP
Chapter I. A Child’s Talk
Chapter II. Economics of Horvendile
Chapter III. How Anavalt Lamented the Redeemer
Chapter IV. Fog Rises
BOOK TWO
THE MATHEMATICS OF GONFAL
Chapter V. Champion at Misadventure
Chapter VI. The Loans of Power
Chapter VII. Fatality the Second
Chapter VIII. How the Princes Bragged
Chapter IX. The Loans of Wisdom
Chapter X. Relative to Gonfal’s Head
Chapter XI. Economics of Morvyth
BOOK THREE
TOUPAN’S BRIGHT BEES
Chapter XII. The Mage Emeritus
Chapter XIII. Economics of Gisele
Chapter XIV. The Changing That Followed
Chapter XV. Disastrous Rage of Miramon
Chapter XVI. Concerns The Pleiades And A Razor
Chapter XVII. Epitome of Marriage
Chapter XVIII. Koshchei Is Vexed
Chapter XIX. Settlement: In Full
BOOK FOUR
COTH AT PORUTSA
Chapter XX. Idolatry of an Alderman
Chapter XXI. The Profits of Pepper Selling
Chapter XXII. Toveyo Dances
Chapter XXIII. Regrettable Conduct of a Corpse
Chapter XXIV. Economics of Yaotl
Chapter XXV. Last Obligation Upon Manuel
Chapter XXVI. The Realist In Defeat
BOOK FIVE
“MUNDUS VULT DECIPI”
Chapter XXVII. Poictesme Reformed
Chapter XXVIII. Fond Motto of a Patriot
Chapter XXIX. The Grumbler’s Progress
Chapter XXX. Havoc of Bad Habits
Chapter XXXI. Other Paternal Apothegms
Chapter XXXII. Time Gnaws At All
Chapter XXXIII. Economics of Coth
BOOK SIX
IN THE SYLVAN’S HOUSE
Chapter XXXIV. Something Goes Wrong: and Why
Chapter XXXV. Guivric’s Journey
Chapter XXXVI. The Appointed Enemy
Chapter XXXVII. Too Many Mouths
Chapter XXXVIII. The Appointed Lover
Chapter XXXIX. One Warden Left Uncircumvented
Chapter XL. Economics of Glaum-Without-Bones
Chapter XLI. The Gratifying Sequel
BOOK SEVEN
WHAT SARAIDE WANTED
Chapter XLII. Generalities At Ogde
Chapter XLIII. Prayer And The Lizard Maids
Chapter XLIV. Fine Cordiality of Sclaug
Chapter XLV. The Gander Also Generalizes
Chapter XLVI. Kerin Rises In The World
Chapter XLVII. Economics of Saraide
Chapter XLVIII. The Golden Shining
Chapter XLIX. They of Nointel
BOOK EIGHT
THE CANDID FOOTPRINT
Chapter L. Indiscretion of a Bailiff
Chapter LI. The Queer Bird
Chapter LII. Remorse of a Poor Devil
Chapter LIII. Continuation of Appalling Pieties
Chapter LIV. Magic That Was Rusty
Chapter LV. The Prince of Darkness
Chapter LVI. Economics of Ninzian
BOOK NINE
ABOVE PARADISE
Chapter LVII. Maugis Makes Trouble
Chapter LVIII. Showing That Even Angels May Err
Chapter LIX. The Conversion of Palnatoki
Chapter LX. In The Hall of the Chosen
Chapter LXI. Vanadis, Dear Lady of Reginlief
Chapter LXII. The Demiurgy of Donander Veratyr
Chapter LXIII. Economics of Sidvrar
Chapter LXIV. Through The Oval Window
Chapter LXV. The Reward of Faith
BOOK TEN
AT MANUEL’S TOMB
Chapter LXVI. Old Age of Niafer
Chapter LXVII. The Women Differ
Chapter LXVIII. Radegonde Is Practical
Chapter LXIX. Economics of Jurgen
Chapter LXX. All Ends Perplexedly
APPENDIX A. COMPENDIUM OF LEADING HISTORI CAL EVENTS
APPENDIX B. THE THIN QUEEN OF ELFHAME
APPENDIX C. THE DELTA OF RADEGONDE
NOTES
THE LORDS THAT POICTESME HAD IN DOM MANUEL’S TIME
These ten were of the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion:
Dom Manuel, Count of Poictesme, held Storisende and Bellegarde, the town of Beauvillage and the strong fort at Lisuarte, with all Amneran and Morven.
Messire Gonfal of Names, Margrave of Aradol, held Upper Naimousin.
Messire Donander of Evre, the Thane of Aigremont, held Lower Naimousin.
Messire Kerin of Nointel, Syndic and Castellan of Basardra, held West Val-Ardray
Messire Ninzian of Yair, the High Bailiff of Upper Ardra, held Val-Ardray in the East.
Messire Holden of Nerac, Earl Marshal of St. Tara, held Belpaysage.
Messire Anavalt of Fomor, the Portreeve and Warden of Manneville, held Belpaysage Le Bas.
Messire Coth of the Rocks, Alderman of St. Didol, held Haut Belpaysage.
Messire Guivric of Perdigon, Heitman of Asch, held Piemontais.
Messire Miramon of Ranee, Lord Seneschal of Gontaron, held Duardenois.
Likewise there were the fiefs of Dom Meunier, Count of Montors, Dom Manuel’s brother-in-law. Meunier was not of this fellowship: he held also Giens. Here his wife ruled over Lower Duardenois.
Othmar Black-Tooth, whom some called Othmar the Lawless, long held Valneres and Ogde, until Manuel routed him: thereafter these villages, with the most of Bovion, stayed masterless.
Helmas the Deep-Minded, after a magic was put upon him in the year of grace 1255, held, in his fashion, the high place at Brunbelois: but the rest of Acaire, once Lorcha had been taken and Sclaug burned, was no man’s land. Also upon Upper Morven lived disaffected persons in defiance of all law and piety.
—Poictesme en Chanson et Legende. G. J. Bulg. Strasburg, 1785. [Pp. 87–88.]
A NOTE UPON POICTESME
Now that I come to preface this illustrated edition of The Silver Stallion, I find myself in the position, not altogether unexampled to human experience, of noting that affairs in this inexplicable world of ours, sometimes fall out a bit quaintly. For I regard these soul-contenting pictures which Mr. Pape has just completed, at his home in Tunbridge Wells, to adorn the pages of this the lateliest written, and the last, of all the stories of Poictesme. I recall the yet earlier illustrations—in Jurgen, and in Figures of Earth, and in The High Place, and in The Cream of the Jest,—which have been coming, now for nine years, from Mr. Pape’s studio, on St. John’s Road in Tunbridge Wells, to represent Poictesme as a land of such never-failing loveliness and drollery as I have found but too often to be humiliatingly absent from the accompanying text. And I recall, too, how my own less scintillant province, the Poictesme of the text, came out of this same Tunbridge Wells as long ago as 1905.
§2
Nobody need believe in the coincidence. I do not quite believe in it myself. None the less, I well remember how when I was writing Gallantry the characters perforce all went to Tunbridge Wells and spent the earlier half of my book there, and thus landed me—who then had not ever visited this watering place,—in endless difficulties. Maps and histories are all very well: but they do not comfortably suffice in dealing with a town which you have never seen, and which still endures to confute you. . . . Meanwhile to every side problems arose. Upon which of the hills would Lady Allonby have lodged in 1750? just where would Captain Audaine have fought his duels? what was, in 1750, the dubious quarter of the town to which a profligate nobleman would abduct Jan heiress? into what suburbs would Vanringham most naturally have eloped with his Marchioness? and at what inn would the great Duke of Ormskirk have sought accommodations when he came down from London to dispose of the Jacobite conspiracy? Such were but five of the hundred or so niggling problems which fretted my imaginary stay in Tunbridge Wells; which made mere maps and histories inadequate; and which caused me to resolve for the remainder of the book, and indeed for the remainder of my auctorial career, to deal with a geography less prodigally adorned with doubts and pitfalls.
Never again, when any possible option is at hand, I said, will I lay the scene of any story in a real place. . . .
§3
So when Ormskirk had finished with his English imbroglios, and when he quitted the Wells, to our shared relief, and when he went into France to visit incognito his betrothed wife, then Mr. Bulmer’s first meeting with Mademoiselle de Puysange occurred in a byway of Louis Quinze’s kingdom thitherto unknown to cartographers. For it was at this time, in the final months of 1905, that Poictesme was born—of an illicit union between Poictiers and Angoulesme,—and that a rejuvenescent John Bulmer discovered this province. It was then that the chateau of Bellegarde was erected, and the Forest of Acaire was planted, to suit the needs of John Bulmer’s story. Upon the horizon the Taunenfels arose, to afford Achille Cazaio an appropriate residence; the Duardenez river flowed coyly just into sight; and somewhere in the background, too, as I gathered from the conversation of the people whom John Bulmer met in Poictesme, were Manneville and Des Roches and Beauseant.
This much alone of Poictesme then came into being, this tiniest snippet of the land then sprouted, as it were, out of my trouble with Tunbridge Wells; and this much of the province served me at this period, quite adequately, throughout the episode called In the Second April.
And Poictesme availed me yet again as I went on with Gallantry, and wrote, in 1906, the episode of The Scapegoats, which a bit more definitely established the existence of the town of Manneville. . . . But by this time I was caught. No author lately escaped from all that trouble in Tunbridge Wells could resist the attractions of a land so courteous in providing out of hand for its historian’s least need in the way of inns and cities and forests, and not even boggling over the instant erection of a mountain range wherever it would come in most serviceably. So the town in which Nelchen Thorn had just been murdered by Monsieur de Gatinais was immediately visited by Prince Edward Longshanks and Ellinor of Castile,—which couple conducted a tenson in this same Manneville, as is duly recorded in Chivalry; and already two of my books dealt with Poictesme.
§4
There Poictesme rested until 1910, when Domnei was started. And then, with this obliging province standing ready, with this whole realm at hand wherein no blunders in any point of fact or in any geographical detail were humanly possible, then quite inevitably the story of Domnei began in Poictesme; and yet further civic additions were made, in Montors and Fomor. A little later Felix Kennaston explored this so convenient nook of old-world France, during the composition of The Cream of the Jest in 1914; and it was he who first heard of Naimes and Bovion and Perdigon and Lisuarte, and who came as a pioneer to the castle of Storisende.
But far more important, to me at least, was this Felix Kennaston’s discovery that Poictesme was “a land wherein human nature kept its first dignity and strength, and wherein human passions were never in a poor way to find expression with adequate speech and action.” For that discovery—again, to me at least,—touched upon what I have since found to be the special feature of Poictesme: it is a land wherein almost anything is rather more than likely to happen save one thing only; it is not permissible in Poictesme for anybody to cease, for one moment, from remaining a human being or ever to deviate from human sanity. ... I mean, in other words, very much what Mr. Gilbert Chesterton once observed:
“The problem of these fairy tales is—what will a healthy man do with a fantastic world? The problem of the modern novel is—what will a madman do with a dull world? In the fairy tales the cosmos goes mad; but the hero does not go mad. In the modern novels the hero is mad before the book begins, and suffers from the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity of the cosmos.”
So, then, did Poictesme continue to sprout out of the trouble which Tunbridge Wells had caused me. . . .
Thereafter I followed Jurgen’s adventuring, throughout the greater part of 1918: and the lay of Poictesme was now sufficiently known for a map to be made of it, although Figures of Earth and The High Place and Straws and Prayer-Books and The Silver Stallion were yet to add here and there to the land’s physical features, until finally, in 1925, in the pages of this same Silver Stallion, the very last settlement was effected, at St. Didol. Meanwhile the history of Poictesme, between the years 1234 and 1750, had been revealed to me: and the land, so far as I can judge, had become real.
§5
Never again, I had said, will I lay the scene of any story in a real place. So I invented Poictesme: and thereupon—for such, again, was the quaint fashion in which affairs fell out,—Poictesme rebelliously became a real place. . . .
At least it seems to me a real place, nowadays, by every known rule of logic. I find Poictesme is duly listed in modern dictionaries and similar books of reference. A reliable map of it exists. Its longitude is now definitely known to have been just four degrees east, although its latitude, to be sure, has been disputed, as too largely moral. Each one of its leading personages has been commemorated in a biography, and the land’s history is upon public record; its laws and legends have been summarized; a considerable section of its literature has been preserved; in at least one symphony its music endures; and its relics in the way of drawings and paintings and mural decorations and sculpture are fairly numerous.
As for the bibliography of Poictesme, it rivals in bulk, if it does not excel, that of any other French province. You have but to compare Poictesme, for example, with Chalosse, or with Amont, or with Grasivaudan, or with Quercy, or with Velay, to see at once how much more numerous are all logical proofs of the existence of Poictesme. For these other provinces have found but partial and infrequent historians, in publications not ever very widely known: whereas a host of notable and diverse savants—such as Gottfried Johannes Bulg, and Carl Van Doren, and John Frederick Lewistam, and H. L. Mencken, and Paul Verville, and John S. Sumner, and many others,—have year by year increased the bibliography of Poictesme, from every conceivable point of view.
So is it that, when once you have ventured into logic, the evidence for the reality of even such famous realms as Sumeria and Carthage, and of Philistia itself, appears to me less multifariously established than is the reality of Poictesme. So is it that when, in Pliny, let us say, I read of such once notable places as Tacompsos (by some called Thatice), and of Gloploa, and of Rhodata, where a golden cat was worshipped as a god, and of the pleasant island kingdom of Hora, and of Orambis (so curiously situated upon a stream of bitumen), and of Molum, which the Greeks, as you will remember, called Hypaton,—that I then, of course, believe in the reality of every one of these places as vouched for by Roman science, but that, even so, upon the whole, I think the proofs to be more numerous and more clear, to-day, for the existence of Poictesme.
Nor do I find here any need to dwell upon the claims which Poictesme may advance, to-day, to be believed in as an actual place, as compared with the claims of lands for whose existence we have even the irrefutable warrant of Scripture. It may, of course, be that I reason hastily. But to me, in any event, this land of Poictesme appears as real and as readily accessible a country as the land of Teinani, or as the land of Erez, or as the land of Shinar,—wherein, as every Sunday-schoolboy knows, the great Emperor Nimrod ruled over Accad and Erech and Babel and yet other dependencies. ... In fine, I have come to believe in the family-tree of the Counts of Poictesme as completely as I do in that of the Dukes of Edom. And that Bellegarde and Montors and Storisende were once real cities in this actual land standing midway between Montpellier and Castries seems to me as thoroughly demonstrated as that Reheboth and Nineveh and Resen once stood midway between Calneh and Calah.
And I find it droll enough to reflect that all these things were created not as the AEnseis create, but, rather, as though these things had sprouted, a little by a little, out of the trouble which Tunbridge Wells once caused me. For I gratefully recognize that, for twenty-odd years now, Poictesme has been to me a never-failing source of diversion and, at times, of active delight. Without any such sure elation, I recognize also that, for twenty-odd years now, I have lived in Poictesme, as go all practical and serious intents, with occasional brief trips abroad to visit my family and other merely physical intimates.
§6
In any case, this is the last of all the stories of Poictesme. Arid, as I said at outset, it seems queer, now that I appraise the last batch of Mr. Pape’s pictures which has come out of Tunbridge Wells to establish yet more clearly the existence of Poictesme,—yes, it seems very queer, to reflect how prodigally Tunbridge Wells has, in the end, atoned for all the trouble which Tunbridge Wells once caused me.
Ricbmond-in-Virginia
March 1928
Herewith begins the history of the birth and of the triumphing of the great legend about Manuel the Redeemer, whom Gonfal repudiated as blown dust; and Miramon, as an impostor and whom Coth repudiated out of honest love; but whom Guivric accepted, through two sorts of policy; whom Kerin accepted as an honorable old human foible; and Ninzian, as a pathetic and serviceable joke; whom Donander accepted whole-heartedly (to the eternal joy of Donander); and who was accepted also by Niafer, and by Jurgen the pawnbroker, after some little private reservations; and hereinafter is recorded the manner of the great legend’s engulfment of these persons.
BOOK ONE
THE LAST SIEGE OF THE FELLOWSHIP
“They shall be, in the siege, both against Judah and against Jerusalem.”
—Zechariah, xii, 2
—Et la route, fait elle aussi un grand tour?
—Oh, bien certainement, étant donné qu’elle circonvient à la fois la destinée et le bon sens.
—Puisqu’il le faut, alors! dit Jürgen; d’ailleurs je suis toujours dispose’ a gouter n’importe quel breuvage au moins une fois.
—la haulte histoire de Jürgen
Chapter I. A Child’s Talk
They relate how Dom Manuel that was the high Count of Poictesme, and was everywhere esteemed the most lucky and the least scrupulous rogue of his times, had disappeared out of his castle at Storisende, without any reason or forewarning, upon the feast day of St. Michael and All the Angels. They tell of the confusion and dismay which arose in Dom Manuel’s lands when it was known that Manuel the Redeemer—thus named because he had redeemed Poictesme from the Northmen, through the aid of Miramon Lluagor, with a great and sanguinary-magic,—was now gone, quite inexplicably, out of these lands.
For whither Manuel had gone, no man nor any woman could say with certainty. At Storisende he had last been seen by his small daughter Melicent, who stated that Father, mounted on a black horse, had ridden westward with Grandfather Death, on a white one, to a far place beyond the sunset. This was quite generally felt to be improbable.
Yet further inquiry had but made more deep the mystery as to the manner of Dom Manuel’s passing. Further inquiry had disclosed that the only human eyes anywhere which had, or could pretend to have, rested upon Dom Manuel after Manuel had left Storisende were those of a little boy called Jurgen, the son of Coth of the Rocks. Young Jurgen, after having received from his father an in no way unusual whipping, had run away from home, and had not been recaptured until the following morning. The lad reported that during his wanderings he had witnessed, toward dusk, upon Upper Morven, a fearful eucharist in which the Redeemer of Poictesme had very horribly shared. Thereafter—so the child’s tale ran,—had ensued a transfiguration, and a prediction as to the future of Poictesme, and Dom Manuel’s elevation into the glowing clouds of sunset. . . . Now, these latter details had been, at their first rendering, blubbered almost inarticulately. For, after just the initiatory passages of this supposed romance, the parents of Jurgen, in their first rapturous relief at having recovered their lost treasure, had, of course, in the manner of parents everywhere, resorted to such moral altitudes and to such corporal corrections as had disastrously affected the putative small liar’s tale. Then, as the days passed, and they of Poictesme still vainly looked for the return of their great Dom Manuel, the child was of necessity questioned again: and little Jurgen, after sulking for a while, had retold his story without any detected deviation.
It certainly all sounded quite improbable. Nevertheless, here was the only explanation of the land’s loss tendered anywhere by anybody: and people began half seriously to consider it. Say what you might, this immature and spanked evangelist had told a story opulent in details which no boy of his age could well, it seemed, have invented. Many persons therefore began sagely to refer to the mouths of babes and sucklings, and to nod ominously. Moreover, the child, when yet further questioned, had enlarged upon Manuel’s last prediction as to the future glories of Poictesme, to an extent which made incredulity seem rather unpatriotic; and Jurgen had amplified his horrific story of the manner in which Manuel had redeemed his people from the incurred penalties of their various sins up to and including that evening.
The suggested inference that there was to be no accounting anywhere for one’s unavoidable misdemeanors up to date,—among which Dom Manuel had been at pains to specify such indiscretions as staying out all night without your parents’ permission,—was an arrangement which everybody, upon consideration, found to be more and more desirable. Good-hearted persons everywhere began, with virtually a free choice thus offered between belief and disbelief, to prefer to invest a little, it well might be, remunerative faith in the story told with such conviction by this sweet and unsullied child, rather than in the carping comments of materialists,—who, after all, could only say, well out of earshot of Coth of the Rocks, that this young Jurgen was very likely to distinguish himself thereafter, either in the pulpit or upon some gallows.
