they gave him a casque and breast-plate, proof, they said, against any
sword, and offered a sword that they said would surely cleave any
breast-plate. For they fought not in battle with the nimble rapier. But
Rodriguez did not forsake that famous exultant sword whose deeds he
knew from many an ancient song; which he had brought so far to give it
its old rich drink of blood. He believed it the bright key of the
castle he was to win.
And they gave Rodriguez a good bed on the ground in the tent of the
three leaders, the tent to which he first came; for they honoured him
for the gift of song that he had, and because he was a stranger, and
because he had asked permission to fight for them in their battle. And
Rodriguez took one look by the light of a lantern at the rose he had
carried from Lowlight, then slept a sleep through whose dreams loomed
up the towers of castles.
Dawn came and he slept on still; but by seven all the camp was loudly
astir, for they had promised the enemy to begin the battle at eight.
Rodriguez breakfasted lightly; for, now that the day of his dreams was
come at last and all his hopes depended on the day, an anxiety for many
things oppressed him. It was as though his castle, rosy and fair in
dreams, chilled with its huge cold rocks all the air near it: it was as
though Rodriguez touched it at last with his hands and felt a dankness
of which he had never dreamed.
Then it came to the hour of eight and his anxieties passed.
The army was now drawn up before its tents in line, but the enemy was
not yet ready and so they had to wait.
When the signal at length was given and the cannoniers fired their
pieces, and the musketoons were shot off, many men fell. Now Rodriguez,
with Morano, was placed on the right, and either through a slight
difference in numbers or because of an unevenness in the array of
battle they a little overlapped the enemy's left. When a few men fell
wounded there by the discharge of the musketoons this overlapping was
even more pronounced.
Now the leaders of that fair army scorned all unknightly devices, and
would never have descended to any vile ruse de guerre. The reproach can
therefore never be made against them that they ever intended to
outflank their enemy. Yet, when both armies advanced after the
discharge of the musketoons and the merry noise of the cannon, this
occurred as the result of chance, which no leader can be held
accountable for; so that those that speak of treachery in this battle,
and deliberate outflanking, lie.
Now Rodriguez as he advanced with his sword, when the musketoons were
empty, had already chosen his adversary. For he had carefully watched
those opposite to him, before any smoke should obscure them, and had
selected the one who from the splendour of his dress might be expected
to possess the finest castle. Certainly this adversary outshone those
amongst whom he stood, and gave fair promise of owning goodly
possessions, for he wore a fine green cloak over a dress of lilac, and
his helm and cuirass had a look of crafty workmanship. Towards him
Rodriguez marched.
Then began fighting foot to foot, and there was a pretty laying on of
swords. And had there been a poet there that day then the story of
their fight had come down to you, my reader, all that way from the
Pyrenees, down all those hundreds of years, and this tale of mine had
been useless, the lame repetition in prose of songs that your nurses
had sung to you. But they fought unseen by those that see for the Muses.
Rodriguez advanced upon his chosen adversary and, having briefly bowed,
they engaged at once. And Rodriguez belaboured his helm till dints
appeared, and beat it with swift strokes yet till the dints were
cracks, and beat the cracks till hair began to appear: and all the
while his adversary's strokes grew weaker and wilder, until he tottered
to earth and Rodriguez had won. Swift then as cats, while Morano kept
off others, Rodriguez leaped to his throat, and, holding up the
stiletto that he had long ago taken as his legacy from the host of the
Dragon and Knight, he demanded the fallen man's castle as ransom for
his life.
"My castle, señor?" said his prisoner weakly.
"Yes," said Rodriguez impatiently.
"Yes, señor," said his adversary and closed his eyes for awhile.
"Does he surrender his castle, master?" asked Morano.
"Yes, indeed," said Rodriguez. They looked at each other: all at last
was well.
The battle was rolling away from them and was now well within the
enemy's tents.
