Freydis, with a vexed tossing of her head. "Nor have I any more time to
waste upon you either, for presently the Moon-Children will be coming
back to their places: and before the hour is out wherein the moon stays
void and powerless I must return to my own kingdom, whither you may not
follow, to provoke me with any more of your nonsense. And then you will
be properly sorry, I dare say, for you will De remembering me always,
and there will be only human women to divert you, and they are poor
creatures."
Freydis went again to the mirror, and she meditated there. "Yes, you
will be remembering me with my hair in these awful plaits, and that is a
pity, but still you will remember me always. And when you make images
they will be images of me. No, but I cannot have you making any more
outrageous parodies like astonished corpses, and people everywhere
laughing at Queen Freydis!"
She took up the magical pen, laid ready as Helmas had directed, and she
wrote with this gryphon's feather. "So here is the recipe for the Tuyla
incantation with which to give life to your images. It may comfort you a
little to perform that silly magic. It, anyhow, will prevent such
good-for-nothing minxes as may have no more intelligence than to take
you seriously, from putting on too many airs and graces around the
images which you will make of me with my hair done so very
unbecomingly."
"Nothing can ever comfort me, fair enemy, when you have gone away," said
Manuel.
But he took the parchment.
XV
Bandages for the Victor
They came out of the enclosure, to the old altar of Vel-Tyno, while the
moon was still void and powerless. The servitors of Freydis were
thronging swiftly toward Upper Morven, after a pleasant hour of ravening
and ramping about Poictesme. As spoorns and trows and calcars and as
other long forgotten shapes they came, without any noise, so that Upper
Morven was like the disordered mind of a wretch that is dying in fever:
and to this side and to that side the witches of Amneran sat nodding in
approval of what they saw.
Thus, one by one, the forgotten shapes came to the fire, and cried, "A
penny, a penny, twopence, a penny and a half, and a halfpenny!" as each
entered into the fire which was the gateway to their home.
"Farewell!" said Freydis: and as she spoke she sighed.
"Not thus must be our parting," Manuel says. "For do you listen now,
Queen Freydis! it was Helmas the Deep-Minded who told me what was
requisite. '_Queen_ is the same as _cwen_, which means a woman, no more
nor less,' said the wise King. 'You have but to remember that.'"
She took his meaning. Freydis cried out, angrily: "Then all the
foolishness you have been talking about my looks and your love for me
was pre-arranged! And you have cheated me out of the old Tuyla mystery
by putting on the appearance of loving me, and by pestering me with such
nonsense as a plowman trades against the heart of a milkmaid! Now,
certainly, I shall reward your candor in a fashion that will be
whispered about for a long while."
With that, Queen Freydis set about a devastating magic.
"All, all was pre-arranged save one thing," said Manuel, with a yapping
laugh, and not even looking at the commencing terrors. He thrust into
the fire the parchment which Freydis had given him. "Yes, all was
pre-arranged except that Helmas did not purge me of that which will not
accept the hire of any lying to you. So the Deep-Minded's wisdom comes,
at the last pinch, to naught."
Now Freydis for an instant waved back two-thirds of an appalling
monster, which was as yet incompletely evoked for Dom Manuel's
destruction, and Freydis cried impatiently, "But have you no sense
whatever! for you are burning your hand."
And indeed the boy had already withdrawn his hand with a grimace, for in
the ardor of executing his noble gesture, as Queen Freydis saw, he had
not estimated how hot her fires were.
"It is but a little hurt to me who have taken a great hurt," says
Manuel, sullenly. "For I had thought to lie, and in my mouth the lie
turned to a truth. At least, I do not profit by my false-dealing, and I
wave you farewell with empty hands burned clean of theft."
Then she who was a human woman said, "But you have burned your hand!"
"It does not matter: I have ointments yonder. Make haste, Queen Freydis,
for the hour passes wherein the moon is void and powerless."
"There is time." She brought out water from the enclosure, and swiftly
bathed Dom Manuel's hand.
From the fire now came a whispering, "Make haste, Queen Freydis! make
haste, dear Fairy mistress!"
"There is time," said Freydis, "and do you stop flurrying me!" She
brought from the enclosure a pot of ointment, and she dressed Manuel's
hand.
"Borram, borram, Leanhaun shee!" the fire crackled. "Now the hour ends."
