The Lady Tells Somewhat of Her Doings After She Left the Wilderness
Ralph stayed her speech now, and said: "When I asked of thee in the
Land of Abundance, there were some who seemed to say that thou hast let
more men love thee than one: and it was a torment to me to think that
even so it might be. But now when thine own mouth telleth me of one of
them it irks me little. Dost thou think it little-hearted in me?"
"O friend," she said, "I see that so it is with thee that thou wouldst
find due cause for loving me, whatever thou foundest true of me. Or
dost thou deem that I was another woman in those days? Nay, I was not:
I can see myself still myself all along the way I have gone." She was
silent a little, and then she said: "Fear not, I will give thee much
cause to love me. But now I know thy mind the better, I shall tell
thee less of what befell me after I left the wilderness; for whatever I
did and whatever I endured, still it was always I myself that was
there, and it is me that thou lovest. Moreover, my life in the
wilderness is a stranger thing to tell thee of than my dealings with
the folk, and with Kings and Barons and Knights. But thereafter thou
shalt hear of me what tales thou wilt of these matters, as the days and
the years pass over our heads.
"Now on the morrow we would not depart at once, because there we had
some victual, and the king's son was not yet so well fed as he should
be; so we abode in that fair place another day, and then we went our
ways westward, according to the rede of the carline; and it was many
days before we gat us out of the wilderness, and we were often hard put
to it for victual; whiles I sat behind my knight a-horseback, whiles he
led the beast while I rode alone, and not seldom I went afoot, and that
nowise slowly, while he rode the white horse, for I was as light-foot
then as now.
"And of the way we went I will tell thee nought as now, because sure it
is that if we both live, thou and I shall tread that road together, but
with our faces turned the other way; for it is the road from the Well
at the World's End, where I myself have been, or else never had thine
eyes fallen on me."
Ralph said, "Even so much I deemed by reading in the book; yet it was
not told clearly that thou hadst been there." "Yea," she said, because
the said book was made not by my friends but my foes, and they would
have men deem that my length of days and the endurance of my beauty and
never-dying youth of my heart came from evil and devilish sources; and
if thou wilt trust my word it is not so, for in the Well at the World's
End is no evil, but only the Quenching of Sorrow, and Clearing of the
Eyes that they may behold. And how good it is that they look on thee
now. And moreover, the history of that book is partly false of
intention and ill-will, and partly a confused medley of true and false,
which has come of mere chance-hap.
"Hearken now," she said, "till I tell thee in few words what befell me
before I came to drink the Water of the Well. After we had passed long
deserts of wood and heath, and gone through lands exceeding evil and
perilous, and despaired of life for the horror of those places, and
seen no men, we came at last amongst a simple folk who dealt kindly
with us, yea, and more. These folk seemed to me happy and of good
wealth, though to my lord they seemed poor and lacking of the goods of
the world. Forsooth, by that time we lacked more than they, for we
were worn with cold and hunger, and hard life: though for me, indeed,
happy had been the days of my wayfaring, but my lord remembered the
days of his riches and the kingdom of his father, and the worship of
mighty men, and all that he had promised me on the happy day when I
first beheld him: so belike he was scarce so happy as I was.
"It was springtime when we came to that folk; for we had worn through
the autumn and winter in getting clear of the wilderness. Not that the
way was long, as I found out afterwards, but that we went astray in the
woodland, and at last came out of it into a dreadful stony waste which
we strove to cross thrice, and thrice were driven back into the
greenwood by thirst and hunger; but the fourth time, having gotten us
store of victual by my woodcraft, we overpassed it and reached the
peopled country.
"Yea, spring was on the earth, as we, my lord and I, came down from the
desolate stony heaths, and went hand and hand across the plain, where
men and women of that folk were feasting round about the simple roofs
and woodland halls which they had raised there. Then they left their
games and sports and ran to us, and we walked on quietly, though we
knew not whether the meeting was to be for death or life. But that
kind folk gathered round us, and asked us no story till they had fed
us, and bathed us, and clad us after their fashion. And then, despite
the nakedness and poverty wherein they had first seen us, they would
have it that we were gods sent down to them from the world beyond the
mountains by their fathers of old time; for of Holy Church, and the
Blessed Trinity, and the Mother of God they knew no more than did I at
that time, but were heathen, as the Gentiles of yore agone. And even
when we put all that Godhood from us, and told them as we might and
could what we were (for we had no heart to lie to such simple folk),
their kindness abated nothing, and they bade us abide there, and were
our loving friends and brethren.
"There in sooth had I been content to abide till eld came upon me, but
my lord would not have it so, but longed for greater things for me.
Though in sooth to me it seemed as if his promise of worship of me by
the folk had been already fulfilled; for when we had abided there some
while, and our beauty, which had been marred by the travail of our
way-faring, had come back to us in full, or it maybe increased
somewhat, they did indeed deal with us with more love than would most
men with the saints, were they to come back on the earth again; and
their children would gather round about me and make me a partaker of
their sports, and be loth to leave me; and the faces of their old folk
would quicken and gladden when I drew nigh: and as for their young men,
it seemed of them that they loved the very ground that my feet trod on,
though it grieved me that I could not pleasure some of them in such
wise as they desired. And all this was soft and full of delight for my
soul: and I, whose body a little while ago had been driven to daily
toil with evil words and stripes, and who had known not what words of
thanks and praise might mean!
"But so it must be that we should depart, and the kind folk showed us
how sore their hearts were of our departure, but they gainsaid us in
nowise, but rather furthered us all they might, and we went our ways
from them riding on horned neat (for they knew not of horses), and
driving one for a sumpter beast before us; and they had given us bows
and arrows for our defence, and that we might get us venison.
