each having a thin peaked beard, came into the opening before the gray
hut, trampling the dead leaves there as they shouted for Mimir. "Come
out!" they cried: "come out, you miserable Mirmir, and face those three
whom you have wronged!"
Dom Manuel rose from the bank of the Wolflake, and went toward the
shouters. "There is no Mimir," he told them, "in Dun Vlechlan, or not at
least in this peculiarly irrational part of the forest."
"You lie," they said, "for even though you have hitched a body to your
head we recognize you." They looked at Niafer, and all three laughed
cruelly. "Was it for this hunched, draggled, mud-faced wench that you
left us, you squinting old villain? And have you so soon forgotten the
vintner's parlor at Neogréant, and what you did with the gold plates?"
"No, I have not forgotten these things, for I never knew anything about
them," said Manuel.
Said one of the knaves, twirling fiercely his moustachios: "Hah,
shameless Mimir, do you look at me, who have known you and your blind
son Oriander, too, to be unblushing knaves for these nine centuries!
Now, I suppose, you will be denying the affair of the squirrel also?"
"Oh, be off with your nonsense!" says Manuel, "for I have not yet had
twenty-two years of living, and I never saw you before, and I hope never
to see you again."
But they all set upon him with cutlasses, so there was nothing remaining
save to have out his sword and fight. And when each of these one-eyed
persons had vanished curiously under his death-wound, Manuel told Niafer
it was a comfort to find that the month of years had left him a fair
swordsman for all that his youth was gone; and that he thought they had
better be leaving this part of the high woods of Dun Vlechlan, wherein
unaccountable things took place, and all persons behaved unreasonably.
"Were these wood-spirits unreasonable," asks Niafer, "in saying that the
countenance and the body you have given me are ugly?"
"My dear," replied Manuel, "it was their saying that which made me try
to avoid the conflict, because it does not look well, not even in
dealing with demons, to injure the insane."
"Manuel, and can it be you who are considering appearances?"
Dom Manuel said gravely: "My dealings with Misery and with Misery's
kindred have taught me many things which I shall never forget nor very
willingly talk about. One of these teachings, though, is that in most
affairs there is a middle road on which there is little traffic and
comparatively easy going. I must tell you that the company I have been
in required a great deal of humoring, for of course it is not safe to
trifle with any evil principle. No, no, one need not absolutely and
openly defy convention, I perceive, in order to follow after one's own
thinking," says Manuel, shrewdly, and waggling a gray beard.
"I am so glad you have learned that at last! At least, I suppose, I am
glad," said Niafer, a little wistfully, as she recalled young Manuel of
the high head.
"But, as I was saying, I now estimate that these tattered persons who
would have prevented my leaving, as well as the red fellow that would
have hindered my entering, this peculiarly irrational part of the
forest, were spiritual intruders into Misery's domain whom Misery had
driven out of their wits. No, Niafer, I voice no criticism, because with
us two this Misery of earth, whom some call Béda, and others Kruchina,
has dealt very handsomely. It troubles me to suspect that he was also
called Mimir; but of this we need not speak, because a thing done has an
end, even a killed grandfather. Nevertheless, I think that Dun Vlechlan
is unwholesome, and I am of the opinion that you and I will be more
comfortable elsewhere."
"But must we go back to looking after pigs, dear Manuel, or are you now
too old for that?"
Dom Manuel smiled, and you saw that he retained at least his former
lordliness. "No, now that every obligation is lifted, and we are
reunited, dear snip, I can at last go traveling everywhither, so that I
may see the ends of this world and judge them. And we will do whatever
else we choose, for, as I must tell you, I am now a nobleman with
lackeys and meadowlands and castles of my own, if only I could obtain
possession of them."
"This is excellent hearing," said Niafer, "and much better than
pig-stealing, and I am glad that the world has had sense enough to
appreciate you, Manuel, and you it. And we will have rubies in my
coronet, because I always fancied them. Now do you tell me how it all
happened, and what I am to be called countess of. And we will talk about
that traveling later, for I have already traveled a great distance
today, but we must certainly have rubies."
[Illustration]
XXIV
Three Women
So Manuel put on his armor, and with Manuel telling as much as he
thought wise of the adventures which he had encountered while Niafer was
dead, they left this peculiarly irrational part of the forest, and fared
out of the ruined November woods; and presently, in those barren fields
that descend toward the sand dunes of Quentavic, came face to face with
Queen Freydis and the Princess Alianora, where these two royal ladies
and many other fine people rode toward the coast.