History says of that day that the good men won. And, sitting, a Muse
upon her mythical mountain, her decision must needs be one from which
we may not appeal: and yet I wonder if she is ever bribed. Certainly
the shrewd sense of Morano erred for once; for those for whom he had
predicted victory, because they prepared so ostentatiously upon the
field, were defeated; while the others, having made their preparations
long before, were able to cheer themselves with song before the battle
and to win it when it came.
And so Rodriguez was left undisturbed in possession of his prisoner and
with the promise of his castle as a ransom. The battle was swiftly
over, as must needs be where little armies meet so close. The enemy's
camp was occupied, his army routed, and within an hour of beginning the
battle the last of the fighting ceased.
The army returned to its tents to rejoice and to make a banquet,
bringing with them captives and horses and other spoils of war. And
Rodriguez had honour among them because he had fought on the right and
so was one of those that had broken the enemy's left, from which
direction victory had come. And they would have feasted him and done
him honour, both for his work with the sword and for his songs to the
mandolin; and they would have marched away soon to their own country
and would have taken him with them and advanced him to honour there.
But Rodriguez would not stay with them for he had his castle at last,
and must needs march off at once with his captive and Morano to see the
fulfilment of his dream. And therefore he thanked the leaders of that
host with many a courtesy and many a well-bent bow, and explained to
them how it was about his castle, and felicitated them on the victory
of their good cause, and so wished them farewell. And they said
farewell sorrowfully: but when they saw he would go, they gave him
horses for himself and Morano, and another for his captive; and they
heaped them with sacks of provender and blankets and all things that
could give him comfort upon a journey: all this they brought him out of
their spoils of war, and they would give him no less that the most that
the horses could carry. And then Rodriguez turned to his captive again,
who now stood on his feet.
"Señor," he said, "pray tell us all of your castle wherewith you ransom
your life."
"Señor," he answered, "I have a castle in Spain."
"Master," broke in Morano, his eyes lighting up with delight, "there
are no castles like the Spanish ones."
They got to horse then, all three; the captive on a horse of far poorer
build than the other two and well-laden with sacks, for Rodriguez took
no chance of his castle cantering, as it were, away from him on four
hooves through the dust.
And when they heard that his journey was by way of the Pyrenees four
knights of that army swore they would ride with him as far as the
frontier of Spain, to bear him company and bring him fuel in the lonely
cold of the mountains. They all set off and the merry army cheered. He
left them making ready for their banquet, and never knew the cause for
which he had fought.
They came by evening again to the house to which Rodriguez had come two
nights before, when he had slept there with his castle yet to win. They
all halted before it, and the man and the woman came to the door
terrified. "The wars!" they said.
"The wars," said one of the riders, "are over, and the just cause has
won."
"The Saints be praised!" said the woman. "But will there be no more
fighting?"
"Never again," said the horseman, "for men are sick of gunpowder."
"The Saints be thanked," she said.
"Say not that," said the horseman, "for Satan invented gunpowder."
And she was silent; but, had none been there, she had secretly thanked
Satan.
They demanded the food and shelter that armed men have the right to
demand.
In the morning they were gone. They became a memory, which lingered
like a vision, made partly of sunset and partly of the splendour of
their cloaks, and so went down the years that those two folk had, a
thing of romance, magnificence and fear. And now the slope of the
mountain began to lift against them, and they rode slowly towards those
unearthly peaks that had deserted the level fields before ever man came
to them, and that sat there now familiar with stars and dawn with the
air of never having known of man. And as they rode they talked. And
Rodriguez talked with the four knights that rode with him, and they
told tales of war and told of the ways of fighting of many men: and
Morano rode behind them beside the captive and questioned him all the
morning about his castle in Spain. And at first the captive answered
his questions slowly, as if he were weary, or as though he were long
from home and remembered its features dimly; but memory soon returned
and he answered clearly, telling of such a castle as Morano had not
dreamed; and the eyes of the fat man bulged as he rode beside him,
growing rounder and rounder as they rode.
They came by sunset to that wood of firs in which Rodriguez had rested.