Meanwhile one woeful fact was, in any case, undeniable: the saga of that quiet, prospering grand thief of a Manuel had ended with the inconsequent, if the not actually incredible, tales of these two little children; and squinting tall gray Manuel of the high head had gone out of Poictesme, nobody could say whither.
Chapter II. Economics of Horvendile
And meanwhile too the Redeemer’s wife, Dame Niafer, had sent a summoning to each of the nine lords that, with Manuel, were of the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion: and all these met at Storisende, as Niafer commanded them, for a session or, as they more formally called it, a siege of this order.
Now this fellowship took its name from the banner it had fought under so destroyingly. Upon that sable banner was displayed a silver stallion, which was rampant in every member and was bridled with gold. Dom Manuel was the captain of this fellowship; and it was made up of the nine barons who, under Manuel, had ruled Poictesme. Each had his two stout castles and his fine woodlands and meadows, which he held in fealty to Dom Manuel: and each had a high name for valor.
Four of these genial murderers had served, under the Conde de Tohil Vaca, in Manuel’s first and utterly disastrous campaign against the Northmen: but all the nine had been with Manuel since the time of the great fighting about Lacre Kai, and throughout Manuel’s various troubles with Oribert and Thragnar and Earl Ladinas and Sclaug and Oriander, that blind and coldly evil Swimmer who was the father of Manuel; and in all the other warrings of Manuel these nine had been with him up to the end.
And the deeds of the lords of the Silver Stallion had fallen very little short of Manuel’s own deeds. Thus, it was Manuel, to be sure, who killed Oriander: that was a family affair. But Miramon Lluagor, the Seneschal of Gontaron, was the champion who subdued Thragnar and put upon him a detection and a hindrance: and it was Kerin of Nointel—the Syndic and, after that, the Castellan of Basardra,—who captured and carefully burned Sclaug. Then, in the quelling of Othmar Black-Tooth’s rebellion, Ninzian of Yair, the High Bailiff of Upper Ardra, had killed eleven more of the outlaws than got their deaths by Manuel’s sword. It was Guivric of Perdigon, and not Manuel, who put the great Arabian Al-Motawakkil out of life. And in the famous battle with the Easterlings, by which the city of Megaris was rescued, it was Manuel who got the main glory and, people said, a three nights’ loan of the body of King Theodoret’s young sister; but capable judges declared the best fighting on that day was done by Donander of Evre, then but a boy, whom Manuel thereafter made Thane of Aigremont.
Yet Holden of Nerac, the Marshal of St. Tara, was the boldest of them all, and was very well able to hold his own in single combat with any of those that have been spoken of: Coth of the Rocks had not ever quitted any battle-field except as a conqueror: and courteous Anavalt of Fomor and light-hearted Gonfal of Naimes—who had the worst names among this company for being the most cunning friends and coaxers of women,—these two had put down their masculine opposers also in gratifyingly large numbers.
In fine, no matter where the lords of the Silver Stallion had raised their banner against an adversary, it was in that place they made an end of that adversary: for there was never, in any time, a hardier gang of bullies than was this Fellowship of the Silver Stallion in the season that they kept earth noisy with the clashing of their swords and darkened heaven with the smoke of the towns they were sacking, and when throughout the known world men had talked about the wonders which these champions were performing with Dom Manuel to lead them. Now they were leaderless.
These heroes came to Storisende; and with Dame Niafer they of course found Holy Holmendis. This saint had lately come out of Philistia, to christen Manuel’s recently born daughter, Ettarre, and to console the Countess in her bereavement. But they found with her also that youthful red-haired Horvendile under whom Dom Manuel, in turn, had held Poictesme, by the terms of a contract which was not ever made public. Some said this Horvendile to be Satan’s friend and emissary, while others declared his origin to lurk in a more pagan mythology: all knew the boy to be a master of discomfortable strange magics such as were unknown to Miramon Lluagor and Guivric the Sage.
This Horvendile said to the nine heroes, “Now begins the last siege of the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion.”
Donander of Evre was the youngest of them. Yet he spoke now, piously and boldly enough. “But it is our custom, Messire Horvendile, to begin each siege with prayer.”
“This siege,” replied Horvendile, “must nevertheless begin without any such religious side-taking. For this is the siege in which, as it was prophesied, you shall be both against Judah and against Jerusalem, and against Thebes and Hermopolis and Avalon and Breidablik and all other places which produce Redeemers.”
“Upon my word, but who is master here!” cried Coth of the Rocks, twirling at his long mustachios. This gesture was a sure sign that trouble brewed.
Horvendile answered: “The master who held Poictesme, under my whims, has passed. A woman sits in his place, his little son inherits after him. So begins a new romance; and a new order is set afoot.”
“Yet Coth, in his restless pursuit of variety, has asked a wholly sensible question,” said Gonfal, the tall Margrave of Aradol. “Who will command us, who now will give us our directions? Can Madame Niafer lead us to war?”
“These things are separate. Dame Niafer commands: but it is I—since you ask,—who will give to all of you your directions, and your dooms too against the time of their falling, and after that to your names I will give life. Now, your direction, Gonfal, is South.”
Gonfal looked full at Horvendile, in frank surprise. “I was already planning for the South, though certainly I had told nobody about it. You are displaying, Messire Horvendile, an uncomfortable sort of wisdom which troubles me.”
Horvendile replied, “It is but a little knack of foresight, such as I share with Balaam’s ass.”
But Gonfal stayed more grave than was his custom. He asked, “What shall I find in the South?”
“What all men find, at last, in one place or another, whether it be with the aid of a knife or of a rope or of old age. Yet, I assure you, the finding of it will not be unwelcome.”
“Well,”—Gonfal shrugged,—“I am a realist. I take what comes, in the true form it comes in.”
Now Coth of the Rocks was blustering again. “I also am a realist. Yet I permit no upstart, whether he have or have not hair like a carrot, to give me any directions.”
Horvendile answered, “I say to you—”
But Coth replied, shaking his great bald head: “No, I will not be bulldozed in this way. I am a mild-mannered man, but I will not tamely submit to be thus browbeaten. I believe, too, that Gonfal was insinuating I do not usually ask sensible questions!”
“Nobody has attempted—”
“Are you not contradicting me to my face! What is that but to call me a liar! I will not, I repeat, submit to these continued rudenesses.”
“I was only saying—”
But Coth was implacable. “I will take directions from nobody who storms at me and who preserves no dignity whatever in our hour of grief. For the rest, the children agree in reporting that, whether he ascended in a gold cloud or traveled more sensibly on a black horse, Dom Manuel went westward. I shall go west, and I shall fetch Dom Manuel back into Poictesme. I shall, also, candidly advise him, when he returns to ruling over us, to discourage the tomfooleries and the ridiculous rages of all persons whose brains are overheated by their hair.”
“Let the West, then,” said Horvendile, very quietly, “be your direction. And if the people there do not find you so big a man as you think yourself, do not you be blaming me.”
These were his precise words. Coth himself conceded the coincidence, long afterward. . . .
“I, Messire Horvendile, with your permission, am for the North,” said Miramon Lluagor. The magician alone of them was upon any terms of intimacy with this Horvendile. “I have yet upon gray Vraidex my Doubtful Castle, in which an undoubtable and a known doom awaits me.”
“That is true,” replied Horvendile. “Let the keen North and the cold edge of Flamberge be yours. But you, Guivric, shall have the warm wise East for your direction.”
That allotment was uncordially received. “I am comfortable enough in my home at Asch,” said Guivric the Sage. “At some other time, perhaps—But, really now, Messire Horvendile, I have in hand a number of quite important thaumaturgies just at the present! Your suggestion is most upsetting. I know of no need for me to travel east.”
“With time you will know of that need,” said Horvendile, “and you will obey it willingly, and you will go willingly to face the most pitiable and terrible of all things.”
Guivric the Sage did not reply. He was too sage to argue with people when they talked foolishly. He was immeasurably too sage to argue with, of all persons, Horvendile.
“Yet that,” observed Holden of Nerac, “exhausts the directions: and it leaves no direction for the rest of us.”
Horvendile looked at this Holden, who was with every reason named the Bold; and Horvendile smiled. “You, Holden, already take your directions, in a picturesque and secret manner, from a queen—”
“Let us not speak of that!” said Holden, between a smirk and some alarm.
“—And you will be guided by her, in any event, rather than by me. To you also, Anavalt of Fomor, yet another queen will call resistlessly by and by, and you, who are rightly named the Courteous, will deny her nothing. So to Holden and to Anavalt I shall give no directions, because it is uncivil to come between any woman and her prey.”
“But I,” said Kerin of Nointel, “I have at Ogde a brand-new wife whom I prize above all the women I ever married, and far above any mere crowned queen. Not even wise Solomon,” now Kerin told them, blinking, in a sort of quiet scholastic ecstasy, “when that Judean took his pick of the women of this world, accompanied with any queen like my Saraide: for she is in all ways superior to what the Cabalists record about Queen Naama, that pious child of the bloodthirsty King of Ammon, and about Queen Djarada, the daughter of idolatrous Nubara the Egyptian, and about Queen Balkis, who was begotten by a Sheban duke upon the person of a female Djinn in the appearance of a gazelle. And only at the command of my dear Saraide would I leave home to go in any direction.”
“You will, nevertheless, leave home, very shortly,” declared Horvendile. “And it will be at the command and at the personal urging of your Saraide.”
Kerin leaned his head to one side, and he blinked again. He had just Dom Manuel’s trick of thus opening and shutting his eyes when he was thinking, but Kerin’s mild dark gaze in very little resembled Manuel’s piercing, vivid and rather wary consideration of affairs.
Kerin then observed, “Yet it is just as Holden said, and every direction is preempted.”
“Oh, no,” said Horvendile. “For you, Kerin, will go downward, whither nobody will dare to follow you, and where you will learn more wisdom than to argue with me, and to pester people with uncalled-for erudition.”
“It follows logically that I,” laughed young Donander of Evre, “must be going upward, toward paradise itself, since no other direction whatever remains.”
“That,” Horvendile replied, “happens to be true. But you will go up far higher than you think for; and your doom shall be the most strange of all.”
“Then must I rest content with some second-rate and commonplace destruction?” asked Ninzian of Yair, who alone of the fellowship had not yet spoken.
Horvendile looked at sleek Ninzian, and Horvendile looked long and long. “Donander is a tolerably pious person. But without Ninzian, the Church would lack the stoutest and the one really godfearing pillar it possesses anywhere in these parts. That would be the devil of a misfortune. Your direction, therefore, is to remain in Poictesme, and to uphold the edifying fine motto of Poictesme, for the world’s benefit.”
“But the motto of Poictesme,” said Ninzian, doubtfully, “is Mundus vult decipi, and signifies that the world wishes to be deceived.”
“That is a highly moral sentiment, which I may safely rely upon you alike to concede and prove. Therefore, for you who are so pious, I shall slightly paraphrase the Scripture: and I declare to all of you that neither will I any more remove the foot of Ninzian from out of the land which I have appointed for your children; so that they will take heed to do all which I have commanded them.”
“That,” Ninzian said, looking markedly uncomfortable, “is very delightful.”
Chapter III. How Anavalt Lamented the Redeemer
Madame Niafer arose, black-robed and hollow-eyed, and she made a lament for Dom Manuel, whose like for gentleness and purity and loving kindness toward his fellows she declared to remain nowhere in this world. It was an encomium under which the attendant warriors stayed very grave and rather fidgety, because they recognized and shared her grief, but did not wholly recognize the Manuel whom she described to them.
And the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion was decreed to be disbanded, because of the law of Poictesme that all things should go by tens forever. There was no fighting-man able to fill Manuel’s place: and a fellowship of nine members was, as Dame Niafer pointed out, illegal.
It well might be, however, she suggested, with a side glance toward Holmendis, that some other peculiarly holy person, even though not a warrior—At the same instant Coth said, with a startling and astringent decisiveness—“Bosh!”
His confreres felt the gross incivility of this interruption, but felt, too, that they agreed with Coth.
And so the fellowship was proclaimed to be disbanded.
Then Anavalt of Fomor made a lament for the passing of that noble order whose ranks were broken at last, and for Dom Manuel also Anavalt raised a lament, praising Manuel for his hardihood and his cunning and his terribleness in battle. The heroes nodded their assent to this more intelligible sort of talking.
“Manuel,” said Anavalt, “was hardy. It was not wise for any enemy to provoke him. When that indiscretion was committed, Manuel made himself as a serpent about the city of that enemy, girdling his prey all round: he seized the purlieus of that city, and its cattle, and its boats upon the rivers. He beleaguered that city everywhere, he put fire to the orchards, he silenced the mill-races, he prevented the plowers from plowing the land; and the people of that city starved, and they ate up one another, until the survivors chose to surrender to Dom Manuel. Then Manuel raised his gallows, he whistled in his headsmen, and there were no more survivors of that people.”
And Anavalt said also: “Manuel was cunning. With a feather he put a deception upon three kings, but the queens that he played his tricks on were more than three, nor was it any feather that he diddled them with. Nobody could outwit Manuel. What he wanted he took, if he could get it that way, with his strong hand: but, if not, he used his artful head and his lazy, wheedling tongue, and his other members too, so that the person whom he was deluding would give Manuel whatever he required. It was like eating honey, to be deluded by Manuel. I think it is no credit for a private man to be a great rogue; but the leader of a people must know how to deceive all peoples.”
Then Anavalt said: “Manuel was terrible. There was no softness in him, no hesitancy, and no pity. That, too, is not a virtue in a private person, but in the leader of a people it may well be a blessing for that people. Manuel so ordered matters that no adversary ever troubled Poictesme the second time. He lived as a tyrant over us; but it is better to have one master that you know the ways of than to be always changing masters in a world where none but madmen run about at their own will. I do not weep for Manuel, because he would never have wept for me nor for anybody else; but I regret that man of iron and the protection he was to us who are not ruthless iron but flesh.”
There was a silence afterward. Yet still the heroes nodded gravely. This was, in the main, a Manuel whom they all recognized.
Dame Niafer, however, had risen up a little way from her seat, when the pious gaunt man Holy Holmendis, who sat next to her, put out his hand to her hand. After this she said nothing: yet it was perfectly clear the Countess thought that Anavalt had been praising Manuel for the wrong sort of virtues.
A fire was kindled with that ceremony which was requisite. The banner of the great fellowship was burned, and the lords of the Silver Stallion now broke their swords, and they cast these fragments also into this fire, so that these swords might never defend any other standard. It was the youth of these nine men and the first vigor and faith of their youth which perished with the extinction of that fire: and they knew it.
Thereafter the heroes left Storisende. Each rode for his own home, and they made ready, each in his own fashion, for that new order of governance which with the passing of Dom Manuel had come upon Poictesme.
Chapter IV. Fog Rises
Now Guivric and Donander and Gonfal rode westward with their attendants, all in one company, as far as Guivric’s home at Asch. And as these three lords rode among the wreckage and the gathering fogs of November, the three talked together.
“It is a pity,” said Gonfal of Naimes, “that, while our little Count Emmerick is growing up, this land must now be ruled by a lame and sallow person, who had never much wit and who tends already to stringiness. Otherwise, in a land ruled over by a widow, who is used to certain recreations, one might be finding amusement, and profit too.”
“Come now,” said loyal Donander of Evre, “but Madame Niafer is a chaste and good woman who means well!”
“She has yet another quality which is even more disastrous in the ruler of any country,” returned Guivric the Sage.
“And what hook have you found now to hang a cynicism on?”
“I fear more from her inordinate piety than from her indifferent looks and her stupid well-meaningness. That woman will be reforming things everywhere into one gray ruin.”
“Indeed,” said Gonfal, smiling, “these rising fogs have to me very much the appearance of church incense.”
Guivric nodded. “Yes. Had it been possible, I believe that Madame Niafer would have preserved and desecrated the fellowship by setting in Dom Manuel’s place that Holy Holmendis who is nowadays her guide in all spiritual matters; and who will presently, do you mark my prophesying, be making a sanctimonious hash of her statecraft.”
“He composed for her, it is well known,” said Gonfal, “the plaint which she made for Dom Manuel.”
“That was a cataloguing of ecclesiastic virtues,” Guivric said, dryly, “which to my mind did not very immediately suggest the tall adulterer and parricide whom we remember. This Holmendis has, thus, already brought hypocrisy into fashion.”
“He will be Niafer’s main counselor,” Gonfal speculated. “He is a pushing, vigorous fellow. I wonder now—?”
Guivric nodded again. “Women prefer to take counsel in a bedchamber,” he stated.
“Come, Guivric,” put in pious young Donander of Evre. “Come now, whatever his over-charitable opinion of our dead master, this Holmendis is a saint: and we true believers should speak no ill of the saints.”
“I have nothing against belief, nor hypocrisy either, within reason, nor have I anything against saints, in their proper place. It is only that should a saint—and more particularly, a saint conceived and nurtured and made holy in Philistia,—ever come to rule over Poictesme, and over the bedchamber of Dom Manuel,” said Guivric, moodily, “that saint would not be in his proper place. And our day, my friends, would be ended.”
“It is already ended,” Gonfal said, “so far as Poictesme is concerned: these fogs smell over-strongly of church incense. But these fogs which rise about Poictesme do not envelop the earth. For one, I shall fare south, as that Horvendile directed me, and as I had already planned to do. In the South I shall find nobody so amusing as that fine great squinting quiet scoundrel of a Manuel. Yet in the South there is a quest cried for the hand of Morvyth, the dark Queen of Inis Dahut; and, now that my wife is dead, it may be that I would find it amusing to sleep with this young queen.”
The others laughed, and thought no more of the light boastfulness of this Gonfal who was the world’s playfellow. But within the month it was known that Gonfal of Naimes, the Margrave of Aradol, had in truth quitted his demesnes, and had traveled southward. And he was the first of this famous fellowship, after Dom Manuel, to go out of Poictesme, not ever to return.
BOOK TWO
THE MATHEMATICS OF GONFAL
“He multiplieth words without knowledge”
Chapter V. Champion at Misadventure
Now the tale is of how Gonfal fared in the South, where the people were Fundamentalists. It is told how the quest was cried; and how, in the day’s fashion, the hand of Morvyth, the dark Queen of Inis Dahut and of the four other Isles of Wonder, was promised to the champion who should fetch back the treasure that was worthiest to be her bridal gift. Eight swords, they say, were borne to the altar of Pyge-Upsizugos, to be suitably consecrated, after a brief and earnest address, by the Imaun of Bulotu. Eight appropriately ardent lovers raised high these swords, to swear fealty to Queen Morvyth and to the quest of which her loveliness was the reward. Thus all was as it should be, until they went to sheathe these swords. Then, one champion among the company, striking his elbow against his neighbor, had, rather unaccountably, the ill luck to drop his sword so that it pierced his own left foot.
The horns sounded afterward, through the narrow streets and over the bronze and lacquer roofs, and seven of Queen Morvyth’s suitors armed and rode forth to ransack the world of its chief riches for a year and a day.
He who did not ride with the others was Gonfal of Naimes. It was three months, indeed, before his wound was so healed that Gonfal could put foot to stirrup. And by that time, he calculated regretfully, the riches of the world must have been picked over with such thoroughness that it would hardly be worth while for a cripple to be hobbling out to make himself ridiculous among unsympathetic strangers. His agony, as he admitted, under this inclement turn of chance, was well-nigh intolerable; yet nothing was to be gained by blinking the facts: and Gonfal was, as he also admitted, a realist.
Gonfal, thus, remained at court through the length of a year, and lived uneventfully in the pagan Isles of Wonder. Gonfal sat unsplendidly snug while all his rivals rode at adventure in the meadows that are most fertile in magic and ascended the mountains that rise beyond plausibility in the climates most favorable to the unimaginable. But Gonfal’s sufficing consolation appeared to be that he sat, more and more often, with the Queen.
However, the Margrave of Aradol, alone of Morvyth’s suitors, had overpassed his first youth; the aging seem to acquire a sort of proficiency in being disappointed, and to despatch the transaction with more ease: and so, Queen Morvyth speculated, the Margrave of Aradol could perhaps endure this cross of unheroic tranquility—even over and above his natural despair, now he had lost all hope of winning her,—with an ampler fortitude than would have been attainable by any of the others.