Alianora went magnificently this morning, on a white horse, and wearing
a kirtle of changeable green like the sea's green in sunlight: her
golden hair was bound with a gold frontlet wherein were emeralds.
Freydis, dark and stately, was in crimson embroidered with small gold
stars and ink-horns: a hooded falcon sat on her gloved wrist.
Now Freydis and Alianora stared at the swarthy, flat-faced, limping
peasant girl in brown drugget that was with Count Manuel. Then Alianora
stared at Freydis.
"Is it for this dingy cripple," says Alianora, with her proud fine face
all wonder, "that Dom Manuel has forsaken us and has put off his youth?
Why, the girl is out and out ugly!"
"Our case is none the better for that," replied Freydis, the wise Queen,
whose gazing rested not upon Niafer but on Manuel.
"Who are those disreputable looking, bold-faced creatures that are
making eyes at you?" says Niafer.
And Manuel, marveling to meet these two sorceresses together, replied,
as he civilly saluted them from a little distance, "Two royal ladies,
who would be well enough were it not for their fondness for having their
own way."
"And I suppose you think them handsome!"
"Yes, Niafer, I find them very beautiful. But after looking at them with
aesthetic pleasure, my gaze returns adoringly to the face I have created
as I willed, and to the quiet love of my youth, and I have no occasion
to be thinking of queens and princesses. Instead, I give thanks in my
heart that I am faring contentedly toward the nearest priest with the
one woman in the world who to my finding is desirable and lovely."
"It is very sweet of you to say that, Manuel, and I am sure I hope you
are telling the truth, but my faith would be greater if you had not
rattled it off so glibly."
Then Alianora said: "Greetings, and for the while farewell, to you,
Count Manuel! For all we ride to Quentavic, and thence I am passing over
into England to marry the King of that island."
"Now, but there is a lucky monarch for you!" says Manuel, politely. He
looked at Freydis, who had put off immortality for his kisses, and whom
he had deserted to follow after his own thinking: these re-encounters
are always awkward, and Dom Manuel fidgeted a little. He asked her, "And
do you also go into England?"
She told him very quietly, no, that she was only going to the coast, to
consult with three or four of the water-demons about enchanting one of
the Red Islands, and about making her home there. She had virtually
decided, she told him, to put a spell upon Sargyll, as it seemed the
most desirable of these islands from what she could hear, but she must
first see the place. Queen Freydis looked at him with rather
embarrassing intentness all the while, but she spoke quite calmly.
"Yes, yes," Dom Manuel said, cordially, "I dare say you will be very
comfortable there, and I am sure I hope so. But I did not know that you
two ladies were acquainted."
"Indeed, our affairs are not your affairs," says Freydis, "any longer.
And what does it matter, on this November day which has a thin sunlight
and no heat at all in it? No, that girl yonder has to-day. But Alianora
and I had each her yesterday; and it may be the one or it may be the
other of us three who will have to-morrow, and it may be also that the
disposal of that to-morrow will be remarkable."
"Very certainly," declared Alianora, with that slow, lovely, tranquil
smile of hers, "I shall have my portion of to-morrow. I would have made
you a king, and by and by the most powerful of all kings, but you
followed after your own thinking, and cared more for messing in wet mud
than for a throne. Still, this nonsense of yours has converted you into
a rather distinguished looking old gentleman, so when I need you I shall
summon you, with the token that we know of, Dom Manuel, and then do you
come post-haste!"
Freydis said: "I would have made you the greatest of image-makers; but
you followed after your own thinking, and instead of creating new and
god-like beings you preferred to resurrect a dead servant girl.
Nevertheless, do I bid you beware of the one living image you made, for
it still lives and it alone you cannot ever shut out from your barred
heart, Dom Manuel: and nevertheless, do I bid you come to me, Dom Manuel,
when you need me."
Manuel replied, "I shall always obey both of you." Niafer throughout
this while said nothing at all. But she had her private thoughts, to the
effect that neither of these high-and-mighty trollops was in reality the
person whom henceforward Dom Manuel was going to obey.