Then Freydis sprang from Manuel, toward the flames beyond which she was
queen of ancient mysteries, and beyond which her will was neither to
loose nor to bind. And she cried hastily, "A penny, a penny, twopence--"
But just for a moment she looked back at Morven, and at the man who
waited upon Morven alone and hurt. In his firelit eyes she saw love out
of measure and without hope. And in the breast of Freydis moved the
heart of a human woman.
"I cannot help it," she said, as the hour passed. "Somebody has to
bandage it, and men have no sense in these matters."
Whereon the fire roared angrily, and leaped, and fell dead, for the
Moon-Children Bil and Hjuki had returned from the well which is called
Byrgir, and the moon was no longer void and powerless.
"So, does that feel more comfortable?" said Freydis. She knew that
within this moment age and sorrow and death had somewhere laid
inevitable ambuscades, from which to assail her by and by, for she was
mortal after the sacred fire's extinction, and she meant to make the
best of it.
For a while Count Manuel did not speak. Then he said, in a shaking
voice: "O woman dear and lovely and credulous and compassionate, it is
you and you alone that I must be loving eternally with such tenderness
as is denied to proud and lonely queens on their tall thrones! And it is
you that I must be serving always with such a love as may not be given
to the figure that any man makes in this world! And though all life may
be a dusty waste of endless striving, and though the ways of men may
always be the ways of folly, yet are these ways our ways henceforward,
and not hopeless ways, for you and I will tread them together."
"Now certainly there is in Audela no such moonstruck nonsense to be
hearing, nor any such quick-footed hour of foolishness to be living
through," Freydis replied, "as here to-night has robbed me of my
kingdom."
"Love will repay," said Manuel, as is the easy fashion of men.
And Freydis, a human woman now in all things, laughed low and softly in
the darkness. "Repay me thus, my dearest: no matter how much I may coax
you in the doubtful time to come, do you not ever tell me how you
happened to have the bandages and the pot of ointment set ready by the
mirror. For it is bad for a human woman ever to be seeing through the
devices of wise kings, and far worse for her to be seeing through the
heroic antics of her husband."
Meanwhile in Arles young Alianora had arranged her own match with more
circumspection. The English, who at first demanded twenty thousand marks
as her jointure, had after interminable bargaining agreed to accept her
with three thousand: and she was to be dowered with Plymouth and Exeter
and Tiverton and Torquay and Brixham, and with the tin mines of
Devonshire and Cornwall. In everything except the husband involved, she
was marrying excellently, and so all Arles that night was ornamented
with flags and banners and chaplets and bright hangings and flaring
lamps and torches, and throughout Provence there was festivity of every
sort, and the Princess had great honor and applause.
But in the darkness of Upper Morven they had happiness, no matter for
how brief a while.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
PART THREE
THE BOOK OF CAST ACCOUNTS
TO
H.L. MENCKEN
Consider, _faire Miserie, (quoth Manuel) that it lyes not in mans power
to place his loue where he list, being the worke of an high Deity._ A
Birde was neuer seen in Pontus, _nor true loue in a fleeting mynde:
neuer shall remoue the affection of my Hearte, which in nature
resembleth the stone_ Abiston.
XVI
Freydis
They of Poictesme narrate how Queen Freydis and Count Manuel lived
together amicably upon Upper Morven. They tell also how the iniquitous
usurper, Duke Asmund, at this time held Bellegarde close at hand, but
that his Northmen kept away from Upper Morven, on account of the
supernatural beings you were always apt to encounter thereabouts, so
that Manuel and Freydis had, at first, no human company.
"Between now and a while," said Freydis, "you must be capturing
Bellegarde and cutting off Duke Asmund's ugly head, because by right and
by King Ferdinand's own handwriting all Poictesme belongs to you."
"Well, we will let that wait a bit," says Manuel, "for I do not so
heartily wish to be tied down with parchments in a count's gilded seat
as I do to travel everywhither and see the ends of this world and judge
them. At all events, dear Freydis, I am content enough for the present,
in this little home of ours, and public affairs can wait."
"Still, something ought to be done about it," said Freydis. And, since
Manuel displayed an obstinate prejudice against any lethal plague, she
put the puckerel curse upon Asmund, by which he was afflicted with all
small bodily ills that can intervene between corns and dandruff.
On Upper Morven Freydis had reared by enchantment a modest home, that
was builded of jasper and porphyry and yellow and violet breccia.