Besides, their famousness was yet to be won, their exploits stayed, as yet, resplendent and misty magnets which drew them toward the future. But this Gonfal, who had come into Inis Dahut after so much notable service under Manuel of Poictesme and the unconquerable banner of the Silver Stallion, had in his day, the young Queen knew, been through eight formal wars, with any amount of light guerrilla work. He had slain his satisfactory quota of dragons and usurpers and ogres, and, also some years ago, had married the golden-haired and starry-eyed and swan-throated princess who is the customary reward of every champion’s faithful attendance to derring-do.
Now, in the afternoon of Gonfal’s day, with his princess dead, and with the realms that he had shared with her all lost,—and with his overlord Count Manuel too departed from this world, and with the banner of the Silver Stallion no longer followed by any one,—now this tall Gonfal went among his fellows in Inis Dahut a little aloofly. Yet the fair-bearded man went smilingly, too, as one who amuses himself at a game which he knows to be not very important: for he was, as he said, a realist, even in the pagan Isles of Wonder.
And Morvyth, the dark Queen of the five Isles of Wonder, was annoyed by the bantering ways of her slow-spoken lover; she did not like these ways: she would put out of mind the question whether this man was being bitterly amused by his own hopeless infatuation or by something—incredible as that seemed,—about her. But that question would come back into her mind: and Morvyth, with an habitual light lovely gesture, would tidy the hair about her ears, and would go again to talk with Gonfal, so that she might, privately and just for her own satisfaction, decide upon this problem. Besides, the man had rather nice eyes.
Chapter VI. The Loans of Power
Now, when the year was over, and when the bland persistent winds of April had won up again out of the South, the heroes returned, each with his treasure. Each brought to Morvyth a bridal gift as miraculous as the adventures through which it had been come by: and all these adventures had been marvelous beyond any easy believing.
Indeed, as the Queen remarked, in private, their tales were hardly credible.
“And yet, I think, these buoyant epics are based upon fact,” replied Gonfal. “Each of these men is the shrewd, small and ill-favored third son of a king. It is the law that such unprepossessing midgets should prosper, and override every sort of evil, in the Isles of Wonder and all other extra-mundane lands.”
“But is it fair, my friend, is it even respectful, to the august and venerable powers of iniquity, that these whippersnappers—?”
Gonfal replied: “Nobody contends, I assure you, that such easy conquests are quite sportsmanlike. Nevertheless, they are the prerogatives of the third son of a king. So, as a realist, madame, I perforce concede that fortune, hereabouts, regards these third sons with a fixed grin of approval. Even foxes and ants and ovens and broomsticks put aside their customary taciturnity, to favor these royal imps with invaluable advice: all giants and three-headed serpents must, I daresay, confront them with a half-guilty sense of committing felo-de-se: and at every turn of the road waits an enamored golden-haired princess.”
Now not every one of these truisms appeared, to the dark eyes of Morvyth, wholly satisfactory.
“Blondes do not last,” said Morvyth, “and I am a queen.”
“That is true,” Gonfal admitted. “I am not certain every third prince prospers with a queen. I can recall no authority upon the point.”
“My friend, there is not any doubt that these dauntless champions have prospered everywhere. And it is another trouble for me now to decide which one has fetched back the treasure that is worthiest to be my bridal gift.”
Gonfal pursed up his remarkably red and soft-looking lips. He regarded the young Queen for a brief while, and throughout that while he wore his odd air of considering an amusing matter which was of no great importance.
“Madame,” Gonfal then said, “I would distinguish. To be worthiest, a thing must first be worthy.”
At this the slender brows of Morvyth went up.
“But upon that ebony table, my friend, are potent magics which control all the wealth of the world.”
“I do not dispute that. I merely marvel—as a perhaps unpractical realist,—how such wealth can be termed a gift, when it at utmost is but a loan.”
“Now do you tell me,” commanded Morvyth, “just what that means!”
But Gonfal before replying considered for a while the trophies which were the increment of his younger, smaller and more energetic rivals’ heroism. These trophies were, indeed, sufficiently remarkable.
Here, for one thing,—fetched from the fiery heart of the very dreadful seven-walled city of Lankha, by bustling little Prince Chedric of Lorn, after an infinity of high exploits,—was that agate which had in the years that are long past preserved the might of the old emperors of Macedon. Upon this strange jewel were to be seen a naked man and nine women, portrayed in the agate’s veinings: and this agate assured its wearer of victory in every battle. The armies of the pagan Isles of Wonder would be ready, at the first convenient qualm of patriotism or religious faith, to lay waste and rob all the wealthiest kingdoms in that part of the world, should Morvyth choose that agate as her bridal gift.
And yet Gonfal, as he now put it aside, spoke rather sadly, and said only, “Bunkhum!” in one or another of the foreign tongues which he had acquired during his mundivagant career of knight-errantry.
Gonfal then looked at an onyx. It was the onyx of Thossakan. Its wearer had the power to draw out the soul of any person, even of himself, and to imprison that soul as a captive inside this hollowed onyx; and its wearer might thus trample any whither resistlessly. Beyond the somber gleaming of this onyx showed the green lusters of an emerald, which was engraved with a lyre and three bees, with a dolphin and the head of a bull. Misfortune and failure of no sort could enter into the house wherein was this Samian gem. But the brightest of all the ensorcelled stones arrayed upon the ebony table was the diamond of Luned, whose wearer might at will go invisible: and to this Cymric wonder Gonfal accorded the tribute of a shrug.
“This diamond,” said Gonfal then, “is a gift which a well-balanced person might loyally tender to his queen, but hardly to his prospective wife. I speak as a widower, madame: and I assure you that Prince Duneval of Ore we may dismiss from our accounting, as a too ardent lover of danger.”
Morvyth thought this very clever and naughty and cynical of him, but smilingly said nothing. And Gonfal touched the offering of pompous little Thorgny of Vigeois. This was the gray sideritis, which, when bathed in running waters and properly propitiated, told with the weak voice of an infant whatever you desired to learn. The secrets of war and statecraft, of all that had ever happened anywhere, and of all arts and trades, were familiar to the wearer of the gray sideritis. And Gonfal touched, more gingerly, the moonstone of Naggar Tura, whose cutting edge no material substance could resist, so that the strong doors of an adversary’s treasure house, or the walls of his fortified city, could be severed with this gem just as a knife slices an apple.
Yet equally marvelous, in another fashion, was this moonstone’s neighbor, a jewel of scarlet radiancy streaked with purple. All that was needed to ensure a prosperous outcome of whatsoever matter one had in hand could be found engraved upon this stone, in the lost color called tingaribinus. For the wearer of this stone—a fragment, as the most reputable cantraps attested, of the pillar which Jacob raised at Bethel,—it was not possible to fail in any sort of worldly endeavor.
Yet Gonfal put this too aside, speaking again in a foreign language unfamiliar to Morvyth, and saying, “Hohkum!”
And then, but not until then, Gonfal answered Queen Morvyth.
“I mean,” he said, “that with my own eyes I have seen that sturdy knave Dom Manuel attain to the summit of human estate, and thence pass, bewilderingly, into nothingness. I mean that, through the virtues of these amulets and periapts and other very dreadful manifestations of lithomancy, a monarch may retain, for a longer season than did Manuel, much money and acreage and all manner of power, and may keep all these fine things for a score or for two-score or even for three-score of years. But not for four-score years, madame: for by that time the riches and the honors of this world must fall away from every mortal man; and all that can remain of the greatest emperor or of the most dreadful conqueror will be, when four-score years are over, picked bones in a black box.”
And Gonfal said also: “Such is now the estate of Alexander, for all that he once owned this agate. Achilles, who wore the sideritis and was so notable at Troy, is master of no larger realm. And to Augustus and Artaxerxes and Attila—here to proceed no further in the alphabet,—quite similar observations apply. These men went very ardently about this earth, the vigor of their misconduct was truly heroic, and the sound of their names is become as deathless as is the sound of the wind. But once that four-score years were over, their worldly power had passed as the dust passes upon the bland and persistent wind which now is come up out of the South to bring new life into Inis Dahut, but to revive nothing that is dead. Just so must always pass all worldly honors, as just such dust.”
Then Gonfal said: “Just so—with my own eyes,—I have seen Dom Manuel tumbled from the high estate which that all-overtrampling rogue had purchased and held so unscrupulously; and I have seen his powerfulness made dust. These occasional triumphs of justice, madame, turn one to serious thinking. . . . Therefore it seems to me that these questing gentlemen are offering you no gift, but only a loan. I perforce consider—as a realist, and with howsoever appropriate regret,—that the conditions of the quest have not been fulfilled.”
The Queen deliberated his orotundities. And she regarded Gonfal with a smile which now was like his smiling, and which appeared not very immediately connected with the trituration they were speaking of.
Morvyth said then: “That is true. Your mathematics are admirable, in that they combine resistlessly the pious and the platitudinous. There is no well-thought-of Fundamentalist in Inis Dahut, nor in any of the Isles of Wonder, who will dare dispute that the riches of this world are but a loan, because that is the doctrine of Pyge-Upsfzugos and of all endowed religions everywhere. These over-busy, pushing ugly little pests that ride impertinently about the world, and get their own way in every place, have insulted me. By rights,”—the Queen said, rather hopefully,—“by rights, I ought to have their heads chopped off?”
“But these heroic imps are princes, madame. Thus, to pursue your very natural indignation, would entail a war with their fathers: and to be bothered with seven wars, according to my mathematics, would be a nuisance.”
Morvyth saw the justice of this; and said, with ever so faint a sighing: “Very well, then! I approve of your mathematics. I shall pardon their impudence, with the magnanimity becoming to a queen; and I shall have the quest cried for another year and another day.”
“That,” Gonfal estimated, still with his odd smiling, “will do nicely.”
“And, besides,” she added, “now you will have a chance with the others!”
“That,” Gonfal assented, without any trace of a smile or any other token of enthusiasm, “will be splendid.”
But Morvyth smiled as, with that habitual gesture, she tidied her hair: and she sent for her seven heroic lovers, and spoke to them, as she phrased it, frankly.
Chapter VII. Fatality the Second
Thus all was to do again. The champions pulled rather long faces, and the lower orders were disappointed in missing the gratis entertainments attendant on a royal marriage. But the clergy and the well-thought-of laity and the leading taxpayers applauded the decision of Queen Morvyth as a most glorious example in such feverish and pleasure-loving days of soulless materialism.
So again the eight lovers of Morvyth met in the cathedral, to have their swords appropriately consecrated by the Imaun of Bulotu. And that beneficent and justly popular old prelate, after he had cut the throats of the three selected children, began the real ceremony with a prayer to Pyge-Upsizugos, as to Him whose transformations are hidden in all temples patronized by the best-thought-of people, and saying, as was customary and polite:
“The height of the firmament is subservient unto thee, O Pyge-Upsizugos! thy throne is very high! the ornaments upon the seat of thy blue trousers are the bright stars which never diminish! Every man makes offering unto that portion of thee which is revealed, and thou art the Sedentary Master commemorated in heaven and upon earth. Thou art a shining noble seated above all nobles, permanent in thy high station, established in thy stern sovereignty, and the callipygous Prince of the Company of Gods.”
Nobody quite believed this, of course, but in Inis Dahut, as in all other places, the Fundamentalists took a proper pride in their tribal deity, and, whenever they could spare time for religious matters made as much of him as possible. So they now tendered to Pyge-Upsizugos a fine offering of quails and cinnamon and bullocks’ hearts, and they raised the Hymn of the Star-Spangled Buttock in the while that the two ewers containing the blood of the children were placed upon his altar.
Thus everything at first went nicely enough. But when the company of Morvyth’s lovers, with all their swords drawn, had approached the altar, for the consecrating, and in the while that they ascended the smooth porphyry steps, then limping Gonfal stumbled or else he slipped. He thus dropped his sword. The tall champion, clutching hastily at this sword as it fell, caught up the weapon by the newly sharpened blade; and he grasped it with such rather unaccountable vigor that he cut open his right hand to the bone, and cut also the muscles of his fingers.
“Decidedly,” said Gonfal, with a wried smile, “there is some fatality in this; and the quest of Morvyth is not for me.”
He spoke the truth, for his sword-bearing days were over. Gonfal must seek for a physician and bandages, while his rivals’ swords were being consecrated. The Queen noted his going, and, from a point midway between complacence and religious scruples, said under her breath, “One must perforce somewhat admire this realist.”
She heard, from afar, a dwindling resonance of horns and knew that once more the seven heroic lovers of Queen Morvyth had ridden forth to ransack the world of its chief riches. But fair-bearded Gonfal stayed in the pagan Isles of Wonder, and beneath the same roof that covered Morvyth, and cared for no riches except the loveliness of Morvyth, whom he saw daily. And with time the hurt in his hand was cured, but the fingers on that hand he could not ever move again. And for the rest, if people whispered here and there, the susurrus was a phenomenon familiar enough to the economy of court life.
Chapter VIII. How the Princes Bragged
Now, when the year was over, and the south wind was come again into Inis Dahut, the seven lovers returned, bringing with them yet other prodigies acquired by heroic exploits.
Here, for example, was the effigy of a bird carved in jade and carnelian.
“With the aid of this inestimable bird,” explained Prince Chedric of Lorn,—who, upon a very dreadfully inhabited peninsula, if one elected to believe him, had wrested this talisman from Morskoi of the Depths,—“you may enter the Sea Market, and may go freely among a folk that dwell in homes builded of coral and tortoise-shell, and tiled with fishes’ scales. Their wisdom is beyond the dry and arid wisdom of earth: their knowledge derides the fictions which we call time and space: and their children prattle of mysteries unknown to any of our major prophets and most expert geomancers.”
“Ah, but,” cried Prince Balein of Targamon, “but I have here a smoke-colored veil embroidered with tiny gold stars and ink-horns; and it enables one to pass through the ardent gateway of Audela, the country that lies behind the fire. This is the realm of Sesphra: there is no grieving in this land, and happiness and infallibility are common to everybody there, because Sesphra is the master of an art which corrodes and sears away all error, whether it be human or divine.”
Prince Duneval of Ore said nothing. His mutely tendered offering was a small mirror about three inches square. Morvyth looked into this mirror: and what she saw in it was very little like a sumptuous dark young girl. She hastily put aside that gleaming and over-wise counselor: and the Queen’s face was troubled, because there was no need to ask what mirror Duneval had fetched to her from out of Antan.
But Thorgny of Vigeois did not love silence. And he was the next suitor.
“Such knickknacks as I notice at your feet, my princess,” stated Thorgny of Vigeois, “have their merits. Nobody denies their merits. But I, who may now address you with the frankness which ought to exist between two persons already virtually betrothed, I bring that sigil which gave wisdom and all power to Apollonius, and later to Merlin Ambrosius. It displays, as you observe, an eye encircled with scorpions and stags and”—he coughed,—“with winged objects which do not ordinarily have wings: and it controls the nine million spirits of the air. I need say no more.”
“I need to,” said Prince Gurguint. “I say that I have here the shining triangle of Thorston. And to say that, is to say a great deal more than Thorgny has said. For this triangle is master of the wisdom of the Duergar and of all peoples that dwell underground. Moreover, madame, when this triangle is inverted—thus,—it enables you to bless and curse at will, to converse with dead priests, and to control the power and the seven mysteries of the moon.”
“To such hole and corner wisdom, to such cavemen devices, and more especially to your lunar vaporings, I cry out like a bird upon the house-tops, and I cry, Cheap, cheap!” observed Prince Clofurd. “For I have here, in this shagreen case, the famous and puissant and unspeakably sacrosanct ring of Solomon, to whose wearer are subject the Djinns and the ass-footed Nazikeen and fourteen of Jahveh’s most discreet and trustworthy seraphim.”
Prince Grimauc said: “Solomon had, in his archaic way, his wisdom, a good enough sort of workaday wisdom, but yet a limited wisdom, as it was meted out to him by the god of Judea: but I have here an altar carved from a block of selenite. Within this altar you may hear the moving and the dry rustlings of an immortal. Let us not speak of this immortal: neither the sun’s nor the moon’s light has ever shone upon him, and his name is not lovable. But here is the Altar of the Adversary; and the owner of this little altar may, at a paid price, have access to the wisdom that defies restraint and goes beyond the bounds permitted by any god.”
Such were the gifts they brought to Morvyth. And, for reasons of not less than two kinds, the Queen found difficulty in saying which of these offerings was the worthiest to be her bridal gift.
Chapter IX. The Loans of Wisdom
But Gonfal, when the Queen consulted him in private, as she was now apt to do about most matters, tall handsome Gonfal shrugged. He said that, to his finding,—as a, no doubt, unpractical realist,—her lovers had, once more, fetched back no gifts, but only loans of very dubious value.
“For I have seen Dom Manuel purchase a deal of just such wisdom from unwholesome sources: and I have seen too what came of it when the appointed season was at hand for that gray knave to be stripped of his wisdom. Just so, madame, must every sort of wisdom be reft away from everybody. These wise men that had all this knowledge in the old time, do they retain it now? The question is absurd, since the dirt that once was Solomon keeps no more sentiency than does the mud which formerly was Solomon’s third under-scullion. Indomitable persons have, before to-day, won to the wisdom of Audela or of the Sea Market; and that Freydis with whom Dom Manuel lived for a while in necromantic iniquity, and that unscriptural Herodias who was Tana’s daughter, these women, once, attained to the wisdom of Antan: but might they carry any of this wisdom into the grave?”
“I see,” said Morvyth, reflectively; and she smiled.
“Equally,” Gonfal continued, “where now is your Thorston or your Merlin? All which to-day remains of any one of these thaumaturgists may well, at this very instant, be passing us as dust in that bland and persistent wind which now courses over Inis Dahut: but the mage goes undiscerned, unhonored, impotent, and goes as the wind wills, not as he elects. Ah, no, madame! These quaint, archaic toys may for a little while lend wisdom and understanding: but, none the less, within four-score of years—”
“Oh, have done with your arithmetic!” she begged of him. “It serves handily, and I approve of your mathematics. I really do consider it is perfectly wonderful, sweetheart, how quickly you realists can think of suitable truisms. But, just the same, I begin to dislike that wind: and I would much rather talk about something else.”
“Let us talk about, then,” Gonfal said, “the different way I feel concerning you, as compared with all other women.”
“That is not a new topic. But it is invariably interesting.”
So they discussed this matter at some length. Then they went on to other matters. And Morvyth asked Gonfal if he was sure that he respected her just as much as ever, and Morvyth tidied her hair, and she summoned the Imaun of Bulotu, and sent also for Masu the prime minister.
“The wisdom of this world is as a dust that passes,” said Morvyth. “The wise men that had wisdom in the old time, do they retain it now?”
She then repeated the rest of Gonfal’s observations with applaudable accuracy.
And her hearers did applaud, in unfeigned emotion. “For this prying into matters which Pyge-Upsizugos has not seen fit to reveal has always seemed to me unwholesome,” remarked the prime minister.
“In fact, the claims of science, so-called—” began the Imaun; and spoke for the usual twenty minutes.
All was thus settled edifyingly. The offerings of the kings’ sons were decreed to be no true gifts; the quest was cried again; and once more the seven champions rode forth. There was no thought of tall Gonfal going with the little heroes, for a cripple who could not bear a sword was not fitted to ransack the treasures of the world. Instead, fair-bearded Gonfal stayed in Inis Dahut, and lived uneventfully in the pagan Isles of Wonder. And if people now talked outright, a queen can never hope to go wholly free of criticism.
Chapter X. Relative to Gonfal’s Head
It followed through the two mischances already recorded that, when spring came again, and when once more the south wind was coursing over Inis Dahut, Gonfal of Naimes sat, as it happened, with his handsome head in Morvyth’s lap, and waited for her less ill-starred lovers to return.
“What gifts, I wonder, will they be bringing me,” Queen Morvyth said, “at about this time tomorrow?”