So the horns sounded. The gay cavalcade rode on, toward Quentavic. And
as they went young Osmund Heleigh (Lord Brudenel's son) asked for the
gallant King of Navarre, "But who, sire, was that time-battered gray
vagabond, with the tarnished silver stallion upon his shield and the
mud-colored cripple at his side, that our Queens should be stopping for
any conference with him?"
King Thibaut said it was the famous Dom Manuel of Poictesme, who had put
away his youth for the sake of the girl that was with him.
"Then is the old man a fool on every count," declared Messire Heleigh,
sighing, "for I have heard of his earlier antics in Provence, and no
lovelier lady breathes than Dame Alianora."
"I consider Queen Freydis to be the handsomer of the two," replied
Thibaut, "but certainly there is no comparing either of these
inestimable ladies with Dom Manuel's swarthy drab."
"She is perhaps some witch whose magic is more terrible than their
magic, and has besotted this ruined champion?"
"It is either enchantment or idiocy, unless indeed it be something far
higher than either." King Thibaut looked grave, then shrugged. "Oy
Dieus! even so, Queen Freydis is the more to my taste."
Thus speaking, the young King spurred his bay horse toward Queen Freydis
(from whom he got his ruin a little later), and all Alianora's retinue
went westward, very royally, while Manuel and Niafer trudged east. Much
color and much laughter went one way, but the other way went
contentment, for that while.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
PART FOUR
THE BOOK OF SURCHARGE
TO
HUGH WALPOLE
Soe _Manuel made all the Goddes that we call_ mamettes _and_ ydolles,
_that were sett ouer the Subiection of his lyfe tyme: and euery of the
goddes that Manuel wolde carue toilesomelie hadde in hys Bodie a
Blemmishe; and in the mydle of the godes made he one god of the
Philistines._
XXV
Affairs in Poictesme
They of Poictesme narrate how Manuel and Niafer traveled east a little
way and then turned toward the warm South; and how they found a priest
to marry them, and how Manuel confiscated two horses. They tell also how
Manuel victoriously encountered a rather terrible dragon at La Flèche,
and near Orthez had trouble with a Groach, whom he conquered and
imprisoned in a leather bottle, but they say that otherwise the journey
was uneventful.
"And now that every obligation is lifted, and we are reunited, my dear
Niafer," says Manuel, as they sat resting after his fight with the
dragon, "we will, I repeat, be traveling every whither, so that we may
see the ends of this world and may judge them."
"Dearest," replied Niafer, "I have been thinking about that, and I am
sure it would be delightful, if only people were not so perfectly
horrid."
"What do you mean, dear snip?"
"You see, Manuel, now that you have fetched me back from paradise,
people will be saying you ought to give me, in exchange for the abodes
of bliss from which I have been summoned, at least a fairly comfortable
and permanent terrestrial residence. Yes, dearest, you know what people
are, and the evil-minded will be only too delighted to be saying
everywhere that you are neglecting an obvious duty if you go wandering
off to see and judge the ends of this world, with which, after all, you
have really no especial concern."
"Oh, well, and if they do?" says Manuel, shrugging lordily. "There is no
hurt in talking."
"Yes, Manuel, but such shiftless wandering, into uncomfortable places
that nobody ever heard of, would have that appearance. Now there is
nothing I would more thoroughly enjoy then to go traveling about at
adventure with you, and to be a countess means nothing whatever to me. I
am sure I do not in the least care to live in a palace of my own, and be
bothered with fine clothes and the responsibility of looking after my
rubies, and with servants and parties every day. But you see, darling, I
simply could not bear to have people thinking ill of my dear husband,
and so, rather than have that happen, I am willing to put up with these
things."
"Oh, oh!" says Manuel, and he began pulling vexedly at his little gray
beard, "and does one obligation beget another as fast as this! Now
whatever would you have me do?"
"Obviously, you must get troops from King Ferdinand, and drive that
awful Asmund out of Poictesme."
"Dear me!" says Manuel, "but what a simple matter you make of it! Shall
I attend to it this afternoon?"
"Now, Manuel, you speak without thinking, for you could not possibly
re-conquer all Poictesme this afternoon--."
"Oh!" says Manuel.
"No, not single-handed, my darling. You would first have to get troops
to help you, both horse and foot."
"My dearest, I only meant--"
"--Even then, it will probably take quite a while to kill off all the
Northmen."
