tell me puts a new complexion upon matters, and not for worlds would I
be coming between husband and wife--"
Queen Freydis looked up from the flames, toward Dom Manuel, very sadly.
Freydis shrugged, flinging out her hands above the heads of the accursed
beasts. "And at the last I cannot do that, either. So do you two dreary,
unimportant, well-mated people remain undestroyed, now that I go to seek
my husband, and now I endeavor to win my pardon for not letting him
torment you. Eh, I was tempted, gray Manuel, to let my masterful fine
husband have his pleasure of you, and of this lean ugly hobbling
creature and her brat, too, as formerly you had your pleasure of me. But
women are so queerly fashioned that at the last I cannot, quite, consent
to harm this gray, staid, tedious fellow, nor any of his chattels. For
all passes in this world save one thing only: and though the young
Manuel whom I loved in a summer that is gone, be nowadays as perished as
that summer's gay leaves, it is certain a woman's folly does not ever
perish."
"Indeed, I did not merit that you should care for me," says Manuel,
rather unhappily. "But I have always been, and always shall be sincerely
fond of you, Freydis, and for that reason I rejoice to deduce that you
are not, now, going to do anything violent and irreparable and such as
your better nature would afterward regret."
"I loved you once," she said, "and now I am assured the core of you was
always a cold and hard and colorless and very common pebble. But it does
not matter now that I am a mortal woman. Either way, you have again made
use of me. I have afforded you shelter when you were homeless. And now
again you will be getting your desire."
Queen Freydis went to the window, and lifted the scarlet curtain figured
with ramping gold dragons; but the couching beasts stayed by the hearth,
and they continued to look at Dom Manuel.
"Yes, now again, gray Manuel, you will be getting your desire. That ship
which shows at the river bend, with serpents and castles painted on its
brown sails, is Miramon Lluagor's ship, which he has sent to fetch you
from Sargyll: and the last day of your days of exile is now over. For
Miramon is constrained by one who is above us all; therefore Miramon
comes gladly and very potently to assist you. And I--who have served
your turn!--I may now depart, to look for Sesphra, and for my pardon if
I can get it."
"But whither do you go, dear Freydis?" Dom Manuel spoke as though he
again felt quite fond of her.
"What does that matter," she answered, looking long and long at him,
"now that Count Manuel has no further need of me?" Then Freydis looked
at Niafer, lying there in a charmed sleep. "I neither love nor entirely
hate you, ugly and lame and lean and fretful Niafer, but assuredly I do
not envy you. You are welcome to your fidgeting gray husband. My husband
is a ruthless god. My husband does not grow old and tender-hearted and
subservient to me, and he never will." Thereafter Freydis bent downward,
and Freydis kissed the child she had christened. "Some day you will be a
woman, Melicent, and then you will be loving some man or another man. I
could hope that you will then love the man who will make you happy, but
that sort of man has not yet been found."
Dom Manuel came to her, not heeding the accursed beasts at all, and he
took both the hands of Freydis in his hands. "My dear, and do you think
I am a happy man?"
She looked up at him: when she answered, her voice trembled. "I made you
happy, Manuel. I would have made you happy always."
"I wonder if you would have? Ah, well, at all events, the obligation was
upon me. At no time in a man's life, I find, is there lacking some
obligation or another: and we must meet each as we best can, not hoping
to succeed, just aiming not to fall short too far. No, it is not a merry
pursuit. And it is a ruining pursuit!"
She said, "I had not thought ever to be sorry for you--Why should I
grieve for you, gray traitor?"
Harshly he answered: "Oho, I am not proud of what I have made of my
life, and of your life, and of the life of that woman yonder, but do you
think I will be whining about it! No, Freydis: the boy that loved and
deserted you is here,"--he beat upon his breast,--"locked in, imprisoned
while time lasts, dying very lonelily. Well, I am a shrewd gaoler: he
shall not get out. No, even at the last, dear Freydis, there is the bond
of silence."
She said, impotently, "I am sorry--Even at the last you contrive for me
a new sorrow--"
For a moment they stood looking at each other, and she remembered
thereafter his sad and quizzical smiling. These two had nothing more to
share in speech or deed.
Then Freydis went away, and the accursed beasts and her castle too went
with her, as smoke passes. Manuel was thus left standing out of doors in
a reaped field, alone with his wife and child while Miramon's ship came
about. Niafer slept. But now the child awoke to regard the world into
which she had been summoned willy-nilly, and the child began to whimper.
Dom Manuel patted this intimidating small creature gingerly, with a
strong comely hand from which his wedding ring was missing. That would
require explanations.
It therefore seems not improbable that he gave over this brief period of
waiting, in a reaped field, to wondering just how much about the past he
might judiciously tell his wife when she awoke to question him, because
in the old days that was a problem which no considerate husband failed
to weigh with care.