And Gonfal, without moving, sighed stupendously, and answered: “To me, madame, they will be bringing bitter gifts. For, whosoever wins in this quest, I lose: and whatsoever he may bring to you, to me he brings disseverance from content, and to me he brings a poignant if brief period of loneliness before you decide to have my head off.”
Now she caressed that head maternally. “Why, but what a notion!” said Morvyth, now that the man himself spoke of the nearing social duty whose imminence had for some while been fretting her. “As if, sweetheart, I would ever think of such a thing!”
“Undoubtedly, that will happen, madame. Marriage entails many obligations, not all of them pleasant. Queens in particular have to preserve appearances, they have to ensure the discretion of those whom they have trusted.”
“That,” she said, sorrowfully, “is what the dear old Imaun has been telling me,:—lately, you know. And Masu talks about what a married woman owes to religion and setting a fine moral example.”
Then Gonfal, still smiling up at her, went on: “And yet it seems an odd thing, delight of my delights, that I shall leave you—for the headsman,—without any real regret. For I am content. While my shrewd fellows rode about the world to seek and to attain to power and wisdom, I have elected, as an unpractical realist, to follow after beauty. I have followed, to be sure, in the phrase of that absurd young Grimauc, at a paid price. Yet, at that price, I have won, maimed and foredoomed, to beauty. And I am content.”
The Queen put on the proper air of diffidence. “But what, my friend, what, after all, is mere beauty?”
And he replied with the neatness which she always rather distrusted. “Beauty, madame, is Morvyth. It is not easy to describe either of these most dear and blinding synonyms, as how many reams of ruined paper attest!”
She waited, still stroking him: and in her mind was the old question, whether it was possible that, even now, this man was laughing at her?
She said: “But would it not grieve you unendurably, sweetheart, to see me the wife of another man? And so, would it not be really a kindness—?”
But the obtuse fellow did not chivalrously aid in smoothing her way to that nearing social duty. Instead, he replied, oddly enough:
“The Morvyth that I see, and in my manner worship, can be no man’s wife. All poets learn this truth in their vexed progress to becoming realists.”
For yet another while the young Queen was silent. And then she said:
“I do not quite understand you, my dear, and probably I never shall. But I know that through your love of me you have twice maimed yourself, and have, as though it were a trifle, put aside your chance of winning honor and great wealth and all that gentle persons most prize—”
“I am,” he replied, “a realist. To get three utterly pleasant years one pays, of course. But realists pay without grumbling.”
“My dearest,” the Queen continued,—now breathing quicklier, and with the sort of very happy sobbing which she felt the occasion demanded,—“you alone of all the men who have talked and postured so much, you alone have given me wholehearted and undivided love, not weighing even your own knightly honor and worldly fame against the utterness of that love. And while of course, just as the Imaun says, if I were ever to marry anybody else, as I suppose I did promise to do,—in a way, that is,—still, it is not as if I cared one snap of my fingers about appearances, and I simply will not have it cut off! For such utterly unselfish love as yours, dear Gonfal, is the gift which is worthiest to be my bridal gift: and, no matter what anybody says, it is you who shall be my husband!”
“Ah, but the cried quest, madame!” he answered, “and your promise to those seven other idiots!”
“I shall proclaim to those detestable third sons, and to the Imaun, and to Masu, and to everybody,” the Queen said, “a very weighty and indeed a sacred truth. I shall tell them that there is no gift more great than love.”
But the tall man who now stood before her shared in nothing in the exaltedness of her sentiments; and his dismay was apparent. “Alas, madame, you propose an enormity! for we are all so utterly the slaves of our catchwords that everybody would agree with you. There is no hope in ‘what anybody may say’. Imbeciles everywhere will be saying that you have chosen wisely.”
Morvyth now sat peculiarly erect upon the ivory couch. “I am sure, I am really quite sure, Gonfal, that I do not understand you.”
“I mean, madame, that—while of course your offer is all that is most kind and generous,—that I must, here again, in mere honesty, I must distinguish. I mean that I think you know, as well as I do, love is not a gift which any man can give nor any person hope long to retain. Ah, no, madame! we shrug, we smilingly allow romanticists their catchwords: meanwhile it remains the veriest axiom, among realists like you and me, that love too is but a loan.”
“So you have come back,” the Queen remarked, with an approach to crossness, “to your eternal loans!”
He slightly flung out both hands, palms upward. “Love is that loan, my dear, which we accept most thankfully. But at the same time let us concede, as rational persons, the impermanence of all those materials which customarily provoke the erotic emotions.”
“Gonfal,” the young Queen said, “now you talk stupidly. You talk with a dangerous lack of something more important than discretion.”
“My love, I talk, again, as a widower.” Then for a while he said nothing: and it appeared to Morvyth that this incomprehensible ingrate had shivered. He said: “And still, still, I talk of mathematical certainties! For how can you hope to remain in anything a lovable object? In a score of years, or within at most two-score, you will have become either fat or wrinkled, your teeth will rot and tumble out, your eyes will blear; your thighs will be most unenticingly mottled, your breath will be unpleasant, and your breasts will have become flabby bags. All these impairments, I repeat, my dear, are mathematical certainties.”
To such horrid and irrelevant nonsense the Queen replied, with dignity, “I am not your dear; and I simply wonder at your impudence in ever for one moment thinking I was.”
“Then, too,” the ill-mannered wretch had gone on, meditatively, “you have not much intelligence. That is very well for the present, because intelligence in youth, for some reason or another, is bad for the hair and muddies the complexion. Yet an aging woman who is stupid, such as Madame Niafer or such as another woman whom I remember, is also quite unendurable.”
“But what,” she asked him, rationally, “have I to do with stupid old women? I am Morvyth, I am Queen of the Isles of Wonder. I have the secrets which control all wealth and—if I should ever take a fancy to such things,—all wisdom too. There is no beauty like my beauty, nor any power like my power—”
“I know, I know!” he returned,—“and for the present I of course adore you. But nevertheless, did I fall in with your very dreadful suggestion, and permit you to place me, quite publicly, at your dear side, upon the terraced throne of Inis Dahut,—why, then, within a terribly brief while, I would not mind your being stupid, I would not actually notice your dilapidated looks, I would accept all your shortcomings complacently. And I would be contented enough with you, who now are the despair and joy of my living. No, Morvyth, no, my child! I, who was once a poet of sorts, could not again endure to live in contentment with a stupid and querulous woman who was unattractive to look at. And, very certainly, within two-score of years—”
But a queenly gesture had put a check to such wild talk, and Morvyth too had arisen, saying:
“Your arithmetic becomes tiresome. One can afford to honor truisms in their proper place, and about suitable persons: but there is, and always must be, a limit to the scope of such trite philosophy. Your audience is over, Messire Gonfal. And it is your last audience, because I consider you quite unutterably a beast.”
He kissed the imperious little hand which dismissed him. “You at all events, my dear,” he stated, “are quite unutterably human.”
Chapter XI. Economics of Morvyth
Thus it came about, to the Imaun’s vast relief,—and, as it seemed to the pious, kindly old man, perhaps in direct answer to his prayers that this matter might be settled agreeably all around and without any unpleasantness,—that the next day at noon, just as the seven champions were returning with their gifts, an attendant brought to Queen Morvyth the severed head of Gonfal.
This was in the vaulted hall of Tothmes, whose building was a famous tale, and of whose splendors travelers, come homeward, spoke without real hope to be believed. There Morvyth waited, crowned, upon the terraced throne: and without, on that bright April morning, the trumpets sounded through the narrow streets and over the bronze and lacquer roofs, proclaiming that the mightiest and most shrewd of champions were riding toward Inis Dahut from all kingdoms of the earth, through their desire of the young Queen of the Isles of Wonder whose beauty was the marvel of the world, and a legend in far lands not known to her even by their names.
Thus Morvyth sat: and at her feet one placed the severed head of Gonfal. There was blood on the fair beard: but still the lips were smiling, pallidly, over something of no great importance. And in her mind was the old question, whether it was possible that—even now,—this man was laughing at her? Or, was it possible, she wondered (as she of a sudden recollected that first talk of theirs), that blondes did sometimes last very damnably? and that some little washed-out fly-by-night princess of nowhere in particular might thus get, in one way or another, even from her grave, the better of a great queen?
Well, but there was no need for a great queen to think as yet about graves, and their most unpleasant contents. For Morvyth sat high, as yet, superb and young and all powerful, in this fine palace of hers, about which so many lovers sighed, and the bland winds of April went caressingly. . . . Nobody denied that this very tiresome wind would every year be coming up from the South,—the lovely girl reflected, as she fell meditatively to prodding with her toe at what remained of Gonfal,—nor that, just so, this most persistent wind would be coursing over Inis Dahut, when there was no Morvyth and no palace in this place any longer. . . . Nobody denied, and nobody except insane and very rude persons thought at all seriously about, such truisms.
It was enough, for really pious people, that in youth one had the loan of a bright sheltering against the ruthless and persistent wind which bore everything away as dust: if one felt a bit low-spirited now and then, it was not for any especial cause: and Morvyth—that, as yet, for her permitted season, was Queen of the five Isles of Wonder,—could hear the trumpets and the heralds proclaiming the entry of Prince Chedric of Lorn. . . .
He, then, was the first to return of those perfectly detestable little meddlers who out of love for her had, now for a third time, ransacked the riches of the world: and he had rather nice eyes. Morvyth tidied her hair.
BOOK THREE
TOUPAN’S BRIGHT BEES
The bee that is in the land of Assyria shall rest upon all bushes.”
—Isaiah vii, 18
Chapter XII. The Mage Emeritus
Now the tale is no more of Gonfal, who was the first to perish of the lords of the Silver Stallion. The tale instead tells that, in the while of Gonfal’s adventuring in Inis Dahut, yet three other champions of the fellowship had left the Poictesme which under Dame Niafer’s rule was altering day by day. Coth of the Rocks, indeed, had ridden westward within the same month that Gonfal departed for the South. There was never any profitable arguing with Coth: and so, when he declared his intention of fetching back Dom Manuel into the Poictesme which women and holy persons and lying poets—as Coth asserted,—were making quite uninhabitable, nobody did argue. Coth blustered westward, unmolested and unreasoned with: and for that while no more was heard of him.
And it was in the May of this year that Kerin of Nointel, the Syndic and Castellan of Basardra, disappeared even more unaccountably than Dom Manuel had done, for about Kerin’s passing there were not even any rumors. Kerin, so far as anybody could learn, had vanished in the darkness of the night season just as unaidedly as that darkness itself had vanished in turn, and with just as slight vestigial traces of his passing. The desolation of Kerin’s young wife, Dame Saraide, was such that dozens upon dozens of lovers might not content her for her widowhood, as was immediately shown: and of Kerin also, for that while, no more was heard.
And Miramon Lluagor, too, that under Manuel had been the Lord Seneschal of Gontaron, had now gone out of Poictesme,—sedately and unmysteriously departing, with his wife and child seated beside him upon the back of an elderly and quite tame dragon, for his former home in the North. It was there that Miramon had first encountered Dom Manuel in the days when Manuel was only a swineherd. And it was there that Miramon Lluagor hoped to pass the remainder of as long a life as his doom permitted him, in such limited comfort as might anywhere be possible for a married man.
Otherwise, he could foresee, upon the brighter side of his appointed and appalling doom, nothing which was likely to worry him. For Miramon Lluagor had very wonderfully prospered at magic, he was, as they say, now blessed with more than any reasonable person would ask for: and the most claimant of these superfluities appeared to him to be his wife.
They tell how Miramon was one of the Leshy, born of a people that was neither human nor immortal, telling how his ancestral home was builded upon the summit of the mountain called Vraidex. To Vraidex Miramon Lluagor returned, after the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion had been disbanded, and Miramon had ceased to amuse himself with the greatness of Manuel and with the other notions of Poictesme.
They narrate that this magician dabbled no more in knight-errantry, for which the Seneschal of Gontaron—who through his art was also lord of the nine kinds of sleep and prince of the seven madnesses,—had never shown any real forte. He righted no more wrongs, in weather as often as not unsuited to a champion subject to rheumatism, and he in no way taxed his comfort to check the prospering of injustice. Instead, he now maintained, upon the exalted scarps of Vraidex, the sedate seclusion appropriate to a veteran artist, in his ivory tower carved out of one of the tusks of Behemoth; and maintained also a handsome retinue of every sort of horrific illusion to guard the approaches to his Doubtful Palace; wherein, as the tale likewise tells, this mage resumed his former vocation, and once more designed the dreams for sleep.
Thus it was that, upon the back of the elderly and quite tame dragon, Miramon returned to his earlier pursuits and to the practice of what he—in his striking way of putting things,—described as art for art’s sake. The episode of Manuel had been, in the lower field of merely utilitarian art, amusing enough. That stupid, tall, quiet posturer, when he set out to redeem Poictesme, had needed just the mere bit of elementary magic which Miramon had performed for him, to establish Manuel among the great ones of earth. Miramon had, in consequence, sent a few obsolete gods to drive the Northmen out of Poictesme, while Manuel waited upon the sands north of Manneville and diverted his leisure by contemplatively spitting into the sea. Thereafter Manuel had held the land to the admiration of everybody but more particularly of Miramon,—who did not at all agree with Anavalt of Fomor in his estimation of Dom Manuel’s mental gifts.
Yes, it had been quite amusing to serve under Manuel, to play at being lord of Gontaron and Ranee, and to regard at close quarters this tall, grave, gray, cock-eyed impostor, who had learned only not to talk. . . . For that, thought Miramon, was Manuel’s secret: Manuel did not expostulate, he did not explain, he did not argue; he, instead, in any time of trouble or of uncertainty, kept quiet: and that quiet struck terror to his ever-babbling race; and had earned for the dull-witted but shrewd fellow—who was concealing only his lack of any thought or of any plan,—a dreadful name for impenetrable wisdom and for boundless resource.
“Keep mum with Manuel!” said Miramon, “and all things shall be added to you. It is a great pity that my wife has not the knack for these little character analyses.”
Yes, the four years had been an amusing episode. But dreams and the designing of dreams were the really serious matters to which Miramon returned after this holiday outing in carnage and statecraft.
And here, too,—as everywhere,—his wife confronted him. Miramon’s personal taste in art was for the richly romantic sweetened with nonsense and spiced with the tabooed. But his wife Gisele had quite other notions, a whole set of notions, and her philosophy was that of belligerent individualism. And the magician to keep peace, at least in the intervals between his wife’s more mordantly loquacious moments, must of necessity design such dreams as Gisele preferred. But he knew that these dreams did not express the small thoughts and fancies which harbored in the heart of Miramon Lluagor, and which would perish with the falling of his doom unless he wrought these fancies into dreams that, being fleshless, might evade carnivorous time.
He was preeminent among the dream-makers of this world, he was the dreaded lord (because of his retinue of illusions) over all the country about Vraidex: but in his own home he was not dreaded, he, very certainly, was not preeminent. And Miramon hungered for the lost freedom of his bachelorhood.
His wife also was discontent, because the ways of the Leshy appeared to this mortal woman indecorous. The dooms that were upon the Leshy seemed not entirely in good taste, to her who had been born of a race about whom destiny appeared not to bother. In fact, it was a continual irritation to Gisele that her little boy Demetrios was predestinate to kill his father with the charmed sword Flamberge. This was a doom Gisele found not the sort of thing you cared to have imminent in your own family: and she felt that the sooner the gray Norns, who weave the fate of all that live, were spoken to quite candidly, the better it would be for everybody concerned.
She was irritated by the mere sight of Flamberge. So her thinking was not of silk and honey when, after polishing the sword as was her usage upon Thursday morning, she came into Miramon’s ivory tower to hang the fatal weapon in its right place.
With Miramon under the green tasseled canopy sat one whom Gisele was not unsurprised to see there. For closeted with Miramon to-day was Ninzian, the High Bailiff of Yair and Upper Ardra, who was the most famous for his piety of all the lords of the Silver Stallion. The dreadful need and the peculiar reason which Ninzian had for being pious and philanthropic were matters not known to everybody: but Miramon Lluagor knew about these things, and therefore he made appropriate use of Ninzian. Indeed, upon this very afternoon, the two were looking at that which Ninzian had fetched out of the land of Assyria, and had procured for the magician, at a price.
Chapter XIII. Economics of Gisele
Now Madame Gisele also was looking at that which Ninzian had procured for her husband at a price. She looked at it—upon the whole—with slightly less disfavor than she afterward looked at the two men.
“A good day and a grand blessing to you, Messire Ninzian!” said Madame Gisele: and she extended her hand, along with her scouring-rag, for him to kiss, and she inquired about his wife Dame Balthis, pleasantly enough. She spoke then, in a different tone, to Miramon Lluagor. “And with what are you cluttering up the house now?”
“Ah, wife,” replied Miramon, “here, very secretly fetched out of the land of Assyria, are those bees about whom it is prophesied that they shall rest upon all bushes. Here are the bright bees of Toupan, a treasure beyond word or thinking. They are not as other bees, for theirs is the appearance of shining ice: and they crawl fretfully, as they have crawled since Toupan’s downfall, about this cross of black stone—”
“That is a very likely story for you to be telling me, who can see that the disgusting creatures have wings to fly away with whenever they want to! And, besides, who in the world is this Toupan?”
“He is nobody in this world, wife, and it is wiser not to speak of him. Let it suffice that in the time of the Old Ones he made all things as they were. Then Koshchei came out of Ydalir, and took the power from Toupan, and made all things as they are. Yet three of Toupan’s servitors endure upon earth, where they who were once lords of the Vendish have now no privilege remaining save to creep humbly as insects: the use of their wings is denied them here among the things which were made by Koshchei, and the charmed stone holds them immutably. Oho, but, wife, there is a cantrap which would free them, a cantrap which nobody has as yet discovered, and to their releaser will be granted whatever his will may desire—”
“This is some more of your stuff and nonsense, out of old fairy tales, where everybody gets three wishes, and no good from any of them!”
“No, my love, because I shall put them to quite practical uses. For you must know that when I have found out the cantrap which will release the bees of Toupan—”
Gisele showed plainly that his foolishness did not concern her. She sighed, and she hung the sword in its accustomed place. “Oh, but I am aweary of this endless magic and piddling with vain dreams!”
“Then, wife,” said Miramon, “then why are you perpetually meddling with what you do not understand?”
“I think,” Ninzian observed at once, for Ninzian too was married, “I think that I had best be going.”
But Giseie’s attention was reserved for her husband. “I meddle, as you so very politely call it, because you have no sense of what is right and proper, and no sense of morals, and no sense of expediency, and, in fact, no sense at all.”
Miramon said, “Now, dearest—!”
Ninzian was hastily picking up his hat.
And Gisele continued, with that resistless and devastating onflow which is peculiar to tidal waves and the tongue of her who speaks for her husband’s own good.
“Women everywhere,” Gisele generalized, “have a hard time of it: but in particular do I pity the woman that is married to one of you moonstruck artists. She has not half a husband, she has but the tending of a baby with long legs—”
“It is so much later than I thought, that really now—” observed Ninzian, ineffectively.
“—And I might have had a dozen husbands—”
Miramon said, “But, surely, no woman of your well-known morality, my darling—”
“—I might, as you very well remember, have married Count Manuel himself—”
“I know. I can recall how near you came to marrying him. He was a dull, a cold-blooded and a rather dishonest clodhopper: but the luck of Manuel Pig-Tender did not ever desert him,” said Miramon, sighing, “not even then!”