Inside, the stone walls were everywhere covered with significant
traceries in low relief, and were incrusted at intervals with disks and
tesserae of turquoise-colored porcelain. The flooring, of course, was of
zinc, as a defence against the unfriendly Alfs, who are at perpetual war
with Audela, and, moreover, there was a palisade, enclosing all, of
peeled willow wands, not buttered but oiled, and fastened with unknotted
ribbons.
Everything was very simple and homelike, and here the servitors of
Freydis attended them when there was need. The fallen Queen was not a
gray witch--not in appearance certainly, but in her endowments, which
were not limited as are the powers of black witches and white witches.
She instructed Dom Manuel in the magic of Audela, and she and Manuel had
great times together that spring and summer, evoking ancient dis-crowned
gods and droll monsters and instructive ghosts to entertain them in the
pauses between other pleasures.
They heard no more, for that turn, of the clay figure to which they had
given life, save for the news brought, by a bogglebo, that as the
limping gay young fellow went down from Morven the reputable citizenry
everywhere were horrified because he went as he was created,
stark-naked, and this was not considered respectable. So a large
tumble-bug came from the west, out of the quagmires of Philistia and
followed after the animated figure, yelping and spluttering, "Morals,
not art!" And for that while, the figure went out of Manuel's saga, thus
malodorously accompanied.
"But we will make a much finer figure," says Freydis, "so it does not
matter."
"Yes, by and by," says Manuel, "but we will let that wait a bit."
"You are always saying that nowadays!"
"Ah, but, my dear, it is so very pleasant to rest here doing nothing
serious for a little while, now that my geas is discharged. Presently of
course we must be travelling everywhither, and when we have seen the
ends of this world, and have judged them, I shall have time, and greater
knowledge too, to give to this image making--"
"It is not from any remote strange places, dear Manuel, but from his own
land that a man must get the earth for this image making--"
"Well, be that as it may, your kisses are to me far more delicious than
your magic."
"I love to hear you say that, my dearest, but still--"
"No, not at all, for you are really much nicer when you are cuddling so,
than when you are running about the world pretending to be pigs and
snakes and fireworks, and murdering people with your extravagant
sorceries."
Saying this, he kissed her, and thus stilled her protests, for in these
amiable times Queen Freydis also was at bottom less interested in magic
than in kisses. Indeed, there was never any sorceress more loving and
tender than Freydis, now that she had become a human woman.
If ever she was irritable it was only when Manuel confessed, in reply to
jealous questionings, that he did not find her quite so beautiful nor so
clever as Niafer had been: but this, as Manuel pointed out, could not be
helped. For there had never been anybody like Niafer, and it would be
nonsense to say otherwise.
It is possible that Dom Manuel believed this. The rather homely, not
intelligent, and in no respect bedazzling servant girl may well have
been--in the inexplicable way these things fell out,--the woman whom
Manuel's heart had chosen, and who therefore in his eyes for the rest of
time must differ from all other persons. Certainly no unastigmatic judge
would have decreed this swarthy Niafer fit, as the phrase is, to hold a
candle either to Freydis or Alianora: whereas Manuel did not conceal,
even from these royal ladies themselves, his personal if unique
evaluations.
To the other side, some say that ladies who are used to hourly
admiration cannot endure the passing of a man who seems to admire not
quite wholeheartedly. He who does not admire at all is obviously a fool,
and not worth bothering about. But to him who admits, "You are well
enough," and makes as though to pass on, there is a mystery attached:
and the one way to solve it is to pursue this irritating fellow. Some
(reasoning thus) assert that squinting Manuel was aware of this axiom,
and that he respected it in all his dealings with Freydis and Alianora.
Either way, these theorists did not ever get any verbal buttressing from
Dom Manuel. Niafer dead and lost to him, he, without flaunting any
unexampled ardors, fell to loving Alianora: and now that Freydis had put
off immortality for his kisses, the tall boy had, again, somewhat the
air of consenting to accept this woman's sacrifice, and her loveliness
and all her power and wisdom, as being upon the whole the handiest
available substitute for Niafer's sparse charms.
Yet others declare, more simply, that Dom Manuel was so constituted as
to value more cheaply every desire after he had attained it. And these
say he noted that--again in the inexplicable way these things fall
out,--now Manuel possessed the unearthly Queen she had become, precisely
as Alianora had become, a not extraordinary person, who in all commerce
with her lover dealt as such.