In the midst of the wood they halted and tethered their horses to
trees; they tied blankets to branches and made an encampment; and in
the midst of it they made a fire, at first, with pine-needles and the
dead lower twigs and then with great logs. And there they feasted
together, all seven, around the fire. And when the feast was over and
the great logs burning well, and red sparks went up slowly towards the
silver stars, Morano turned to the prisoner seated beside him and "Tell
the señors," he said, "of my master's castle."
And in the silence, that was rather lulled than broken by the
whispering wind from the snow that sighed through the wood, the captive
slowly lifted up his head and spoke in his queer accent.
"Señors, in Aragon, across the Ebro, are many goodly towers." And as he
spoke they all leaned forward to listen, dark faces bright with
firelight. "On the Ebro's southern bank stands," he went on, "my home."
He told of strange rocks rising from the Ebro; of buttresses built
among them in unremembered times; of the great towers lifting up in
multitudes from the buttresses; and of the mighty wall, windowless
until it came to incredible heights, where the windows shone all safe
from any ladder of war.
At first they felt in his story his pride in his lost home, and
wondered, when he told of the height of his towers, how much he added
in pride. And then the force of that story gripped them all and they
doubted never a battlement, but each man's fancy saw between firelight
and starlight every tower clear in the air. And at great height upon
those marvellous towers the turrets of arches were; queer carvings
grinned down from above inaccessible windows; and the towers gathered
in light from the lonely air where nothing stood but they, and flashed
it far over Aragon; and the Ebro floated by them always new, always
amazed by their beauty.
He spoke to the six listeners on the lonely mountain, slowly,
remembering mournfully; and never a story that Romance has known and
told of castles in Spain has held men more than he held his listeners,
while the sparks flew up toward the peaks of the Pyrenees and did not
reach to them but failed in the night, giving place to the white stars.
And when he faltered through sorrow, or memory weakening, Morano
always, watching with glittering eyes, would touch his arm, sitting
beside him, and ask some question, and the captive would answer the
question and so talk sadly on.
He told of the upper terraces, where heliotrope and aloe and oleander
took sunlight far above their native earth: and though but rare winds
carried the butterflies there, such as came to those fragrant terraces
lingered for ever.
And after a while he spoke on carelessly, and Morano's questions ended,
and none of the men in the firelight said a word; but he spoke on
uninterrupted, holding them as by a spell, with his eyes fixed far away
on black crags of the Pyrenees, telling of his great towers: almost it
might have seemed he was speaking of mountains. And when the fire was
only a deep red glow and white ash showed all round it, and he ceased
speaking, having told of a castle marvellous even amongst the towers of
Spain: all sitting round the embers felt sad with his sadness, for his
sad voice drifted into their very spirits as white mists enter houses,
and all were glad when Rodriguez said to him that one of his ten tall
towers the captive should keep and should live in it for ever. And the
sad man thanked him sadly and showed no joy.
When the tale of the castle and those great towers was done, the wind
that blew from the snow touched all the hearers; they had seemed to be
away by the bank of the Ebro in the heat and light of Spain, and now
the vast night stripped them and the peaks seemed to close round on
them. They wrapped themselves in blankets and lay down in their
shelters. For a while they heard the wind waving branches and the thump
of a horse's hoof restless at night; then they all slept except one
that guarded the captive, and the captive himself who long lay thinking
and thinking.
Dawn stole through the wood and waked none of the sleepers; the birds
all shouted at them, still they slept on; and then the captive's guard
wakened Morano and he stirred up the sparks of the fire and cooked, and
they breakfasted late. And soon they left the wood and faced the bleak
slope, all of them going on foot and leading their horses.
And the track crawled on till it came to the scorn of the peaks,
winding over a shoulder of the Pyrenees, where the peaks gaze cold and
contemptuous away from the things of man.
In the presence of those that bore them company Rodriguez and Morano
felt none of the deadly majesty of those peaks that regard so awfully
over the solitudes. They passed through them telling cheerfully of wars
the four knights had known: and descended and came by sunset to the
lower edge of the snow. They pushed on a little farther and then
camped; and with branches from the last camp that they had heaped on
their horses they made another great fire and, huddling round it in the
blankets that they had brought, found warmth even there so far from the
hearths of men.