“I say, I might have had my pick of a dozen really prominent and looked-up-to warriors, who would have had the decency to remember our anniversary and my birthday, and in any event would never have been in the house twenty-four hours a day! Instead, here I am tied to a muddle-head who fritters away his time contriving dreams that nobody cares about one way or the other! And yet, even so—”
“And yet, even so—as you were no doubt going on to observe, my dearest,—even so, since your soliloquy pertains to matters in which our guest could not conceivably be interested—”
“—And yet,” said Gisele, with a heavier and a deadlier emphasis, “even so, if only you would be sensible about your silly business I could put up with the inconvenience of having you underfoot every moment. People need dreams to help them through the night, and nobody enjoys a really good dream more than I do when I have time for it, with the million and one things that are put upon me. But dreams ought to be wholesome—”
“My darling, now, as a matter of esthetics, as a mere point of fact—”
“—But dreams ought to be wholesome, they ought to be worth while, they ought to teach an uplifting moral, and certainly they ought not to be about incomprehensible thin nonsense that nobody can half way understand. They ought, in a word, to make you feel that the world is a pretty good sort of place, after all—”
“But, wife, I am not sure that it is,” said Miramon, mildly.
“Then, the more shame to you! and the very least you can do is to keep such morbid notions to yourself, and not be upsetting other people’s repose with them!”
“I employ my natural gift, I express myself and none other. The rose-bush does not put forth wheat, nor flax either,” returned the magician, with a tired shrug. “In fine, what would you have?”
“A great deal it means to you,—you rose-bush!—what I prefer! But if I had my wish your silly dream-making would be taken away from you so that we might live in some sort of reputable and common-sense way.”
All the while that she reasoned sensibly and calmly with her husband for his own good, Gisele had feverishly been dusting things everywhere, just to show what a slave she was to him, and because it irritated Miramon to have his personal possessions thus dabbed at and poked about: and now, as she spoke, Gisele slapped viciously with her scouring-rag at the black cross. And a thing happened, to behold which would have astonished the innumerous mages and the necromancers and the enchanters who had given over centuries to searching for the cantrap which would release the bees of Toupan. For now without any exercise of magic the scouring-rag swept from the stone one of the insects. Koshchei, who made all things as they are, had decreed, they report, that these bright perils could be freed only in the most obvious way, because he knew this would be the last method attempted by any learned person.
Then for an instant the walls of the ivory tower were aquiver like blown veils. And the bee passed glitteringly to the window and through the clear glass of the closed window, leaving a small round hole there, as the creature went to join its seven fellows in the Pleiades.
Chapter XIV. The Changing That Followed
Now, when this eighth bright bee had joined its seven fellows in the Pleiades, then Toupan, afloat in the void, unclosed his ancient unappeasable eyes. Jacy returned to his aforetime estate in the moon: all plants and trees everywhere were withered, and the sea also lost its greenness, and there were no more emeralds. And the Star Warriors and the Wardens of the Worlds were troubled, and They cried out to Koshchei who had devised Them and who had placed Them in Their stations to remain in eternal watchfulness over all things as they are.
Koshchei, for reasons of his own, did not reply.
Then Jacy. whispered to Toupan: “Now is the hour of thy release, O Toupan! now is the hour that Koshchei falls. For among the things that are there stays no verdancy anywhere, and without green things nobody can keep health and strength.”
Toupan answered: “I am diminished. My bones have become like silver, and my members have turned into gold, and my hair is like lapis-lazuli.”
“Thine eyes remain unchanged,” said the slow whispering of Jacy. “Send forth thine eyes, O Toupan, against the work of Koshchei, who has blasphemed against the Old Ones, and who has created things as they are.”
“Though he acknowledge both of these misdoings, why need my eyes be troubled,—as yet?”
Then Jacy said, “Send forth thine eyes, O Toupan, so that we Old Ones may rejoice in the dreadfulness of thy overlooking!”
Toupan answered: “I was before the Old Ones. My soul was before thought and time. It is the soul of Shu, it is the soul of Khnemu, it is the soul of Heh: it is the soul of Night and of Desolation, and there is a thinking about my soul which looks out of the eyes of every serpent. My soul alone keeps any knowledge of that dark malignity which everywhere encompasses the handiwork of Koshchei who made things as they are. Why need my soul be troubled, therefore,—as yet?”
But Jacy said again: “Give aid now to the Old Ones! Already thy bees go forth, that shall rest upon all bushes, and already no verdancy remains. Send forth thine eyes now, also, in which there is the knowledge denied to Koshchei!”
And Toupan answered: “The time of my release is not yet at hand. Nevertheless, between now and a while, when yet another bee is loosed, I shall bestir my soul, I will send forth my eyes, so that all may perceive the dreadfulness of my overlooking.”
At that the Star Warriors and the Wardens of the Worlds cried out again to Koshchei.
Then Koshchei answered Them: “Have patience! When Toupan is released I perish with You. Meanwhile I have made all things as they are.”
Chapter XV. Disastrous Rage of Miramon
Now also, when this eighth bright bee had joined its fellows in the Pleiades, in that same instant Miramon Lluagor, as he stood appalled in his ivory tower, was aware of a touch upon his forehead, as if a damp sponge were passing over it. Then he perceived that, with the petulant voicing of his damnable wife’s desire, he had forthwith forgotten the secret of his preeminence.
Something he could yet recall, they say, of the magic of the Purin and the cast stones, of the Horse and the Bull of the Water, and most of the lore of the Apsarasas and the Faidhin remained to him. He could still make shift, he knew, to control the roving Lamboyo, to build the fearful bridge of the White Ladies, or to contrive the dance of the Korred. He retained his communion with Necksa and Paralda, those sovereign Elementaries. He kept his mastery of the Shedeem who devastate, of the Shehireem who terrify, and of the Mazikeen who destroy. Nor had he lost touch with the Stewards of Heaven,—of whom at this period Och had the highest power and was customarily summoned by Miramon Lluagor, for a brief professional consultation, every Sunday morning at sunrise.
But such accomplishments, as Miramon despairingly knew, were the stock in trade of mere hedge wizards, they were the rudiments of any fairly competent sorcerer anywhere: and that supreme secret which had made Miramon Lluagor the master of all dreams was gone away from him completely.
He was very angry. He was the angrier for that he saw, just for an instant, a sort of frightened and bewildered remorse in his wife’s foolish face, and he desperately foreknew himself to be upon the brink of comforting her.
“Accursed woman!” Miramon cried out, “now indeed has your common-sense completed what your nagging began! This is the doom of all artists that have to do with well-conducted women. Truly has it been “said that the marriage-bed is the grave of art. Well, I have put up with much from you, but this settles it, and I will not put up with your infatuation for a reputable and common-sense way of living, and I wish you were in the middle of next week!”
With that he caught the soiled scouring-rag from the hand of Gisele, and he slapped at one of the remaining bees, and he brushed it from the black cross. And this bee departed as the other had done.
Chapter XVI. Concerns The Pleiades And A Razor
WHEN this bright bee had departed as the other had done before him, then Toupan moved his wings, and he made ready to overlook the work of Koshchei: and in the instant that Toupan moved, the worlds in that part of the universe were dislodged and ran melting down the sky. It was Gauracy who swept all the fragments together and formed a sun immeasurably larger than that which he had lost, and an obstreperous mad conflagration which did not in anything conform with the handiwork of Koshchei.
And Gauracy then shouted friendlily to Toupan, “Now is the hour of thy release, O Toupan! now is the hour of the return of the Old Ones, now is the hour that Koshchei falls!”
Toupan answered: “The hour of my release is not yet come. But this is the hour of my overlooking.”
Then Gauracy bellowed, as he swept yet other worlds into the insatiable flaming of his dreadful sun, “I kindle for you a fine light to see by!”
And now the gods who were worshiped in those worlds which remained, these also cried out to Koshchei. For now, in the intolerable glare of Gauracy’s malefic sun, they showed as flimsy and incredible inventions. And the gods knew, moreover, that, if ever the last remaining bee were freed from the cross, the dizain of the Pleiades would be completed, and Toupan would be released, and the power of the Old Ones would return; and that a day foretold by many prophets, the day upon which every god must shave with a razor that is hired, would be at hand; and that, with the falling about of this very dreadful and ignominious necessity, the day of the divine contentment of all gods in any place would be over, forever.
Meanwhile the eyes of Toupan went forth, among the Star Warriors and the Wardens of the Worlds. It was They who, under Koshchei, had shaped the earths and the waters, and who had knit together the mountains, and who had fashioned all other things as they are. It was They who had woven the heavens, and who had placed the soul of every god within him. They were the makers of the hours and the creators of the days and the kindlers of the fires of life, and They were powers whose secret and sustaining names were not known to any of the gods of men. Yet now the eyes of Toupan went among the Star Warriors and the Wardens of the Worlds, and Toupan regarded them one by one; and wheresoever the old eyes of Toupan had rested there remained no world nor any Warden watching over it, but only, for that instant, a very little spiral of thin sluggish vapor.
And those of Them who were not yet destroyed cried piteously to Koshchei, who had devised Them and who had placed Them in Their stations to keep eternal watchfulness over all things as they are.
Now there is no denying that, in the manner of artists, Koshchei had cleared his throat, and had fidgeted a little, in the while that Toupan was overlooking Koshchei’s handiwork. But when the Wardens and the Star Warriors cried out to him for aid, then Koshchei, lifting never a finger, said only:
“Eh, sirs, have patience! For I made all things as they are; and I know now it is my safeguard that I made them in two ways.”
Chapter XVII. Epitome of Marriage
But Miramon, in his ivory tower upon Vraidex, knew only that his wish had been granted, for Gisele had gone just as a bubble breaks, and she was now somewhere in the middle of next week.
“And a good riddance, too!” said Miramon. He turned to Ninzian, that smiling large philanthropist. “For did you ever see the like of such outrageousness as her outrageousness!”
“Oh, very often,” replied this Ninzian, who too was married. Then Ninzian asked, “But what will you do next?”
Said Miramon, “I shall wish to have back the secret and the solace of my art.”
But to Ninzian this seemed less obvious. “You can do that, readily enough, by releasing the third bee which my devices have procured for you out of the land of Assyria. Yes, Miramon, you can in this manner get back your art, but thus also you will be left defenseless against the doom which is appointed. So, friend, by my advice you will, instead, employ the cantrap as you at first intended, and you will secure for yourself eternal life by wishing that Flamberge may vanish from this world of men.”
And Ninzian waved toward the sword with which according to the foreordainment of the Norns great Miramon Lluagor was to be killed by his own son.
The fallen magician answered, “Of what worth is life if it breed no more dreams?” And Miramon said also, “I wonder, Ninzian, just where is the middle of next week?”
Sleek Ninzian spoke, secure in his peculiar erudition. “It will fall upon a Wednesday, but nobody knows whence. Olybrius states it is now in Aratu, where all that enter are clothed like a bird with wings, and have only dust and clay to eat in the unchanging twilight—”
“She would not like that. She had always a delicate digestion.”
“Whereas Asinius Pollio suggests, not unplausibly, that it waits beyond Slid and Gjold, in the blue house of Nostrand, where Sereda bleaches the unborn Wednesdays, under a roof of plaited serpents—”
“Dear me!” said Miramon, disconsolately rubbing at his nose, “now that would never suit a woman with an almost morbid aversion to reptiles!”
“—But Sosicles declares it is in Xibalba, where Zipacna and Cabrakan play at handball, and the earthquakes are at nurse.”
“She would be none the happier there. She does not care for babies, she would not for one moment put up with a fractious young earthquake, and she would make things most uncomfortable for everybody. Ninzian,”—and Miramon cleared his throat,—“Ninzian, I begin to fear I have been a little hasty.”
“It is the frailty of all you artists,” the man of affairs replied. “So my advice, about Flamberge, is not to the purpose?”
“Well, but, you see,” said Miramon, very miserably, “or perhaps I ought to say that, while of course, still, when you come to look at it more carefully, Ninzian, what I really mean is that the fact is, as it seems to me—”
“The fact is,” Ninzian returned, with a depressed but comprehending smile, “you are a married man. So am I. Well, then, you have one wish remaining, and no more. You can at will desire to have back again the control of your lost magics or you can have back your wife to control you—”
“Yes,” Miramon agreed, forlornly.
“And indeed,” sleek Ninzian went on, with that glib optimism reserved for the dilemmas of one’s friends, “indeed it is in many ways a splendid thing for you to have the choice clear cut. Nobody can succeed alike at being an artist and a husband. I hold no brief for either career, because I think that art is an unreasonable mistress, and I think also that a wife is amenable to the same description. But I am certain no man can serve both,”
Miramon sighed. “That is true. There is no marriage for the maker of dreams, because he is perpetually creating finer women than earth provides. The touch of flesh cannot content him who has arranged the shining hair of angels and modeled the breasts of the sphinx. The woman that shares his bed is there of course, much as the blanket or the pillow is there, and each is an aid to comfort. But what has the maker of dreams, what has that troubled being who lives inside the creature which a mirror reveals to him, to do with women? At best, these animals provide him with models to be idealized beyond the insignificant truth, somewhat as I have made a superb delirium with only a lizard to start on. And at worst, these animals can live through no half-hour without meddling where they do not understand.”
Now Miramon kept silence. He was fingering the magic colors with which he blazoned the first sketches of his dreams. Here was his white, which was the foam of the ocean made solid, and the black he had wrung from the burned bones of nine emperors. Here was the yellow slime of Scyros, and crimson cinnabar is composed of the mingled blood of mastodons and dragons, and here was the poisonous blue sand of Puteoli. And Miramon, who was no longer an all-accomplished artist, thought of that loveliness and horror which, but a moment ago, he had known how to evoke with these pigments, he who had no longer any power to lend life to his designs, and who kept just skill enough, it might be, to place the stripings on a barber’s pole.
Then Miramon Lluagor said: “It would be a sad happening if I were never again to sway the sleeping of men, and grant them yet more dreams of distinction and clarity, of beauty and symmetry, of tenderness and truth and urbanity. For whether they like it or not, I know what is good for them, and it affords to their starved living that which they lack and ought to have.”
And Miramon said also: “Yet it would be another sad happening were my poor wife permitted eternally to scold the shivering earthquakes in the middle of next week. What does it matter that I do not especially like her? There is a great deal about myself that I do not like, such as my body’s flabbiness and the snub nose which makes ludicrous the face I wear: but do I hanker to be transformed into a sturdy man-at-arms? do I view the snout of an elephant with covetousness? Why, but, Ninzian, I am astonished at your foolish talking! What need have I of perfection? what would I have in common with anybody who was patient with me and thought highly of my doings?”
Miramon shook his head, with some sternness. “No, Ninzian, it is in vain that you pester me with your continuous talking, for I am as used to her shortcomings as I am to my own shortcomings. I regard her tantrums with the resignation I extend to inclement weather. It is unpleasant. All tempests are unpleasant. Ah, yes, but if life should become an endless clear May afternoon we could not endure it, we who have once been lashed by storms would cross land and sea to look for snow and pelting hail. Just so, to have Gisele about keeps me perpetually fretted; but now that she is gone I am miserable. No, Ninzian, you may spare your talking, you need say no more, for I simply could not put up with being left to live in comfort.”
Ninzian had heard him through without impatience, because they were both married men. Now Ninzian, shrugging, said, “Then do you choose, Miramon, for your wife and no more dreams, or for your art and loneliness?”
“Such wishing would be over-wasteful,” Miramon replied, as he dusted away the third bee. “Since I can bear to give up neither my wife nor my art, no matter how destroyingly they work against each other, I wish for everything to be put back just where it was an hour ago.”
The third bee flew in a wide circle, and returned to the cross. The knowledge which Miramon had lost was put back into his mind.
Chapter XVIII. Koshchei Is Vexed
EVEN as the knowledge which Miramon had lost was put back into his mind, just so did life reawaken in all else which had perished in that hour. Gauracy’s baleful sun was gone, and the dislodged and incinerated worlds, with all their satellites, were revolving trimly in their proper places, undamaged. And the gods who were worshiped in these worlds now made a celestial rejoicing, because once more there were only seven Pleiades. The Old Ones had sunk back into their sleeping; things, for the while, stayed as they are; and even Toupan now seemed harmless enough. . . .
For the eyes were closed wherein lurked tireless and unappeasable malignity, and a remembrance of all that which was before Koshchei’s time, and an undivulged foreknowledge which withered Toupan shared with brisk little Koshchei alone. Nobody could speak certainly about this: yet it was whispered that both of these well knew that, in the end, the Old Ones would return, and that only Toupan knew in what manner and at what hour. . . .
But above the gods who in the multitudinous heavens and paradises were now rejoicing over their regained omnipotence, far higher than these junketing gods stood the Star Warriors and the Wardens of the Worlds, each in the appointed place, and each once more set in eternal watchfulness over all things as they are. And the Star Warriors and the Wardens of the Worlds said, soberly, to Koshchei:
“Sir, your protection is established. You are protected as the guide of the things which exist and of the things which are not yet created. You are protected as a dweller in the realm which goes round about Those who are over Hidden Things. For now the Old Ones sleep again, and not any new thing anywhere shall ever gain the. mastery over you, who are our only master: and all things as they are stay yours forever.”
Koshchei replied, rather absent-mindedly: “What need was there to worry? Did I not make my creatures male and female? and did I not make the tie which is between them, that cord which I wove equally of love and of disliking? Eh, sirs, but that is a strong cord, and though all things that are depend upon it, my weaving holds.”
They answered him, “Your weaving holds, sir, assuredly: yet you do not rejoice, as we rejoice.”
“Why, but,” said Koshchei, “but I do so hate flat incivility! And after overlooking my handiwork, the fellow might very well have said something intelligent. Nobody minds an honest criticism. Just to say nothing—and in that rather marked way, you know,—is stupid!”
For Koshchei also, they relate, was, in his fashion, an artist.
Chapter XIX. Settlement: In Full
But that lesser artist, Miramon Lluagor—once more a great magician, in his ivory tower, and once more preeminent among the dream-makers of this world,—knew nothing of how he had played havoc with the handiwork of Koshchei who made things as they are. Miramon only knew that upon the black stone cross were buzzing fretfully three bees, who had now no luster and no power to grant wishes to anybody; and that his wife Gisele also was making noises, not fretfully but in a tearing rage.
“A pretty trick that was to play on me!” she said. “Oh, but I pity the woman that is married to an artist!”
“But why do you perpetually meddle without understanding?” he replied, as fretful as the accursed bees, as angry as the intolerable woman. . . .
And they went on very much as before. . . .
They went on very much as before, because, as Miramon put it, the Norns, for all their strength, had not been able to contrive for him any doom more inflexible than he, like every other married man who holds his station unmurderously, had contrived out of his weakness. The way of Miramon Lluagor’s death, said he, was set and inescapable, because he was one of the Leshy: but the way of his life he blushed to find quite equally set and inescapable, because he was also a husband. In brief, he detested this woman; she pestered his living, she hampered his art, and with her foolish notions about his art she had, now, frittered away his immortality: but he was rather fond of her, too, and he was used to her.
Miramon, in any event, fell back upon his famous saying that the secret of a contented marriage is to pay particular attention to the wives of everybody else; and from this axiom he derived what comfort he could. He might, he reflected, have been married to that sallow, crippled, flat-faced Niafer, who in the South was upsetting all the familiar customs of Poictesme with her unrelenting piety, and who was actually imposing upon her associates that sort of reputable and common-sense way of living which Gisele at worst only talked about. Niafer, indeed, seemed to be becoming wholly insane; for very curious tales reached Miramon as to the nonsense which this woman, too, was talking, about—of all mad fancies!—how that cock-eyed husband of hers was to return by and by, in another incarnation. ... Or Miramon, instead of his lost comrade Kerin of Nointel, might have been married to that chit of a Saraide who had managed so artfully to dispose of her husband, in some undetected manner or another, and who was now providing poor Kerin with such a host of extra-legal successors. . . . Yes, Miramon would reflect (in Gisele’s absence), he might—conceivably at least,—have been worse off. Yet, a bit later, with her return, this possibility would seem more and more dubious.
And—in fine,—they went on very much as before. And Miramon Lluagor was preeminent among the dream-makers of this world, and he was a dreaded lord: but in his own home he was not dreaded, and he, very certainly, was not preeminent.
Then, when the time was due, fell the appointed doom of Miramon, and he was slain by his son Demetrios with the charmed sword Flamberge. For this thing, people say, had long ago been agreed upon by the Norns, who weave the fate of all that live: to them it could not matter that Miramon Lluagor was preeminent among the dream-makers of this world, because the Norns do not ever sleep: and no magician, through whatsoever havoc and upsetment of Koshchei’s chosen economy, has, in the end, power to withstand the Norns.