"It is not to be said that we did not encounter perils; but thereof I
will tell thee naught as now. We came to other peoples, richer and
mightier than these, and I saw castles, and abbies, and churches, and
walled towns, and wondered at them exceedingly. And in these places
folk knew of the kingdom of my lord and his father, and whereas they
were not of his foes (who lay for the more part on the other side of
his land), and my lord could give sure tokens of what he was, we were
treated with honour and worship, and my lord began to be himself again,
and to bear him as a mighty man. And here to me was some gain in that
poverty and nakedness wherewith we came out of the mountains and the
raiment of the simple folk; for had I been clad in my poor cloth and
goat-skins of the House of the Sorcerer, and he in his brave attire and
bright armour, they would have said, it is a thrall that he is assotted
of, and would have made some story and pretence of taking me from him;
but they deemed me a great lady indeed, and a king's daughter,
according to the tale that he told them. Forsooth many men that saw me
desired me beyond measure, and assuredly some great proud man or other
would have taken me from my lord, but that they feared the wrath of his
father, who was a mighty man indeed.
"Yea, one while as we sojourned by a certain town but a little outside
the walls, a certain young man, a great champion and exceeding
masterful, came upon me with his squires as I was walking in the
meadows, and bore me off, and would have taken me to his castle, but
that my lord followed with a few of the burghers, and there was a
battle fought, wherein my lord was hurt; but the young champion he
slew; and I cannot say but I was sorry of his death, though glad of my
deliverance.
"Again, on a time we guested in a great baron's house, who dealt so
foully by us that he gave my lord a sleeping potion in his good-night
cup, and came to me in the dead night and required me of my love; and I
would not, and he threatened me sorely, and called me a thrall and a
castaway that my lord had picked up off the road: but I gat a knife in
my hand and was for warding myself when I saw that my lord might not
wake: so the felon went away for that time. But on the morrow came
two evil men into the hall whom he had suborned, and bore false witness
that I was a thrall and a runaway. So that the baron would have held
me there (being a mighty man) despite my lord and his wrath and his
grief, had not a young knight of his house been, who swore that he
would slay him unless he let us go; and whereas there were other
knights and squires there present who murmured, the baron was in a way
compelled. So we departed, and divers of the said knights and squires
went with us to see us safe on the way.
"But this was nigh to the kingdom of my lord's father, and that felon
baron I came across again, and he was ever after one of my worst foes.
"Moreover, that young champion who had first stood up in the hall rode
with us still, when the others had turned back; and I soon saw of him
that he found it hard to keep his eyes off me; and that also saw my
lord, and it was a near thing that they did not draw sword thereover:
yet was that knight no evil man, but good and true, and I was
exceedingly sorry for him; but I could not help him in the only way he
would take help of me.
"Lo you, my friend, the beginnings of evil in those long past days, and
the seeds of ill-hap sown in the field of my new life even before the
furrow was turned.
"Well, we came soon into my lord's country, and fair and rich and
lovely was it in those days; free from trouble and unpeace, a happy
abode for the tillers of the soil, and the fashioners of wares. The
tidings had gone to the king that my lord was come back, and he came to
meet him with a great company of knights and barons, arrayed in the
noblest fashion that such folk use; so that I was bewildered with their
glory, and besought my lord to let me fall back out of the way, and
perchance he might find me again. But he bade me ride on his right
hand, for that I was the half of his life and his soul, and that my
friends were his friends and my foes his foes.
"Then there came to me an inkling of the things that should befall, and
I saw that the sweet and clean happiness of my new days was marred, and
had grown into something else, and I began to know the pain of strife
and the grief of confusion: but whereas I had not been bred
delicately, but had endured woes and griefs from my youngest days, I
was not abashed, but hardened my heart to face all things, even as my
lord strove to harden his heart: for, indeed, I said to myself that if
I was to him as the half of his life, he was to me little less than the
whole of my life.
"It is as if it had befallen yesterday, my friend, that I call to mind
how we stood beside our horses in the midst of the ring of great men
clad in gold and gleaming with steel, in the meadow without the gates,
the peace and lowly goodliness whereof with its flocks and herds
feeding, and husbandmen tending the earth and its increase, that great
and noble array had changed so utterly. There we stood, and I knew
that the eyes of all those lords and warriors were set upon me
wondering. But the love of my lord and the late-learned knowledge of
my beauty sustained me. Then the ring of men opened, and the king came
forth towards us; a tall man and big, of fifty-five winters, goodly of
body and like to my lord to look upon. He cast his arms about my lord,
and kissed him and embraced him, and then stood a little aloof from him
and said: 'Well, son, hast thou found it, the Well at the World's End?'
"'Yea,' said my lord, and therewith lifted my hand to his lips and
kissed it, and I looked the king in his face, and his eyes were turned
to me, but it was as if he were looking through me at something behind
me.
"Then he said: 'It is good, son: come home now to thy mother and thy
kindred.' Then my lord turned to me while the king took no heed, and
no man in the ring of knights moved from his place, and he set me in
the saddle, and turned about to mount, and there came a lord from the
ring of men gloriously bedight, and he bowed lowly before my lord, and
held his stirrup for him: but lightly he leapt up into the saddle, and
took my reins and led me along with him, so that he and the king and I
went on together, and all the baronage and their folk shouted and
tossed sword and spear aloft and followed after us. And we left the
meadow quiet and simple again, and rode through the gate of the king's
chief city, wherein was his high house and his castle, the
dwelling-place of his kindred from of old."