"But do you really love me, O man of all men?" Freydis would say, "and,
this damned Niafer apart, do you love me a little more than you love any
other woman?"
"Why, are there any other women?" says Manuel, in fine surprise. "Oh, to
be sure, I suppose there are, but I had forgotten about them. I have not
heard or seen or thought of those petticoated creatures since my dear
Freydis came."
The sorceress purred at this sort of talk, and she rested her head where
there seemed a place especially made for it. "I wish I could believe
your words, king of my heart. I have to strive so hard, nowadays, to
goad you into saying these idiotic suitable dear things: and even when
at last you do say them your voice is light and high, and makes them
sound as though you were joking."
He kissed the thick coil of hair which lay fragrant against his lips.
"Do you know, in spite of my joking, I do love you a great deal?"
"I would practise saying that over to myself," observed Freydis
critically. "You should let your voice break a little after the first
three words."
"I speak as I feel. I love you, Freydis, and I tell you so."
"Yes, but you are no longer a perpetual nuisance about it."
"Alas, my dear, you are no longer the unattainable Queen of the country
on the other side of the fire, and that makes a difference, certainly.
It is equally certain that I love you over and above all living women."
"Ah, but, my dearest, who loves you more than any human tongue can
tell?"
"A peculiarly obstinate and lovely imbecile," says Manuel; and he did
that which seemed suitable.
Later Freydis sighed luxuriously. "That saves you the trouble of
talking, does it not? And you talked so madly and handsomely that first
night, when you wanted to get around me on account of the image, but now
you do not make me any pretty speeches at all."
"Oh, heavens!" said Manuel, "but I am embracing a monomaniac. Dear
Freydis, whatever I might say would be perforce the same old words that
have been whispered by millions of men to many more millions of women,
and my love for you is a quite unparalleled thing which ought not to be
travestied by any such shopworn apparel."
"Now again you must be putting me off with solemn joking in that light
high voice, and there is no faithfulness in that voice, and its talking
troubles me."
"I speak as I feel. I love you, Freydis, and I tell you so, but I cannot
be telling it over and over again every quarter of the hour."
"Oh, but very certainly this big squinting boy is the most unloquacious
and the most stubborn brute that ever lived!"
"And would you have me otherwise?"
"No, that is the queer part of it. But it is a grief to me to wonder if
you foresaw as much."
"I!" says Manuel, jovially. "But what would I be doing with any such
finespun policies? My dear, until you comprehend I am the most frank and
downright creature that ever lived you do not begin to appreciate me."
"I know you are, big boy. But still, I wonder," Freydis said, "and the
wondering is a thin little far-off grief."
[Illustration]
XVII
Magic of the Image-Makers
It was presently noised abroad that Queen Freydis of Audela had become a
human woman; and thereafter certain enchanters came to Upper Morven, to
seek her counsel and her favor and the aid of Schamir. These were the
enchanters, Manuel was told, who made images, to which they now and then
contrived--nobody seemed to know quite how, and least of all did the
thaumaturgists themselves,--to impart life.
Once Manuel went with Freydis into a dark place where some of these
magic-workers were at labor. By the light of a charcoal fire, clay
images were ruddily discernible; before these the enchanters moved
unhumanly clad, and doing things which, mercifully perhaps, were veiled
from Manuel by the peculiarly perfumed obscurity.
As Manuel entered the gallery one of the magic-workers was chaunting
shrilly in the darkness below. "It is the unfinished Rune of the
Blackbirds," says Freydis, in a whisper.
Below them the troubled wailing continued:
"--Crammed and squeezed, so entombed (on some wager I hazard), in spite
of scared squawking and mutter, after the fashion that lean-faced Rajah
dealt with trapped heroes, once, in Calcutta. Dared you break the crust
and bullyrag 'em--hot, fierce and angry, what wide beaks buzz plain
Saxon as ever spoke Witenagemot! Yet, singing, they sing as no white
bird does (where none rears phoenix) as near perfection as nature gets,
or, if scowls bar platitude, notes for which there is no rejection in
banks whose coinage--oh, neat!--is gratitude."