Then Demetrios went far oversea into Anatolia; and he married Callistion there, and in yet other ways he won a fine name for his hardihood and shrewdness. And in the years that followed, he prospered (for a while) without any check, and, because of a joke about Priapos, he pulled down one emperor of heathenry, to raise up in his stead another emperor with superior taste in humor. Demetrios held wide power and much land, and was a ruthless master over all the country between Quesiton and Nacumera. He was supreme there, as upon Vraidex Miramon Lluagor had been supreme. It was the boast of Demetrios that he feared nobody in any of the worlds beneath or above him, and that boast was truthful.
Yet none of these preeminencies could avail Demetrios, when the time was due, and when the doom of Demetrios fell in that manner and that instant which the Norns had agreed upon, and when he who had put his father out of life with the great sword was, in his turn, put out of life with a small wire. For this thing also, people say, had been appointed by Urdhr and Verdandi and Skuld as they sat weaving under Yggdrasill beside the carved door of the Sylan’s House: and to this saying the didactic like to add that no warrior, through whatsoever havoc and upsetment of human economy, has, in the end, power to withstand the Norns.
Now it was this Demetrios who married, among many other women, Dom Manuel’s oldest daughter Melicent, as is narrated in her saga.
BOOK FOUR
COTH AT PORUTSA
“Their land also is full of idols: they worship the work of their own hands.”
—Isaiah ii, 8
Chapter XX. Idolatry of an Alderman
Now the tale is again of Coth, and of how Coth went blustering westward to fetch back Dom Manuel into his Poictesme, which, as Coth asserted, skinny women and holy persons and lying poets were making quite uninhabitable. It is probable that Coth thus more or less obliquely referred to the Countess Niafer herself, as well as to Holy Holmendis and to pious Ninzian and to the most virtuous but not plump Madame Balthis, the wife of Ninzian, since these three nowadays were the advisers of Dame Niafer in everything. It is certain that, even in these early days, Dom Manuel had already become a legend; and the poets everywhere were rehearsing his valor and his wisdom and his noble excellencies in all the affairs of this life.
But Coth of the Rocks twirled his mustachios, and he disapprovingly shook his great bald head, and he went very quickly away from all these reformings of Poictesme and of the master whom his heart remembered and desired. Coth of the Rocks traveled westward, without any companion, faring alone by land and sea. Coth broke his journeying, first, at Sorcha, and he companioned there with Credhe of the Red Brown Hair: he went thence to the Island of Hunchback Women, and it was in that island (really a peninsula) he had so much pleasure, and deadly trouble too, with a harlot named Bar, the wife of Ogir. But in neither of these realms did Coth get any sure news of Dom Manuel, although there was a rumor of such a passing. Then, at Kushavati, in a twilit place of rustling leaves and very softly chiming little bells, Coth found, with the aid of Dame Abonde, the book of maps by which he was thereafter to be guided.
Coth journeyed, in fine, ever westward, with such occasional stays to rest or copulate or fight as were the natural concomitants of travel. In some lands he found only ill-confirmed reports that such a person as Dom Manuel had passed that way before him: in other lands there was no report. But Coth had reason, after what Abonde had showed him in that secluded place under the rustling leaves, to put firm faith in his maps.
So he went on, always westward, with varied and pleasant enough adventures befalling him, at Leyma, and Skeaf, and Adrisim. He had great sorrow at Murnith, in the Land of Marked Bodies, on account of a religious custom there prevalent and of the girl Felfel Rhasif Yedua; and—at Ran Reigan,—the one-legged Queen Zelele held him imprisoned for a while, in her harem of half a hundred fine men. Yet, in the main, Coth got on handily, in part by honoring the religious customs everywhere, but chiefly by virtue of his maps and his natural endowments. These last enabled him amply to deal with all men who wanted a quarrel and with all women whom he found it expedient to placate and to surprise: and as far as to Lower Yarold, and even to Khaikar the Red, his maps served faithfully to guide him, until Coth perforce went over the edge of the last one, into a country which was not upon any map; and in this way approached, though he did not know it, to the city of Porutsa.
Thus, it was near Porutsa that Coth found a stone image standing in a lonely field which was overgrown with pepper plants. Among these plants, charred thigh-bones and ribs and other put-by appurtenances of mankind lay scattered everywhither rather dispiritingly: and before the image were the remnants of yet other burnt offerings, upon a large altar carved everywhere with skulls.
This image represented a seated and somewhat scantily clothed giant carved of black stone: from its ears hung rings of gold and silver; its face was painted with five horizontal yellow stripes; and a great gleaming jewel, which might or might not be an emerald, was set in its navel. Such was the limited apparel of this giant’s person. But in the right hand of the image were four arrows, and the left hand held a curious fan made of a mirror surrounded by green and yellow and blue feathers. Coth had never before seen such an idol as this.
“However, in this unknown region,” Coth reflected, “there are, doubtless, a large number of unknown gods. They may not amount to much, but Dame Abonde has taught me that in religious matters a traveler loses nothing by civility.”
Coth knelt. He tendered fealty, and he prayed to this image for protection in his search for his lost liege-lord. Coth heard a voice saying:
“Your homage is accepted. Your prayers are granted.”
Coth looked upward, still kneeling. Coth saw that the huge black image regarded him with living eyes, and that the mouth of this image was now of moving purple flesh.
“Your prayers are granted, full measure,” the image continued, “because you are the first person of your pallid color and peculiar clothing to come over the edge of the map and worship me. Such enterprise in piety ought to be rewarded: and I shall reward it, prodigally. Bald-headed man with long mustaches, I promise you, upon the oath of the Star Warriors, even by the Word of the Tzitzi-Mime, that you shall rule over all the country of Tollan. So that is settled: and now do you tell me who you are.”
“I am Coth of the Rocks, the Alderman of St. Didol. I followed Dom Manuel of Poictesme, about whom the poets nowadays are telling so many outrageous lies. I followed him, that is, until he rode westward to a far place beyond the sunset. Now I still follow him, since to do that was my oath: and I have come into the West, not to rule over this outlandish place, but to get news of my master, and to fetch him back into Poictesme.”
“You will get no such news from me, for I never heard of this Manuel.”
“Why, then, whatever sort of deity can you be!”
“I am Yaotl, the Capricious Lord, the Enemy upon Both Sides. This is my Place of the Dead: but I have everywhere power in this land, and I shall have all power in this land when once I have driven out the Feathered Serpent.”
“Then let me tell you, Messire Yaotl, you might very profitably add to this power at least such knowledge as is common to the run of civilized persons. It is not becoming in any deity never to have heard of my liege-lord Dom Manuel, who was the greatest of all captains, and who founded the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion, of which I had the honor to be a member. Such ignorance appears strange in anybody. In a deity it is perfectly preposterous.”
“I was only saying—”
“Stop interrupting me! What sort of god are you, who break in upon the devotional exercises of people when they are actually upon their knees! It is my custom, sir, whenever I go into a foreign country, to be civil to the gods of that country; and I am thus quite familiar with the behavior appropriate to a deity in such circumstances. When people pray to you, you ought to exhibit more repose of manner and a certain well-bred reticence.”
“Oh, go away!” said the image of Yaotl, “and stop lecturing me! Go up into Porutsa yonder, where the Taoltecs live, and where it may be they have heard of your Dom Manuel, since the Taoltecs also are fools and worship the Feathered Serpent. And when you are emperor over the country of Tollan, do you come back and pray to me more civilly!”
Coth rose up from his kneeling, in strong indignation. “I tendered fealty in the liberal sense appropriate to religious matters. It was but a bit of politeness recommended by Dame Abonde, and I did not mean a word of it—”
The image replied: “Nobody cares what you meant, it matters only what you have sworn. I have accepted your sworn homage; and the affair is concluded.”
“—And upon no terms,” Coth continued, “would I consent to be emperor of this outlandish place. For the rest, do you instantly tell me what you meant by saying ‘the Taoltecs also are fools.’ because I do not understand that ‘also.’”
“But,” said the image, wearily, “but you will have to be emperor, now that I have sworn it upon the oath of the Star Warriors. I do not deny that I spoke hastily: even so, I did say it, with an unbreakable oath; and, here likewise, the affair is concluded.”
Coth replied, “Stuff and nonsense!”
“You are now,” continued the image of Yaotl, “under my protection: and as a seal of this, I must put upon you three refrainments. We will make them very light ones, since this is but a matter of form. I will order you to refrain from such things as no sane person would ever dream of doing in any event; and thus nobody will be discommoded.”
Coth cried out, “Bosh!”
“So you must not infringe upon divine privileges by going naked in public; you must avoid any dealings with green peppers such as you see over yonder, for the reason that they are sacred to my worthless stepson, the Flower Prince; and the third refrainment which I now put upon you I shall not bother to reveal, because you are certain to find this abstinence even more easy to observe than the others. I have spoken.”
“I know well enough that you have spoken! But you have spoken balderdash. For if you for one moment think I am going to be bullied by you and your idiotic refrainments—!”
But Coth saw that the image had closed its eyes, and had tranquilly turned back in all to stone, and was not heeding him any longer.
Chapter XXI. The Profits of Pepper Selling
Coth was goaded, by such incivility, from indignation into a fine rage. He addressed the idol at some length, in terms which no person, whether human or divine, could have construed as worshipful. He gathered from the plants about him an armful of green peppers, he took off all his clothes, and he left them there in a heap upon the altar that was carved with skulls. He went up into the city of Porutsa stark naked and sat down in the market-place, crying, “Who will buy my green peppers!”
None of the Taoltecs hindered him, because the hill people, from Uro and Hipal and Thiapas, were used to come into Porutsa almost thus lightly clad; and it was evident enough that this fair-skinned stranger, with the bare, great, round, pink head, came unarmed with anything except the equipments of nature.
Coth sold his peppers, and went striding about the market-place inquiring for news of Dom Manuel, but none of these charcoal- and copper-colored persons seemed ever to have heard of the gray champion. When the market for that day was over, Coth went up into the hills about Tzatzitepec, in company with a full-bosomed, brown-eyed, delicious girl who had been selling watercresses in the market-place: she proved brisk; and Coth spent four days with her to their mutual contentment.
On the fifth day he returned, still naked as his mother bore him, to the market-place in Porutsa; and there he again sold green peppers, so that this brow-beating Yaotl might have no least doubt as to the value which Coth set on this god’s patronage.
And all went well enough for a while. But by and by seven soldiers came into the market-place, and so to where Coth had just disposed of the last bunch of peppers; and the leader of these soldiers said, “Our Emperor desires speech with you.”
“Well,” Coth returned, “I am through with my day’s work, and I can conveniently spare him a moment or two.”
He went affably with these soldiers, and they led him to the emperor Vemac. “Who are you?” said the Emperor, first of all, “and what is your business in Porutsa?”
“I am an outlander called Coth of the Rocks, a dealer in green peppers, and I came hither to sell my green peppers.”
“But why do you come into my city wearing no blanket and no loin-cloth and, in fact, nothing whatever except a scowl?”
“That is because of a refrainment which was put upon me by an impudent black rascal who carried arrows and a fan with a mirror in it, and who called himself Yaotl.”
“Blessed be the name of that god!” said the pious Emperor Vemac, “although we worship the Feathered Serpent, and not the Capricious Lord.”
Then Vemac went on to explain that he had an only daughter, who five days earlier had observed Coth, first from the windows of the palace, and later had gone down veiled into the market-place in order to regard at closer quarters this virtually pink person. She had returned, astounded and in some excitement, to demand of her father that he give her this queerly colored and greatly gifted seller of peppers to be her husband. Vemac granted her request, because he never denied his daughter anything, and ardently desired a grandson: but when they sent to look for the pink-colored pepper vendor with the great and hairless, pink-colored head, he was nowhere to be found.
The Princess Utsume had taken this disappointment, with its attendant delay of her nuptials, rather hard. In fine, said Vemac, the girl had fallen sick with love, six physicians had been able to do nothing for her, and nobody could heal her, she declared, except that beautifully tinted and in all ways magnificent pepper vendor.
“Well, you must tell the poor girl that I already have a wife,” said Coth, “even over and above an understanding with a seller of watercresses.”
“I do not,” Vemac submitted, “see what that has to do with it. In Tollan a man is permitted as many wives as he cares to have, within, of course, reason.”
“Marrying does not come under the head of reason,” said Coth.
“Then, as the husband of my only child,” said Vemac, “you will rule over Tollan along with me.”
“Oh! oh!” said Coth. For, since he had punctiliously disobeyed Yaotl in everything, he knew this must be a coincidence, and it seemed a very strange coincidence.
“And, finally,” said Vemac, “if you are hard-headed about this really excellent opening in life for a green pepper vendor, we shall have to persuade you.”
“But how,” asked Coth, reservedly, “how would you persuade me?”
Vemac raised his brown hand. His persuaders came, masked, and bringing with them their implements and a stalwart male slave. They demonstrated their methods of persuasion; and after what remained of the slave was quiet at last, Coth also for a while remained quiet.
“Of two evils,” Coth said then, “one should choose the more familiar. I will marry.”
He let them take him and bathe him and trim his long mustachios and dye his body black and perfume him and set upon his great bald head a coronal of white hens’ feathers. A red cloth was wrapped about his loins, upon his feet a priest put painted sandals with little golden bells fastened to them, and about Coth’s scented body was placed a mantle of yellow netting very beautifully fringed.
“Now,” said Vemac, “when you have had supper, do you go in there and comfort my daughter in her sickness!”
Coth obeyed, and found the princess—who proved to be in an unmitigatedly brunette fashion a most charming girl,—recumbent and weeping in a solidly built double-bed. Coth hung upon a peg in the wall his coronal of white hens’ feathers, he coughed, and he looked again at the weeping princess.
Coth said: “By such an attachment to me, my dear, I am touched. An attachment to me, in this land of half-men, is indicative of sound sense.” He coughed again, perhaps to hide his emotion, and he added: “An attachment to me is moving. So do you move over!”
She, still weeping, made room for him. He sat down upon the bed and began to comfort her. She in turn began to express her appreciation of this comforting. He hung upon a peg in the wall a mantle of yellow netting, and a red loin-cloth.
In the morning no trace whatever remained of the Princess Utsume’s illness except a great and agreeable fatigue. And in the forenoon Coth was married to the Princess Utsume and escorted to the temple of the Feathered Serpent, and there given the imperial name Toveyo, and he was crowned as the co-ruler along with Vemac over all Tollan.
Yet afterward a rather curious ceremony—called, as his brown loving bride informed Toveyo, the Feast of Brooms,—was enacted by the clergy and the entire populace of Porutsa, in order to ensure for the marriage of their princess fertility.
“I feel that this ceremony is superfluous,” Utsume said, still yawning. “But this ceremony was divinely ordained by the Goddess of Dirt; and I feel, too, my wonderful pink darling, that it is becoming for persons of our exalted rank to encourage all true religious sentiment, and generally to consent that the will of the gods be done.”
Meanwhile these rites had opened with the beheading of a quite handsome young woman, from whose body the skin was then removed, in two sections, like a horrid corselet and trousers. As such they were worn each by a priest during the rest of the ceremony: and about this Feast of Brooms the less said, the better, but to the newly christened Toveyo a great deal of it seemed morbid and even a bit immodest.
Chapter XXII. Toveyo Dances
Toveyo’s first official act was to send ambassadors to the kings in that neighborhood,—to Cocox and Napaltzin and Acolhua, the second of that name,—but none of these could give him any news of Dom Manuel. Meanwhile Coth cherished his wife and dealt with other persons also according to his nature.
Of his somewhat remarkable behavior in the war with Cacat and Coat, of how in one of his rages he destroyed a bridge with all the people on it, and of how he killed ten of his subjects with a gardener’s hoe, there is in this place no need to speak. But it came about unavoidably that, before Coth’s honeymoon was over, a deputation from the Taoltecs was beseeching Vemac to have this son-in-law of his unostentatiously assassinated.
“For there is really,” they said, “no standing him and his tantrums.”
“Such,” Vemac replied, “has been my own experience. I am afraid, though, that if we kill him my daughter will be put out, for she seems to have discovered about him some feature or another feature of great and unfailing attractiveness.”
“It is better, majesty, that she should weep than that we all be driven mad. The man’s pride and self-conceit are unbearable.”
“Nobody knows that better than I do. He hectors me in my own palace, where I am not accustomed to be overrun by anybody except my daughter. In such a position we must be politic. We must first see that this Toveyo is belittled in my daughter’s eyes. Afterward, if I know her as well as I think I do, she will consent to let us get rid of him.”
One of the darker Taoltecs, who called himself Tal-Cavepan, said then:” This all-overbearing Toveyo is now in the market-place. Follow me, and you shall see him belittled in his wife’s eyes and in the eyes of everybody!”
They followed, inquiring among themselves who might be this huge Tal-Cavepan, that he spoke so boldly. Nobody remembered having seen him before. Meanwhile Tal-Cavepan went up to where Coth and his royal wife Utsume were chaffering with a Yopi huckster over some melons. Tal-Cavepan clapped his hand to Coth’s shoulder and bore down with this hand. Coth became smaller and smaller, so that presently Tal-Cavepan stooped and picked up the nuisance whom they called Toveyo, and thus displayed to the Taoltecs their blustering oppressor as a pink midget not more than four inches high, standing there in the palm of Tal-Cavepan’s black hand.
“Dance, majesty! dance, dreadful potentate!” said Tal-Cavepan. And Coth danced for them. All the while that he danced, he swore very horribly, and his little voice was like the cheeping of a young bird.
The people crowded about him, because no such wonder-working had ever before been seen in Porutsa. Tal-Cavepan cried merrily to Vemac the Emperor, “Is not this capering son-in-law of yours belittled in his wife’s eyes and in the eyes of everybody?”
Vemac called out to his guards, “Kill this sorcerer!”
His soldiers obeyed the Emperor. But the Princess Utsume caught up her tiny husband and thrust him into the bosom of her purple gown, out of harm’s way, the while that Tal-Cavepan was being enthusiastically despatched.
Chapter XXIII. Regrettable Conduct of a Corpse
Now the huge body of Tal-Cavepan lay where it had fallen, and it instantly began to corrupt, and from it arose a most astounding stench. “Take that devil carrion out of my city!” Vemac commanded his guards, “lest it breed a pestilence in Porutsa.”
But when they attempted again to obey the Emperor, they found the body was so heavy that no force could raise it from the ground. So the Taoltecs of necessity left this corpse in their marketplace. And a pestilence, in the form of a small yellow whirlwind, went stealthily about the city; and many hundreds died.
Those who yet remained in life, now that they were not able to help themselves, prayed for help from the Feathered Serpent, and, at each of the seven holy stations, sacrificed to him suckling children decked with bands and streamers of properly colored paper. But the pestilence continued.
The Taoltecs then made a yet handsomer oblation, of plump and really valuable slaves and of captive warriors, each one of whom had been duly painted with blue-and-gilt stripes; and they offered the hearts of all these to their older and somewhat outmoded gods, to the Slayer with the Left Hand and to the Maker of Sprouts. Then, as the pestilence grew worse, they became desperate, and they experimentally decapitated and flayed eight of the lesser nobility in honor of the new god called Yaotl, the Capricious Lord, the Enemy upon Both Sides.
Forthwith the dead Tal-Cavepan raised up what was left of his countenance, and he said: “Fasten to me ropes woven of black and of red cords, you worshipers of the Feathered Serpent! And when fifty of you have done so-and-so,”—he stipulated very exactly what they were to do, each to the other,—“then do you drag my body to the Place of the Dead, which is Yaotl’s place; and there let my body be burned upon his altar. So shall this pestilence be ended.”
The Taoltecs obeyed. Fifty of them, forming a circle, shamefacedly did the abomination which was required, and fifty of them tugged at the particolored ropes: but still the corpse could not be moved. Tal-Cavepan spoke again, saying, “Fetch Vemac, that Emperor who decreed my death!”