And dawn and the cold woke them all on that treeless slope by barely
warm embers. Morano cooked again and they ate in silence. And then the
four knights rose sadly and one bowed and told Rodriguez how they must
now go back to their own country. And grief seized on Rodriguez at his
words, seeing that he was to lose four old friends at once and perhaps
for ever, for when men have fought under the same banner in war they
become old friends on that morning.
"Señors," said Rodriguez, "we may never meet again!"
And the other looked back to the peaks beyond which the far lands lay,
and made a gesture with his hands.
"Señor, at least," said Rodriguez, "let us camp once more together."
And even Morano babbled a supplication.
"Methinks, señor," he answered, "we are already across the frontier,
and when we men of the sword cross frontiers misunderstandings arise,
so that it is our custom never to pass across them save when we push
the frontier with us, adding the lands over which we march to those of
our liege lord."
"Señors," said Rodriguez, "the whole mountain is the frontier. Come
with us one day further." But they would not stay.
All the good things that could be carried they loaded on to the three
horses whose heads were turned towards Spain; then turned, all four,
and said farewell to the three. And long looked each in the face of
Rodriguez as he took his hand in fare well, for they had fought under
the same banner and, as wayfaring was in those days, it was not likely
that they would ever meet again. They turned and went with their horses
back towards the land they had fought for.
Rodriguez and his captive and Morano went sadly down the mountain. They
came to the fir woods, and rested, and Morano cooked their dinner. And
after a while they were able to ride their horses.
They came to the foot of the mountains, and rode on past the Inn of the
World's End. They camped in the open; and all night long Rodriguez or
Morano guarded the captive.
For two days and part of the third they followed their old course,
catching sight again and again of the river Segre; and then they turned
further west ward to come to Aragon further up the Ebro. All the way
they avoided houses and camped in the open, for they kept their captive
to themselves: and they slept warm with their ample store of blankets.
And all the while the captive seemed morose or ill at ease, speaking
seldom and, when he did, in nervous jerks.
Morano, as they rode, or by the camp fire at evening, still questioned
him now and then about his castle; and sometimes he almost seemed to
contradict himself, but in so vast a castle may have been many styles
of architecture, and it was difficult to trace a contradiction among
all those towers and turrets. His name was Don
Alvidar-of-the-Rose-pink-Castle on-Ebro.
One night while all three sat and gazed at the camp-fire as men will,
when the chilly stars are still and the merry flames are leaping,
Rodriguez, seeking to cheer his captive's mood, told him some of his
strange adventures. The captive listened with his sombre air. But when
Rodriguez told how they woke on the mountain after their journey to the
sun; and the sun was shining on their faces in the open, but the
magician and his whole house were gone; then there came another look
into Alvidar's eyes. And Rodriguez ended his tale and silence fell,
broken only by Morano saying across the fire, "It is true," and the
captive's thoughtful eyes gazed into the darkness. And then he also
spoke.
"Señor," he said, "near to my rose-pink castle which looks into the
Ebro dwells a magician also."
"Is it so?" said Rodriguez.
"Indeed so, señor," said Don Alvidar. "He is my enemy but dwells in awe
of me, and so durst never molest me except by minor wonders."
"How know you that he is a magician?" said Rodriguez.
"By those wonders," answered his captive. "He afflicts small dogs and
my poultry. And he wears a thin, high hat: his beard is also
extraordinary."
"Long?" said Morano.
"Green," answered Don Alvidar.
"Is he very near the castle?" said Rodriguez and Morano together.
"Too near," said Don Alvidar.
"Is his house wonderful?" Rodriguez asked.
"It is a common house," was the answer. "A mean, long house of one
story. The walls are white and it is well thatched. The windows are
painted green; there are two doors in it and by one of them grows a
rose tree."
"A rose tree?" exclaimed Rodriguez.
"It seemed a rose tree," said Don Alvidar.