"Niafer, will you let me explain--"
"--Besides, you are miles away from Poictesme. You could not even manage
to get there this afternoon."
Manuel put his hand over her mouth. "Niafer, when I spoke of subjugating
Poictesme this afternoon I was attempting a mild joke. I will never any
more attempt light irony in your presence, for I perceive that you do
not appreciate my humor. Meanwhile I repeat to you, No, no, a thousand
times, no! To be called Count of Poictesme sounds well, it strokes the
hearing: but I will not be set to root and vegetate in a few hundred
spadefuls of dirt. No, for I have but one lifetime here, and in that
lifetime I mean to see this world and all the ends of this world, that I
may judge them. And I," he concluded, decisively, "am Manuel, who follow
after my own thinking and my own desire."
Niafer began to weep. "I simply cannot bear to think of what people will
say of you."
"Come, come, my dear," says Manuel, "this is preposterous."
Niafer wept.
"You will only end by making yourself ill!" says Manuel.
Niafer continued to weep.
"My mind is quite made up," says Manuel, "so what, in God's name, is the
good of this?"
Niafer now wept more and more broken-heartedly. And the big champion sat
looking at her, and his broad shoulders relaxed. He viciously kicked at
the heavy glistening green head of the dragon, still bleeding uglily
there at his feet, but that did no good whatever. The dragon-queller was
beaten. He could do nothing against such moisture, his resolution was
dampened and his independence was washed away by this salt flood. And
they say too that, now his youth was gone, Dom Manuel began to think of
quietness and of soft living more resignedly than he acknowledged.
"Very well, then," Manuel says, by and by, "let us cross the Loir, and
ride south to look for our infernal coronet with the rubies in it, and
for your servants, and for some of your palaces."
So in the Christmas holidays they bring a tall burly squinting
gray-haired warrior to King Ferdinand, in a lemon grove behind the royal
palace. Here the sainted King, duly equipped with his halo and his
goose-feather, was used to perform the lesser miracles on Wednesdays and
Saturdays.
The King was delighted by the change in Manuel's looks, and said that
experience and maturity were fine things to be suggested by the
appearance of a nobleman in Manuel's position. But, a pest! as for
giving him any troops with which to conquer Poictesme, that was quite
another matter. The King needed his own soldiers for his own ends, which
necessitated the immediate capture of Cordova. Meanwhile here were the
Prince de Gâtinais and the Marquess di Paz, who also had come with this
insane request, the one for soldiers to help him against the
Philistines, and the other against the Catalans.
"Everybody to whom I ever granted a fief seems to need troops nowadays,"
the King grumbled, "and if any one of you had any judgment whatever you
would have retained your lands once they were given you."
"Our deficiencies, sire," says the young Prince de Gâtinais, with
considerable spirit, "have not been altogether in judgment, but rather
in the support afforded us by our liege-lord."
This was perfectly true; but inasmuch as such blunt truths are not
usually flung at a king and a saint, now Ferdinand's thin brows went up.
"Do you think so?" said the King. "We must see about it. What is that,
for example?"
He pointed to the pool by which the lemon-trees were watered, and the
Prince glanced at the yellow object afloat in this pool. "Sire," said de
Gâtinais, "it is a lemon which has fallen from one of the trees."
"So you judge it to be a lemon. And what do you make of it, di Paz?" the
King inquired.
The Marquess was a statesman who took few chances. He walked to the edge
of the pool, and looked at the thing before committing himself: and he
came back smiling. "Ah, sire, you have indeed contrived a cunning sermon
against hasty judgment, for, while the tree is a lemon-tree, the thing
that floats beneath it is an orange."
"So you, Marquess, judge it to be an orange. And what do you make of it,
Count of Poictesme?" the King asks now.
If di Paz took few chances, Manuel took none at all. He waded into the
pool, and fetched out the thing which floated there. "King," says big
Dom Manuel, sagely blinking his bright pale eyes, "it is the half of an
orange."
Said the King: "Here is a man who is not lightly deceived by the vain
shows of this world, and who values truth more than dry shoes. Count
Manuel, you shall have your troops, and you others must wait until you
have acquired Count Manuel's powers of judgment, which, let me tell you,
are more valuable than any fief I have to give."