Vemac came, and along with him came his daughter.
“Hail, Vemac, son of Imos, of the line of Chan, and of the race of Chivim!” said the corpse. “It appears that these puny sons of nobodies, enfeebled by their long worship of the Feathered Serpent, are not able—after one little act of homage to the Capricious Lord,—to remove me from this city. It is therefore necessary that their broad-shouldered and heavenly descended Emperor draw my body to the Place of the Dead, and there burn my body upon the altar of Yaotl.”
“What will become of me in the Place of the Dead?” Vemac asked.
The corpse smiled. “From that holy place the Emperor will depart on a long journey. His son-in-law will thereafter reign, as was foretold, over all Tollan. For the Emperor Vemac will be traveling afar, he will be journeying between two mountains and beyond the lair of the snake and the crocodile, even to the Nine Waters, which he will cross upon the back of a red dog. Nor will the Emperor Vemac ever return from that journeying.”
Vemac shivered a little. But he said:
“It is right that an emperor should die rather than his people perish. I will not degrade my body, but your body I will draw to the Place of the Dead; and I will abide what follows.”
Now Coth cried out, like the cheeping of a bird, from where he sat in the bosom of his wife’s gown. “This sort of talk is very well, but what assurance have we that this dung-pile is speaking the truth?”
The corpse answered: “To you, Toveyo, I swear that when the Emperor of Tollan has drawn my body to the Place of the Dead, the pestilence will cease: and I swear too that the Emperor will never return. Thus shall his son-in-law reign in his stead, precisely as was foretold.”
“Oho!” said Coth, “so it is as I thought, and nobody guarantees the affair but you! Well, now, upon my word, do you take us for buzzards or for scavengers, that we should in any way be bothering about what emanates from you! By what oath can garbage swear, that anybody should heed it!”
The great corpse stirred restively under the midget’s piping taunts. But the voice of Tal-Cave-pan said only, “I swear by the oath of the Star Warriors, even by the Word of the Tzitzi-Mime.”
“Ah, ah!” said Coth. “Put me down, dear little wife!” Then Coth, the very tiny pink mannikin, strutted toward the evil-smelling black corpse, and brown Utsume followed fondly after him. Coth posed in a majestic attitude, resting one elbow upon his wife’s instep, and twirling at his mustachios. Coth said:
“You have sworn to these things, Yaotl, by that unbreakable oath of yours which first started all this trouble. Very well! I am co-emperor of Tollan. I am as much emperor as Vemac is: and it is I who will draw you to the burning you have richly earned; and it is I whom your oath will prevent from ever returning into this infernal Porutsa, where such uncalled-for liberties are taken with a person’s size, and the people are very much too fond of dancing.”
“But,” said the corpse, “I meant the other emperor!”
Coth answered: “Bosh! Nobody cares what you meant, it matters only what you have sworn.”
“But,” said the corpse, “but, you pernicious pink shrimp—!”
Coth replied, “I do not deny that you spoke lightly: even so, you did swear it, by an unbreakable oath; and the affair is concluded.”
Coth caught at the parti-colored ropes with tiny fingers. But as he tugged, Coth began to grow. The harder he pulled, the greater became his stature, in order that the honor of the Capricious Lord might stay undisgraced, and Yaotl not be evicted from Porutsa by a midget. And now the corpse moved. Now the Taoltecs saw hauling doggedly at those black and red ropes a full-grown if somewhat short-legged champion, with a remarkably large and glistening pink head: before him went a little yellow whirlwind, and behind him dragged a dreadful black corruption. Thus Coth passed through the east gate of their city.
“The will of the gods be done!” said Vemac,—“especially when it is in every way a very good riddance.” Nobody dissented from his pious utterance. “Let the city gates be closed!” said Vemac then. “Put new bolts on them, lest that son-in-law of mine be coming back to us against the will of the gods. And you, my dear Utsume, since you alone are losing anything, howsoever happily, by this business, you shall have another husband, of less desultory dimensions, and, in fact, you may have as many husbands as you like, my darling, to raise up an heir for us in Porutsa and an emperor to come after me and rule over all Tollan.”
Utsume replied: “I have reason to believe, my revered father, that the matter of an heir has been attended to. I shall regret my pink Toveyo and his great natural gifts, which were to me as a tireless fountain of delights. And I shall honor his memory by always marrying somebody as near like him as it may be possible to find in this degenerate country. Meanwhile I quite agree with you that it is becoming for persons of our exalted rank to encourage all true religious sentiment, and generally to consent that the will of the gods be done.”
Chapter XXIV. Economics of Yaotl
In the Place of the Dead, Yaotl sat up and scratched his nose reflectively. The Capricious Lord had put off the putrid appearance of Tal-Cavepan. He now had the seeming which is his in the heaven called Tamo-Anchan: and as he sat opposite the black stone idol there was no difference between Yaotl and the image of Yaotl. At the god’s navel also shone a green jewel, his face was striped with yellow, and from his ears hung rings of gold and silver. Otherwise he wore nothing at all, but in one hand he carried arrows, and in his other hand was the scrying-stone with long feathers of three differing colors set about it.
“I will now,” said Yaotl, “reveal to you the third refrainment which was put upon you. It was that you must never obey my commands in anything.”
“That,” Coth replied, hotly, “is not a fair refrainment. It gives me no chance to treat you as you deserve. It is a refrainment which strikes directly at the doctrine of free will. It is a treacherous and vile refrainment! For if you will consider just for a moment,—you black and very dull-witted dancing-master!—even you will see that, by commanding any self-respecting person to do the exact contrary of your most absurd and tyrannical wishes—”
“I had considered that,” said Yaotl, dryly. “It was quite necessary I should retain some little protection for my real wishes in the lands over which I exercise divine power.” Now the Capricious Lord fell into a silence, out of which by and by bubbled a chuckle. “Well, you tricked me neatly enough, just now, when I was in train to make you the sole ruler over this country. And I was going to have a rather pleasant forenoon, too, with that Vemac! Still, I did make you an emperor: and I have kept in everything the oath of the Star Warriors. So the affair is concluded: I am released from my oath; and you may now return to that home of yours, where people have, in some unimaginable fashion, learned how to put up with you.”
“I shall not give over my searching of the West,” Coth answered, stubbornly, “until I have found my liege-lord, whom I intend to fetch back into Poictesme.”
“But that will never do, because we really must preserve hereabouts some sort of order and rule! And no man nor any deity can hope for actual ease in Tollan as long as you are blustering about like a bald-headed pink hornet. ... So do you let me think the thought of the Most High Place of the Gods, and take counsel with the will of Teotex-Calli. About this Dom Manuel of yours, for instance—”Yaotl sat quite still for a moment, thinking and looking into the scrying-stone. And his thought, which was the thought of the Most High Place of the Gods of Tollan, took form there very slowly as a gray smoke; and a little by a little this pallid smoke assumed the appearance of a tall gray man, clad all in silvery gray armor, and displaying upon his shield the silver emblem of Poictesme: and Coth knelt before his master, in Yaotl’s Place of the Dead.
Chapter XXV. Last Obligation Upon Manuel
“Coth” said the voice of Manuel, “most stubborn and perverse of all that served me! Coth, that must always serve me grudgingly, with so much of grumbling and of ill grace and of more valor! So, is it you, Coth, is it you, bald-headed, gruff growler!”
Coth answered: “It is I, master, who am come to fetch you back into Poictesme. And I take it very ill, let me tell you quite frankly, sir, that you should be expressing any surprise to see me in my place and about my proper duty! I follow, as my oath was, after the captain of the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion. They tell me that the fellowship is dissolved by your wife’s orders. Well, we both know what wives are. We know, moreover, that my oath was to follow you and to serve you. So I take it that such surprise in the matter comes from you most unbecomingly: and that much, master or not, I wish you distinctly to understand.”
And Manuel said: “You follow me across the world and over the world’s rim because of that oath, you pester these gods into summoning me from my last home, and then you begin forthwith to bluster at me! Yes, this is Coth, who serves me just as he did of old. What of the others who swore with you, Coth?”
“They thrive, master. They thrive, and they listen to small poets caterwauling about you, in those fine fiefs and castles which you gave them.”
“But you only, the least honored and the most rebellious of my barons, have followed me even to this far Place of the Dead! Coth, yet you also had your lands and your two castles.”
“Well, they will keep! What do you mean by hinting that anybody will dare in my absence to meddle with my property! Did I not pick up an empire here with no trouble at all! You are casting reflections, sir, upon my valor and ability, which, I must tell you quite frankly, and for your own good—!”
But Manuel was speaking, rather sadly. “Coth, that which you have done because of your given word was very nobly done, and with heroic unreason. Coth, you are heroic, but the others are wise.”
“Master, there was an oath.” Coth’s voice now broke a little. “Master, it was not only the oath. There was a great love, also, in a worsening land, where lesser persons ruled, and there remained nobody like Manuel.”
But Manuel said: “The others are wise. You follow still the Manuel who went about Poictesme. Now in Poictesme all are forgetting that Manuel, and our poets are busied with quite another Manuel, and my own wife has builded a large tomb for that other Manuel. . . Coth, that is always so. It is love, not carelessness, which bids us forget our dead, so that we may love them the more whole-heartedly. Unwelcome memories must be recolored and reshaped, the faults and blunders and the vexing ways which are common to all men must be put out of mind, and strange excellencies must be added, until the compound in nothing resembles the man that is dead. Such is love’s way, Coth, to keep love immortal. . . . Coth, oh, most bungling Coth!” said Manuel, very tenderly, “you lack the grace even to honor your loved dead in a decorous and wise fashion!”
“I follow the true Manuel,” Coth replied, “because to do that was my oath. There was involved, I cannot deny it, sir, some affection.” Coth gulped. “I, for the rest, am not interested in these newfangled, fine lies they are telling about you nowadays.”
Then there was silence. A small wind went about the pepper plants; and it seemed to whisper of perished things.
Now Manuel said: “Coth, I repeat to you, the others are wise. I have gone, forever. But another Manuel abides in Poictesme, and he is nourished by these fictions. Yearly he grows in stature, this Manuel who redeemed Poictesme from the harsh Northmen’s oppression and lewd savagery. Already this Manuel the Redeemer has become a most notable hero, without fear or guile or any other blemish: and with each generation he will increase in virtue. It is this dear Redeemer whom Poictesme will love and emulate: men will be braver because this Manuel was so very brave; and men, in one or another moment of temptation, will refrain from folly because his wisdom was so well rewarded; and, at least now and then, a few men will refrain from baseness, too, because all his living was stainless.”
“I,” Coth said, heavily, “do not recall this Manuel.”
“Nor do I recall him either, old grumbler. I can remember only one who dealt with each obligation as he best might, and that was always rather inefficiently. I remember many doings which I would prefer not to remember. And I remember a soiled struggler who reeled blunderingly from one half-solved riddle to another, thwarted and vexed, and hiding very jealously his hurt. . . . Well, it is better that such a person should be forgotten! And so I come from my last home to release you from your oath of service. I release you now, forever, dear Coth, and I now bid you do as all the others have done, and I now lay upon you my last orders. I order that you too forget me, Coth, as those have forgotten who might have known me better than you did.”
Coth said, with a queer noise which was embarrassingly like a sob: “I cannot forget the most dear and admirable of earthly lords. You are requiring, sir, the impossible.”
“Nevertheless, it is necessary that you too—bald realist!—should serve this other Manuel; and should forget, as your fellows have forgotten, that muddied and not ever quite efficient bull-necked struggler who has gone out of life and vigor and out of all persons’ memory. For now is come upon me my last obligation: it is that the figure which I made in the world shall not endure anywhere in any particle; and I accept this obligation also, and I submit to the common lot of all men, without struggling any longer.”
Coth said, “Return to us, dear master! return, and with the brave truth do you make an end of your people’s bragging and vain lies!”
But Manuel said: “No. For Poictesme has now, as every land must have, its faith and its legend, to lead men more nobly and more valorously than ever any living man may do. I, who was strong, had not the strength to beget this legend: but it has been created, Coth, it has been created by the folly of a woman and the wild babble of a frightened child; and it will endure.”
Coth replied, brokenly: “But, master, we are men of this world, a world made of dirt. Oh, my dear master, we pick our way about that dirt as we best can! The results need surprise nobody. The results are rather often, in a pathetic fashion, very admirable. Should this truth be disregarded for a vain-glorious dream!”
And Manuel answered: “The dream is better. For man alone of animals plays the ape to his dreams.”
Chapter XXVI. The Realist In Defeat
Here Yaotl ended thinking, and put aside the scrying-stone. And his thought was no longer of Manuel, and nothing was apparent in the Place of the Dead save Yaotl and the image of Yaotl and Coth standing there, in the apparel of an emperor, alone and small and remarkably subdued looking, between the vast black naked twins.
“It would appear,” said Yaotl, “that some men are no more tractable than are the gods when the affair concerns a keeping of oaths. And so Toveyo will be remembered in this land for a long while.”
Coth answered, rather drearily: “Yes; it is such fools as you and I, Messire Yaotl, who create unnecessary trouble everywhere. Well, I also am now released from my oath! And my master has spoken bitter good sense. The famousness of Manuel is but a dream and a loud jingling of words which happen to sound well together; it is a vanity and a great talking by his old wife and my gray peers: and yet, this nonsense, it may be, will hearten people, and will serve all people always, better than would the truth. And my faith is a foolishness, in that, because of a mere oath,—like your Star Warriors’ Word of the Thingumajigs, sir,—I have followed after the truth, across this windy planet upon which every person is nourished by one or another lie.”
“Each to his creed,” said Yaotl. “So do men choose between hope and despair.”
“Yet creeds mean very little,” Coth answered the dark god, still speaking almost gently. “The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. So I elect for neither label. I merely know that, at the end of all my journeying, there remains for me only to settle down, in my comfortable castles yonder in Poictesme, and to live contentedly with my fine-looking wife Azra and with my son Jurgen,—that innocent dear lad, whom his old hypocrite of a father will by and by, beyond any doubt, be exhorting to imitate a Manuel who never lived! And I know, too, that this is not the ending which I would have chosen for my saga. For I also, I suppose, must now decline into fat ease and high thinking, and I would have preferred the truth.” Coth meditated for a while: he shrugged: and he laughed without hilarity. “Capricious Lord, I pray you, what sort of creatures do men seem to the gods?”
“Let us think of more pleasant matters,” Yaotl replied. “For one, I am already thinking of the way in which I can most speedily get you, O insatiable grumbler, again to your far home, and out of my too long afflicted country.”
He turned his naked huge back toward Coth, as Coth supposed, to indulge in meditation. Coth was, however, almost instantly disabused, by a miracle.
BOOK FIVE
“MUNDUS VULT DECIPI”
“Not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. ’’
—Ephesians, i, 11
Chapter XXVII. Poictesme Reformed
Now the tale, for one reason and another, does not record the miracle which Yaotl performed. The Gods of Tollan were always apt to be misled by their queer notions of humor. Instead, the tale is of that Poictesme to which—borne by that favorable if malodorous wind which Yaotl provided and aimed,—Coth now perforce returned alone.
During the years of Coth’s absence there had been many changes. Nominally it was the Countess Niafer who ruled over this land, but she in everything seemed to be controlled by St. Holmendis of Philistia. About the intimacy between the Countess and her lean but sturdy adviser there was now no longer any gossip nor shrugging: people had grown used to this alliance, just as they were becoming reconciled to the reforms and the prohibitions which were its fruitage.
For now that Manuel was gone, Coth found, the times were changing for the better at a most uncomfortable rate. To Coth of the Rocks these days seemed to breed littler men, who, to be sure, if you cared about such kickshaws, lived more decorously than had lived their fathers, now that this overbearing St. Holmendis had come out of Philistia with his miracles: for this sacrosanct person would put up with no irregularity anywhere, and would hardly so much as tolerate the mildest form of wonderworking by anybody else. Even Guivric the Sage, who in the elder and more candid times had attended to all of Dom Manuel’s conjuring, now found it expedient to restrict his thaumaturgies to a wholly confidential practice.
For the rest, you could go for days now without encountering a warlock or a fairy; the people of Audela but rarely came out of the fire to make sport for and with mankind; and, while many persons furtively brewed spells at home, all traffic with spirits had to be conducted secretly. In fine, Poictesme was everywhere upon its most sedate behavior, because there was no telling when Holy Holmendis might be dealing with you for your own good; and the cowed province, just as Guivric had prophesied, stayed subject nowadays to a robustious saint conceived and nurtured and made holy in Philistia.
But yet another unsettling influence was abroad, nefariously laboring to keep everybody sanctimonious and genteel,—Coth said,—for over the entire land Coth found, and fretted under, the all-enveloping legend of Manuel the Redeemer. Coth found the land’s most holy place, now, to be that magnificent tomb which, in Coth’s absence, the Countess Niafer had reared at Storisende to the memory of her husband. And that this architectural perjury was handsome enough, even Coth admitted.
The intricately carved lower half of the sepulchre displayed eight alcoves in each of which was sealed the relic of one or another saint. The upper portion was the pedestal of a very fine equestrian statue of Dom Manuel with his lance raised, and in full armor, but wearing no helmet, so that the hero’s face was visible as he sat there, waiting, it seemed, and watching the North. Thus Manuel appeared to keep eternal guard against whatever enemy might dare molest the country which he had once redeemed from the Northmen. And there was never a more splendid looking champion than was this mimic Manuel, for the armor of this effigy was everywhere inset with jewels of every kind and color.
How Madame Niafer, who was, moreover, by ordinary a notably parsimonious person, had ever managed to pay for all these gems, nobody could declare with certainty, but it was believed that Holy Holmendis had provided them through one or another pious miracle. Coth of the Rocks voiced an exasperated aspersion that they were paste; and declared paste gems to be wholly appropriate to the mortuary imposture. In any event, the Redeemer of Poictesme had been accorded the most magnificent sepulchre these parts had ever known.
And Coth found all this jewelry and tortured stone-work, as a piece of art, to be wholly admirable, if you cared for such kickshaws. But as a tomb he considered it to lack at least one essential feature, in that it was empty.
Yet to most persons the emptiness of the great tomb was its peculiar sanctity. This spacious and proud glittering void was, to most persons, a perpetual reminder that Dom Manuel had ascended into heaven while yet alive, uncorrupted by the ignominy of death, and taking with him every heroic bone and bit of flesh, and every tiniest sinew, unmarred. That miracle—no more, to be sure, than the great Redeemer’s just due,—most satisfactorily and most awfully accounted for the lack of any corpse, as surely as the lack of a corpse was the firm proof of the miracle; sublime verities here interlocked: and that miracle had been set above cavil when it was first revealed, by Heaven’s wisdom, through the unsullied innocence of a little child, lest in this world, men and women being what they are, by any scoffer the testimony of an adult evangelist might be suspected.
Coth, after hearing these axioms,—so unshakably established as axioms during the seven years of Coth’s absence,—would look meditatively at his young Jurgen, to whose extreme youth and comparative innocence this revelation had been accorded. The boy was now nearing manhood, he fell short in many respects of the virtues appropriate to an evangelist, and he confessed to remembering very faintly now that tremendous experience of his infancy. That hardly mattered, though, Coth would reflect, when Poictesme at large was so industriously preserving and embroidering the tale which the dear brat had brought down from Upper Morven to explain away an overnight truancy from home.
“There is but one Manual,” Coth would remark, to himself, “and—of all persons!—my Jurgen is his prophet. That kickshaw creed seems to content everybody, now that the rogue no longer bothers to provide an excuse for staying out all night.”
Chapter XXVIII. Fond Motto of a Patriot
Everywhere, indeed, during the while of Coth’s vain adventuring after the real Manuel, the legend had grown steadily. Coth found it wholly maddening to hear of the infallible and perfect Redeemer with whom he had formerly lived in daily converse of a painstakingly quarrelsome and uncivil nature: and he found too that, of his confreres of the Silver Stallion who yet remained in Poictesme, Ninzian and Donander at least were beginning to lie about Manuel with as pious a lack of restraint as anybody. Guivric the Sage, of course, would chillily assent to whatsoever the best-thought-of people affirmed, because the self-centered old knave did not ever really bother about what other persons thought: whereas Holden and Anavalt sought, rather markedly, to turn the conversation to other topics. These aging champions had, in fine, encountered, in this legend as to their former glories and privileges, an unconquerable adversary with which they, each according to his nature, were of necessity compromising.