Said, in the darkness, another enchanter:
"But far from their choiring the high King sat, in a gold-faced vest and
a gold-laced hat, counting heaped monies, and dreaming of more francs
and sequins and Louis d'or. Meanwhile the Queen on that fateful night,
though avowing her lack of all appetite, was still at table, where,
rumor said, she was smearing her seventh slice of bread (thus each
turgescible rumor thrives at court) with gold from the royal hives.
Through the slumberous pare, under arching trees, to her labors went
singing the maid Dénise--"
A third broke in here, saying:
"And she sang of how subtle and bitter and bright was a beast brought
forth, that was clad with the splendor and light of the cold fair ends
of the north, like a fleshly blossom more white than augmenting tempests
that go, with thunder for weapon, to ravage the strait waste fastness of
snow. She sang how that all men on earth said, whether its mistress at
morn went forth or waited till night,--whether she strove through the
foam and wreckage of shallow and firth, or couched in glad fields of
corn, or fled from all human delight,--that thither it likewise would
roam."
Now a fourth began:
"Thus sang Dénise, what while the siccant sheets and coverlets that
pillowed kingly dreams, with curious undergarbs of royalty, she neatly
ranged: and dreamed not of that doom which waited, yet unborn, to strike
men dumb with perfect awe. As when the seventh wave poises, and sunlight
cleaves it through and through with gold, as though to gild oncoming
death for him that sees foredoomed--and, gasping, sees death high and
splendid!--while the tall wave bears down, and its shattering makes an
end of him: thus poised the sable bird while one might count one, two,
and three, and four, and five, and six, but hardly seven--"
So they continued; but Manuel listened to no more. "What is the meaning
of all this?" he asked, of Freydis.
"It is an experimental incantation," she replied, "in that it is a bit
of unfinished magic for which the proper words have not yet been found:
but between now and a while they will be stumbled on, and then this rune
will live perpetually, surviving all those rhymes that are infected with
thought and intelligent meanings such as are repugnant to human nature."
"Are words, then, so important and enduring?"
"Why, Manuel, I am surprised at you! In what else, pray, does man differ
from the other animals except in that he is used by words?"
"Now I would have said that words are used by men."
"There is give and take, of course, but in the main man is more
subservient to words than they are to him. Why, do you but think of such
terrible words as religion and duty and love, and patriotism and art,
and honor and common-sense, and of what these tyrannizing words do to
and make of people!"
"No, that is chop-logic: for words are only transitory noises, whereas
man is the child of God, and has an immortal spirit."
"Yes, yes, my dearest, I know you believe that, and I think it is
delightfully quaint and sweet of you. But, as I was saying, a man has
only the body of an animal to get experiences in, and the brain of an
animal to think them over with, so that the thoughts and opinions of the
poor dear must remain always those of a more or less intelligent animal.
But his words are very often magic, as you will comprehend by and by when
I have made you the greatest of image-makers."
"Well, well, but we can let that wait a bit," said Manuel.
And thereafter Manuel talked with Freydis, confessing that the
appearance of these magic-workers troubled Manuel. He had thought it, he
said, an admirable thing to make images that lived, until he saw and
considered the appearance of these habitual makers of images. They were
an ugly and rickety, short-tempered tribe, said Manuel: they were
shiftless, spiteful, untruthful, and in everyday affairs not far from
imbecile: they plainly despised all persons who could not make images,
and they apparently detested all those who could. With Manuel they were
particularly high and mighty, assuring him that he was only a prosperous
and affected pseudo-magician, and that the harm done by the self-styled
thaumaturgist was apt to be very great indeed. What sort of models,
then, were these insane, mud-moulding solitary wasps for a tall lad to
follow after? And if Manuel acquired their arts (he asked in
conclusion), would he acquire their traits?
"The answer is perhaps no, and not impossibly yes," replied Freydis.
"For by the ancient Tuyla mystery they extract that which is best in
them to inform their images, and this is apt to leave them empty of
virtue. But I would have you consider that their best endures, whereas
that which is best in other persons is obliterated on some battle-field
or mattress or gallows That is why I have been thinking that this
afternoon--"
"No, we will let that wait a bit, for I must turn this over in my mind,"
said Manuel, "and my mature opinion about this matter must be expressed
later."
But while his thoughts were on the affair his fingers made him droll
small images of ten of the image-makers, which he set aside unquickened.
Freydis smiled at these caricatures, and asked when Manuel would give
them life.