So when the spring had opened, Manuel went into Poictesme at the head of
a very creditable army, and Dom Manuel summoned Duke Asmund to surrender
all that country. Asmund, who was habitually peevish under the puckerel
curse, refused with opprobrious epithets, and the fighting began.
Manuel had, of course, no knowledge of generalship, but King Ferdinand
sent the Conde de Tohil Vaca as Manuel's lieutenant. Manuel now figured
imposingly in jeweled armor, and the sight of his shield bearing the
rampant stallion and the motto _Mundus vult decipi_ became in battle a
signal for the more prudent among his adversaries to distinguish
themselves in some other part of the conflict. It was whispered by
backbiters that in counsel and in public discourse Dom Manuel sonorously
repeated the orders and opinions provided by Tohil Vaca: either way, the
official utterances of the Count of Poictesme roused everywhere the
kindly feeling which one reserves for old friends, so that no harm was
done.
To the contrary, Dom Manuel now developed an invaluable gift for public
speaking, and in every place which he conquered and occupied he made
powerful addresses to the surviving inhabitants before he had them
hanged, exhorting all right-thinking persons to crush the military
autocracy of Asmund. Besides, as Manuel pointed out, this was a struggle
such as the world had never known, in that it was a war to end war
forever, and to ensure eternal peace for everybody's children. Never, as
he put it forcefully, had men fought for a more glorious cause. And so
on and go on, said he, and these uplifting thoughts had a fine effect
upon everyone.
"How wonderfully you speak!" Dame Niafer would say admiringly.
And Manuel would look at her queerly, and reply: "I am earning your
home, my dear, and your servants' wages, and some day these verbal
jewels will be perpetuated in a real coronet. For I perceive that a
former acquaintance of mine was right in pointing out the difference
between men and the other animals."
"Ah, yes, indeed!" said Niafer, very gravely, and not attaching any
particular meaning to it, but generally gathering that she and Manuel
were talking about something edifying and pious. For Niafer was now a
devout Christian, as became a Countess of Poictesme, and nobody anywhere
entertained a more sincere reverence for solemn noises.
"For instance," Dame Niafer continued, "they tell me that these lovely
speeches of yours have produced such an effect upon the Philistines
yonder that their Queen Stultitia has proffered an alliance, and has
promised to send you light cavalry and battering-rams."
"It is true she has promised to send them, but she has not done so."
"None the less, Manuel, you will find that the moral effect of her
approbation will be invaluable; and, as I so often think, that is the
main thing after all--"
"Yes, yes," says Manuel, impatiently, "we have plenty of moral
approbation and fine speaking here, and in the South we have a saint to
work miracles for us, but it is Asmund who has that army of splendid
reprobates, and they do not value morality and rhetoric the worth of an
old finger-nail."
So the fighting continued throughout that spring, and in Poictesme it
all seemed very important and unexampled, just as wars usually appear to
the people that are engaged in them. Thousands of men were slain, to the
regret of their mothers and sweethearts, and very often of their wives.
And there was the ordinary amount of unparalleled military atrocities
and perfidies and ravishments and burnings and so on, and the endurers
took their agonies so seriously that it is droll to think of how
unimportant it all was in the outcome.
For this especial carnage was of supreme and world-wide significance so
long ago that it is now not worth the pains involved to rephrase for
inattentive hearing the combat of the knights at Perdigon--out of which
came alive only Guivric and Coth and Anavalt and Gonfal,--or to speak of
the once famous battle of the tinkers, or to retell how the inflexible
syndics of Montors were imprisoned in a cage and slain by mistake. It no
longer really matters to any living person how the Northmen burned the
bridge of boats at Manneville; nor how Asmund trod upon a burned-through
beam at the disastrous siege of Évre, and so fell thirty feet into the
midst of his enemies and broke his leg, but dealt so valorously that he
got safe away; nor how at Lisuarte unarmored peasants beat off Manuel's
followers with scythes and pitchforks and clubs.
Time has washed out the significance of these old heroisms as the color
is washed from flimsy cloths; so that chroniclers act wisely when they
wave aside, with undipped pens, the episode of the brave Siennese and
their green poison at Bellegarde, and the doings of the Anti-Pope there,
and grudge the paper needful to record the remarkable method by which
gaunt Tohil Vaca levied a tax of a livre on every chimney in Poictesme.