For Manuel the great Redeemer, who had first carnally redeemed Poictesme in battle with the Northmen, and later had redeemed Poictesme in more exalted fields, when at his passing he had taken all his people’s sins upon his proud gray head,—this Manuel was to return and was to bring again with him the golden age which, everybody now asserted, had existed under Manuel’s ruling of Poictesme. That was the sweet and reason-drugging allure of the legend, that was the prediction transmitted by Coth’s young scapegrace, who nowadays had averted so whole-heartedly from prophecy to petticoats. There was no sense in arguing against such vaticinatory fanfaronade, since it promised to all inefficient persons that which they preferred to believe in. Everywhere in the world people were expecting the latter coming of one or another kickshaw messiah who would remove the discomforts which they themselves were either too lazy or too incompetent to deal with; and nobody had anything whatever to gain by electing for peculiarity among one’s fellow creatures and a gloomier outlook.
Even Coth saw that. So the bald realist looked over his cellar and the later produce among his vassals in the way of likely girls; he gave such orders as seemed best in the light of both inspections; and he settled down as comfortably as might be to the task of making old bones in this land of madmen. He might at least look forward to the requisite creature comforts to be derived from these bins and amiable spry bedfellows. His Azra was no more trying than most wives; and his young Jurgen, after all, might turn out better than seemed probable.
So Coth in the end let maudlin imbeciles proclaim whatsoever they elected about the glorious stay upon earth and the second coming of Manuel the Redeemer, and Coth answered them at worst with inarticulate growlings. But that the old bear’s love for Poictesme remained unchanged was evinced by the zeal with which he now caused his two homes superabundantly to be adorned with the arms of Poictesme, so that at every turn your eye fell upon the rampant silver stallion and the land’s famous motto, Mundus vult decipi. Such patriotism showed, said everybody, that, for all his fault-finding, Coth’s heart was in the right place.
Chapter XXIX. The Grumbler’s Progress
And the tale is still of Coth, telling how he avoided Niafer’s court, and the decorums and the pieties which were in fashion there, and how he debauched reasonably in his own citadels.
He fought no more, but he did not lack for other pleasures. He hunted in the Forest of Acaire; and, in his rich coat of fox fur, he rode frequently with hounds and falcons about the plains of the Roigne. He maintained an excellent pit in which wild boars and bears contended and killed one another for his diversion. When the weather was warm he drank, and he amused himself at dice and backgammon, in his well-ordered orchard: in winter he sat snug under the carved hood of his huge fireplace; and it was thus that for his health’s sake he was cozily cupped and bled, while the Alderman of St. Didol drank quietly and insatiably.
Then, too, it amused Coth now and then to execute a vassal or so upon his handsome gallows,—that notorious gallows supported with four posts, although his rank as Alderman entitled him to only two posts,—because this bit of arrogance, in the matter of those two extra posts, was a continuous great source of anger to his nominal sovereign, Madame Niafer. But his main recreation, after all, Coth found in emulating those very ancient and most famous monarchs Jupiter and David in a constant change of women; and the fine girls of Poictesme remained as always a lively joy to him.
And daily, too, the Alderman of St. Didol squabbled with his wife and son; and, since he could discover profuse grounds everywhere for faultfinding, was comfortable enough.
To his sardonic bent it was at this period amusing to note how staidly Poictesme thrived by virtue of the land’s faith in Poictesme’s Redeemer, who had removed all troubles and obligations in the past, and who by and by would be coming again, no doubt to wipe similarly clean the moral slate; so that there was no real need to worry about the future, nor about any little personal misdemeanor (which had not become embarrassingly public), since this would of course be included in the general amnesty when Manuel returned to take charge of his people’s affairs.
And yet there was another and more troubling side. The younger, here and there, were beginning, within moderation, to emulate that Manuel who had never lived. For Coth saw that too. He saw young persons—here and there,—displaying traits and customs strange if not virtually unknown to the old reprobate’s varied experience. Civility, for one thing, was rather sickeningly pandemic: you saw fine strapping lads, differing in opinion about this, that or the other, who, instead of resorting sensibly to a duel, stopped—who positively sat down side by side,—to examine each the other’s point of view, and after that, as often as not, talked themselves out of fighting at all. That was because of the fame of Manuel’s uniform civility, which, indeed, the rogue had displayed, and had made excellent profit of.
But you saw, too, people pardoning and even befriending persons who had affronted or injured them, and doing this because of the fame of Manuel’s loving kindliness toward his fellows: everywhere you saw that wholly groundless notion flowering also into a squeamishness about taking any other person’s property away from him, even when you really wanted it. You saw bodily sound young men avoiding, or at any rate stinting, the normal pleasures of youth, alike among their peers and in bed, because of the famousness of Dom Manuel’s sobriety and chastity: and you saw milksops, in fine, giving up all the really intelligent vices because of that slanderous rumor about Manuel’s addiction to the virtues.
It was not, either—not altogether,—that the young fools thought they had much to gain by these eccentricities. They had, somehow, been tempted into emulation by this nonsense about Manuel’s virtues. And then they had—still somehow, still quite unexplainably,—found pleasure in it. Coth granted this rather forlornly: these young people were getting a calm and temperate, but a positive, gratification out of being virtuous. And since the, comparatively, intelligent and unregenerate persons were all profiting by their fellows’ increased forbearance, altogether everybody was reaping benefit.
This damnable new generation was, because of its insane aspiring, happier than its fathers had been under the reign of candor and common-sense. This moon-struck legend of Manuel was bringing, not to be sure any omnipresent and unendurable perfection, but an undeniable increase of tranquility and contentment to all Poictesme. Coth saw that too.
He remembered what his true liege-lord had said to him in the Place of the Dead: and Coth admitted that, say what you might as to the Manuel who had really lived, the squinting rascal did as a rule know what he was talking about.
Chapter XXX. Havoc of Bad Habits
News as to court affairs and the rest of the province came now to Coth, in his two lairs at Haut Belpaysage, belatedly and rarely. Yet at this time he heard that Anavalt the Courteous had gone out of Poictesme with as little warning as the other lords of the Silver Stallion had accorded their intimates when Gonfal and Kerin and Miramon, and Coth himself, had each gone out of the land after Manuel’s passing.
These overnight evasions appeared to be becoming a habit, Coth said to his wife Azra, so you had best cherish me in the night season while you may, instead of shrieking out nonsense about my hands being so cold. She replied with an uxorial generality as to sore-headed bears and snapping-turtles and porcupines, which really was not misplaced. And it was not for a long while that any tidings were had of Anavalt the Courteous, and the riddle of his evasion was unraveled, [1] but by and by came news as to the end which Anavalt had found near a windmill in the Wood of Elfhame, in his courtship of the mistress of that sinister and superficial forest.
“At his age, too! and with a woman too thin to keep him warm!” said Coth. “It simply shows you, my dear son, what comes of lecherous habits, and I trust you may profit by it, for the world is very full of such deceits.”
And Coth, for his Jurgen’s benefit, piously indicated the motto which you encountered at well-nigh every turn in Coth’s two homes, along with the stallion rampant in every member.
Nevertheless, Coth was unhappier than he showed. He had loved Anavalt in the days when these two had served together under the banner of the Silver Stallion. It seemed to Coth that in dark Elfhame a handsome and fine-spoken and kindly rascal had been trapped and devoured rather wastefully. Nor was it cheering to consider that, now, but five of the great fellowship remained alive. . . . Meanwhile, in rearing a son judiciously, one must preserve the proper moral tone.
And Coth heard also, at about this time, of the magic which had been put upon King Helmas the Deep-Minded, that monarch whom, as people said, Dom Manuel in the old days had bamboozled into giving Manuel a fine start in life. At first, to be sure, the tale ran that Helmas had been murdered, and his treasury rifled, by one of his attendants: and this Perion de la Foret, after his escape from prison, was sought for everywhere. Later, the truth was known: and Coth heard of how a magic had been put upon Helmas, by his own daughter Melusine, and of the notable transfer of the king’s castle of Brunbelois and the king’s person and entire entourage, from out of Albania to that high place in the great Forest of Acaire, where, people said, the ill-fated court of Helmas now stayed enchanted.
And Coth drew the moral. “It shows you what parents may expect of their children,” he remarked, with a malevolent glance toward his adored Jurgen. “It shows you what comes of this habit of indulging children.”
“Now, Father—” said the boy.
“Stop storming at me! How dare you attempt to bulldoze me, sir! Do you take me for another Helmas!”
“But, Father, I was only—”
“Get out of my sight, you quarrelsome puppy! I will not be thus deafened. Get back to that Dorothy of yours! You care for nobody else,” said jealous old Coth.
“But, Father—”
“And must you still be arguing with me! Do you think there is no end to my patience? What is there to argue about? The puppy follows the bitch. That is natural.”
“But, Father, how can you—!”
“Get out of my sight before I break every bone in your body! Get back to that cold sanctimonious court and to your hot wench!” said Coth.
Yet all the while that he spoke with such fluency Coth’s heart was troubled. Of course, in rearing a son judiciously, one must preserve the proper moral tone. Nevertheless, Coth felt, at heart, that he might be taking the wrong way with the boy, and was being almost brusque.
But Coth was Coth. That was his doom. He had only one way.
Chapter XXXI. Other Paternal Apothegms
Now Jurgen went very often to court, since the boy at twenty-one was fathoms deep in love with Count Manuel’s second daughter, whom they called Dorothy la Desiree. Coth saw her but once: and, even over and above his rage at the thought of sharing Jurgen with anybody, Coth was honestly moved, in the light of his considerable boudoir experience, to uncivil prophecy. He was upon this occasion, in the main hall at Bellegarde, with dozens of persons within earshot, most embarrassingly explicit with Jurgen, alike as to the quality of Jurgen’s intelligence and the profession which Coth desired no daughter-in-law of his to practice.
The two quarreled. That nowadays was no novelty. The difference was that into this quarrel Jurgen put all his heart. So the insolent, overbearing, bulldozing young scoundrel was packed off to serve under the Vidame de Soyecourt: and before the year was out Coth heard that this Dorothy la Desiree was married to Guivric’s son Michael.
“This Michael is but the first served at an entertainment preparing for the general public,” was Coth’s epithalamium.
And many rumors came back to Haut Belpaysage as to Jurgen’s doings in Gatinais, and, while they all seemed harmless enough, not all were precisely what a father would have elected to hear. Coth considered, for example, that Jurgen had acted with imprudence in thus hastily making Coth a grandfather with the assistance of the third wife of the Vidame de Soyecourt. Husbands had a sad way of being provoked by such offspring, upon the wholly illogical ground that the provocation was not mutual. Still, young people needed their diversions, and husbands, to Coth’s experience, were not a dangerous tribe. What really fretted a somewhat aging Alderman, however, was that such stories reached him casually, and that from Jurgen himself he heard nothing.
Yet other gossip came too from the court at Bellegarde and Storisende, as to how Manuel’s oldest daughter, Madame Melicent, was now betrothed to King Theodoret, and how upon the eve of her marriage she had disappeared out of Poictesme: and she was next heard of as living in unchristian splendor far oversea, as—if you elected to put it more gracefully than Coth did,—as the wife of Miramon Lluagor’s son and murderer, Demetrios.
“Why not?” said Coth. “Why should not snub-nosed Miramon’s swarthy lad be having his wenches when convenient? Parricide is no bar to fornication. They are sins committed with quite different weapons. And, for the rest, all sons are intent to do what this one has succeeded in doing. How, for that matter, did Dom Manuel, that famous Redeemer of yours, deal with his own father Oriander the Swimmer?”
That, it was hastily explained to Coth by his wife Azra, was but a part of the great Redeemer’s abnegation and self-denial. That was the atonement, and the immolation of his only beloved father, in order to expiate the gross sins of Poictesme—
“To expiate the sins of one person by killing another person,” replied Coth, “is not an atonement. It is nonsense.”
Well, but, it was furthermore explained, this atonement was a great and holy mystery; and, as such, it should be approached with reverence rather than mere rationality. Yet this high mystery of the atonement must undoubtedly symbolize the fact that, in order to attain perfection, Manuel had put off the ties of his flesh—
To which Coth answered, staring moodily at his wife Azra: “I saw that fight. He put off those ties of his flesh, and Oriander’s head from his body, with such pleasure as Manuel showed in no other combat. And all sons are like him. Have we not a son? Why do you keep pestering me?”
“I only meant—”
“Stop contradicting me!” But very swiftly Coth added, with a sort of gulp, “—my dear.”
For Coth was changing. He hunted no more, he had closed up his bear-pit. He seemed to prefer to be alone. Azra would very often find him huddled in his chair, not doing anything, but merely thinking: and then he would glare at her ferociously, without speaking; and she would go away from him, without speaking, because she also thought too frequently about their son for her own comfort.
Chapter XXXII. Time Gnaws At All
Emmerick came of age, and Madame Niafer’s rule was over, men said, because the Count would be swayed in all things by his cousin, the Bishop Ayrart of Montors, the same that afterward was Pope.
“The young church rat drives out the old one,” said Coth. “Now limping Niafer must learn to do without a night-light and to sleep without a halo on her pillow.”
But Ayrart’s supremacy was not for long, and Holy Holmendis remained about the court, after all, because, at just this time, lean Holden the Brave appeared at Storisende with a beautiful young gray-eyed stranger whom he introduced as the widow of Elphanor, King of Kings. People felt that for this Radegonde thus to be surviving her husband by more than thirteen centuries was a matter meritorious of explanation, but neither she nor Holden offered any.
The history of the love which had been between Radegonde and Holden is related elsewhere [2]: at this time it remained untold. But now, at this love’s ending, Radegonde found favor in the small greedy eyes of Count Emmerick, and she married him, nor was there ever at any season thereafter during the lifetime of Radegonde a question as to what person, howsoever flightily, ruled over Poictesme and Emmerick. And Radegonde—after a very prettily worded but frank proviso as to the divine right of princes, which rendered them and their wives responsible to Heaven directly, and to nobody else, as she felt sure dear Messire Holmendis quite understood,—Radegonde thereafter favored Holmendis and his wonder-working reforms, among the appropriate class of people, because she considered that his halo was distinctly decorative, and that a practicing saint about the court lent it, as she phrased the matter, an air.
Coth heard of these things; and he nodded his great dome-shaped head complacently enough. “A tree may be judged by its fruit. Now in England Dom Manuel’s long-legged bastard by Queen Alianora has returned his young wife to the nursery. He is to-day, they tell me,—in the approved fashion of all sons,—junketing about foreign courts with the Lord of Bulmer’s daughter. He, in brief, while the Barons steal England from him, is intent upon begetting his own bastards—”
“But you also, my husband—”
“Do you stop deafening me with your talk about irrelevant matters! In Philistia, Dom Manuel’s most precious bantling by Queen Freydis is working every manner of pagan iniquity, and has brought about the imprisonment, in infamous Antan, of his own mother, after having lived with her for some while in incest—”
“Nevertheless—”
“Azra, you have, as I tell you for your own good, a sad habit, and a very ill-bred habit also, of interrupting people, and that habit is quite insufferable. A tree, I repeat to you, may be judged by its fruit! Everybody knows that. Now, in our Poictesme, the increase of Dom Manuel’s body has, thus far, produced two strumpets and a guzzling cuckold—”
“But, even so—”
“You are talking nonsense. A tree, I say to you, may be judged by its fruit! I consider this exhibit very eloquently convincing as to the true nature of our Redeemer.”
Azra now answered nothing. And Coth fell to looking at his motto, rather gloomily.
“It was not that I meant,” he said, heroically, by and by, “to be rude, my dear. But I do hate a fool, and, in particular, an obstinate fool.”
Here too it must be recorded that upon the night of Radegonde’s marriage old Holden had the ill taste to die. That it was by his own hand, nobody questioned, but the affair was hushed up: and Count Emmerick’s married life thus started with gratifyingly less scandal than it culminated in.
Coth heard of this thing also. He looked at his motto, he recalled the love which he had borne for Holden in the times when Coth had not yet given over loving anybody: and he mildly wondered that Holden, at his age, should still be clinging to the fallacy that one wench was much more desirable than another. By and large, thought Coth, they had but one use, for which any one of them would serve, if you still cared for such kickshaws. For himself, he was growing abstemious; and as often as not, found it rather a nuisance when any of his vassals married, and the Alderman of St. Didol was expected to do his seignorial duty by the new-made wife. Things everywhere were dwindling and deteriorating.
Even the great Fellowship of the Silver Stallion was wearing away, thus steadily, under the malice and greed of time. Donander of Evre was to-day the only one of Manuel’s barons who yet rode about the world, now and then, in search of good fighting and fine women. All the best of the fellowship were gone from life: the hypocrites and the fools alone remained, Coth estimated modestly. For he and that boy Donander were, at least, not hypocrites. . . .
And very often, too, Coth would look at his wife Azra, and would remember the girl that she had been in the times when Coth had not yet given over loving anybody. He rather liked her now. It was a felt loss that she no longer had the spirit to quarrel with anything like the fervor of their happier days: not for two years or more had Azra flung a really rousing taunt or even a dinner plate in his direction: and Coth pitied the poor woman’s folly in for an instant bothering about that young scoundrel of a Jurgen, who had set up as a poet, they said, and—in the company, one heard, of a grand duchess,—was rampaging everywhither about Italy, with never a word for his parents. Coth, now, did not worry over such ingratitude at all: not less than twenty times a day he pointed out to his wife that he, for one, never wasted a thought upon the lecherous runagate.
His wife would smile at him, sadly: and after old Coth had been particularly abusive of Jurgen, she would, without speaking, stroke her husband’s knotted, stubby, splotched hand, or his tense and just not withdrawing cheek, or she would tender one or another utterly uncalled-for caress, quite as though this illogical and broken-spirited creature thought Coth to be in some sort of trouble. The woman, though, had never understood him. . . .
Then Azra died. Coth was thus left alone. It seemed to him a strange thing that the Coth who had once been a fearless champion and a crowned emperor and a contender upon equal terms with the High Gods, should be locked up in this quiet room, weeping like a small, punished, frightened child.
Chapter XXXIII. Economics of Coth
In the months that followed, Coth wore a puzzled and baffled look. His servants reported that he talked to himself almost incessantly. But it was incoherent, uncharacteristic stuff, without any quarreling in it, they said. . . . Coth at the last had well-nigh given over faultfinding. He was merely puzzled.
For life, somehow, in some as yet undetected fashion, seemed to have cheated him. It was not possible that, with fair play everywhere, life would be affording you, as the sum and harvest of all, no more than this. No sort of pleasure remained: girls left, and for that matter found, you wholly frigid; wine set you to vomiting. You wanted, as if in a cold cemetery of desires, one thing alone, nowadays.
Yet the son Jurgen whom Coth’s tough heart remembered and desired was still frolicking about the pleasant and famous places of the world, with no time to waste in sedate Poictesme: and Coth rather suspected that, even now, in this sick unimaginable loneliness, were Jurgen to return, a feebly raging Coth would storm at the lad and turn him out of doors. For that was Coth’s way. He had only one way. . . . He reflected, now, Jurgen was no longer a lad: it well might be, indeed, that pockmarked, greasy-headed roisterer had ended living, with some husband’s dagger in his ribs. The last news heard of Jurgen, though, was that he was making songs in Byzantium with the aid of a runaway abbess, who at least had no husband. And in any event, Jurgen would not ever return, because Coth had come between the boy that had been and the leering, high-nosed strumpet at Asch, who was reported to be rivaling even that poor Kerin’s widow, Sara’ide, in the great number of her co-partners in lectual exercise.
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Детективы
Фантастика и фэнтези, все новинки
Фантастика
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