"A captive lady chained to the wall perhaps, changed by magic,"
suggested Morano.
"Perhaps," said Don Alvidar.
"A strange house for a magician," said Rodriguez, for it sounded like
any small farmhouse in Spain.
"He much affects mortal ways," replied Don Alvidar.
Little more was then said, the fire being low: and Rodriguez lay down
to sleep while Morano guarded the captive.
And the day after that they came to Aragon, and in one day more they
were across the Ebro; and then they rode west for a day along its
southern bank looking all the while as they rode for Rodriguez' castle.
And more and more silent and aloof, as they rode, grew Don
Alvidar-of-the-Rose-pink-Castle-on-Ebro.
And just before sunset a cry broke from the captive. "He has taken it!"
he said. And he pointed to just such a house as he had described, a
jolly Spanish farmhouse with white walls and thatch and green shutters,
and a rose tree by one of the doors just as he had told.
"The magician's house. But the castle is gone," he said.
Rodriguez looked at his face and saw real alarm in it. He said nothing
but rode on in haste, a dim hope in his mind that explanations at the
white cottage might do something for his lost castle.
And when the hooves were heard a woman came out of the cottage door by
the rose tree leading a small child by the hand. And the captive called
to the woman, "Maria, we are lost. And I gave my great castle with
rose-pink towers that stood just here as ransom to this señor for my
life. But now, alas, I see that that magician who dwelt in the house
where you are now has taken it whither we know not."
"Yes, Pedro," said the woman, "he took it yesterday." And she turned
blue eyes upon Rodriguez.
And then Morano would be silent no longer. He had thought vaguely for
some days and intensely for the last few hundreds yards, and now he
blurted out the thoughts that boiled in him.
"Master," he shouted, "he has sold his cattle and bought this raiment
of his, and that helmet that you opened up for him, and never had any
castle on the Ebro with any towers to it, and never knew any magician,
but lived in this house himself, and now your castle is gone, master,
and as for his life ..."
"Be silent a moment, Morano," said Rodriguez, and he turned to the
woman whose eyes were on him still.
"Was there a castle in this place?" he said.
"Yes, señor. I swear it," she said. "And my husband, though a poor man,
always spoke the truth."
"She lies," said Morano, and Rodriguez silenced him with a gesture.
"I will get neighbours who will swear it too," she said.
"A lousy neighbourhood," said Morano.
Again Rodriguez silenced him. And then the child spoke in a frightened
voice, holding up a small cross that it had been taught to revere. "I
swear it too," it said.
Rodriguez heaved a sigh and turned away. "Master," Morano cried in
pained astonishment, "you will not believe their swearings."
"The child swore by the cross," he answered.
"But, master!" Morano exclaimed.
But Rodriguez would say no more. And they rode away aimless in silence.
Galloping hooves were heard and Pedro was there. He had come to give up
his horse. He gave its reins to the scowling Morano but Rodriguez said
never a word. Then he ran round and kissed Rodriguez' hand, who still
was silent, for his hopes were lost with the castle; but he nodded his
head and so parted for ever from the man whom his wife called Pedro,
who called himself Don Alvidar-of-the-Rose-pink-Castle-on-Ebro.
THE TENTH CHRONICLE
HOW HE CAME BACK TO LOWLIGHT
"Master," Morano said. But Rodriguez rode ahead and would not speak.
They were riding vaguely southward. They had ample provisions on the
horse that Morano led, as well as blankets, which gave them comfort at
night. That night they both got the sleep they needed, now that there
was no captive to guard. All the next day they rode slowly in the April
weather by roads that wandered among tended fields; but a little way
off from the fields there shone low hills in the sunlight, so wild, so
free of man, that Rodriguez remembering them in later years, wondered
if their wild shrubs just hid the frontiers of fairyland.
For two days they rode by the edge of unguessable regions. Had Pan
piped there no one had marvelled, nor though fauns had scurried past
sheltering clumps of azaleas. In the twilight no tiny queens had court
within rings of toadstools: yet almost, almost they appeared.