XXXI
Statecraft
Now from the ship's gangway came seven trumpeters dressed in glistening
plaids: each led with a silver chain a grayhound, and each of the seven
hounds carried in his mouth an apple of gold. After these followed three
harp-players and three clergymen and three jesters, all bearing crested
staves and wearing chaplets of roses. Then Miramon Lluagor, lord of the
nine sleeps and prince of the seven madnesses, comes ashore. An
incredible company followed. But with him came his wife Gisèle and their
little child Demetrios, thus named for the old Count of Arnaye: and it
was this boy that, they say, when yet in swaddling-bands, was appointed
to be the slayer of his own father, wise Miramon Lluagor.
Dame Niafer was wakened, and the two women went apart to compare and
discuss their babies. They put the children in one cradle. A great while
afterward were these two again to lie together thus, and from this
mating was the girl to get long sorrow, and the boy his death.
Meanwhile the snub-nosed lord of the nine sleeps and the squinting Count
of Poictesme sat down upon the river bank to talk about more serious
matters than croup and teething. The sun was high by this time, so Kan
and Muluc and Ix and Cauac came in haste from the corners of the world,
and held up a blue canopy to shelter the conferring between their master
and Dom Manuel.
"What is this," said Miramon Lluagor to Dom Manuel, first of all, "that
I hear of your alliance with Philistia, and of your dickerings with a
people who say that my finest designs are nothing but indigestion?"
"I have lost Poictesme," says Manuel, "and the Philistines offer to
support me in my pretensions."
"But that will never do! I who design all dreams can never consent to
that, and no Philistine must ever enter Poictesme. Why did you not come
to me for help at the beginning, instead of wasting time upon kings and
queens?" demands the magician, fretfully. "And are you not ashamed to be
making any alliance with Philistia, remembering how you used to follow
after your own thinking and your own desire?"
"Well," Manuel replies, "I have had as yet nothing save fair words from
Philistia, and no alliance is concluded."
"That is more than well. Only, let us be orderly about this. Imprimis,
you desire Poictesme--"
"No, not in particular, but appearances have to be preserved, and my
wife thinks it would look better for me to redeem this country from the
oppression of the heathen Northmen, and so provide her with a suitable
home."
"Item, then I must obtain this country for you, because there is no
sense in withstanding our wives in such matters."
"I rejoice at your decision--"
"Between ourselves, Manuel, I fancy you now begin to understand the
reasons which prompted me to bring you the magic sword Flamberge at the
beginning of our acquaintance, and have learned who it is that wears the
breeches in most marriages."
"No, that is not the way it is at all, Miramon, for my wife is the
dearest and most dutiful of women, and never crosses my wishes in
anything."
Miramon nodded his approval. "You are quite right, for somebody might be
overhearing us. So, let us get on, and do you stop interrupting me.
Item, you must hold Poictesme, and your heirs forever after must hold
Poictesme, not in fee but by feudal tenure. Item, you shall hold these
lands, not under any saint like Ferdinand, but under a quite different
sort of liege-lord."
"I can see no objection to your terms, thus far. But who is to be my
overlord?"
"A person whom you may remember," replied Miramon, and he beckoned
toward the rainbow throng of his followers.
One of them at this signal came forward. He was a tall lean youngster,
with ruddy cheeks, wide-set brown eyes, and a smallish head covered with
crisp, tightly-curling dark red hair: and Manuel recognized him at once,
because Manuel had every reason to remember the queer talk he had held
with this Horvendile just after Niafer had ridden away with Miramon's
dreadful half-brother.
"But do you not think that this Horvendile is insane?" Dom Manuel asked
the magician, privately.
"I confess he very often has that appearance."
"Then why do you make him my overlord?"
"I have my reasons, you may depend upon it, and if I do not talk about
them you may be sure that for this reticence also I have my reasons."
"But is this Horvendile, then, one of the Léshy? Is he the Horvendile
whose great-toe is the morning star?"
"I may tell you that it was he who summoned me to help you in distress,
of which I had not heard upon Vraidex, but why should I tell you any
more, Dom Manuel? Come, is it not enough that am offering you a province
and comparatively tranquil terms of living with your wife, that you must
have all my old secrets to boot?"
"You are right," says Manuel, "and prospective benefactors must be
humored." So he rested content with his ignorance, nor did he ever find
out about Horvendile, though later Manuel must have had horrible
suspicions.
Meanwhile, Dom Manuel affably shook hands with the red-headed boy, and
spoke of their first meeting. "And I believe you were not talking utter
foolishness after all, my lad," says Manuel, laughing, "for I have
learned that the strange and dangerous thing which you told me is very
often true."
"Why, how should I know," quiet Horvendile replied, "when I am talking
foolishness and when not?"
Manuel said: "Still, I can understand your talking only in part. Well,
but it is not right for us to understand our overlords, and, madman or
not, I prefer you to Queen Stultitia and her preposterous rose-colored
spectacles. So let us proceed in due form, and draw up the articles of
our agreement."
This was done, and they formally subscribed the terms under which Dom
Manuel and the descendants of Dom Manuel were to hold Poictesme
perpetually in fief to Horvendile. It was the most secret sort of
compact, and to divulge its ten stipulations would even now be most
disastrous. So the terms of this compact were not ever made public. Thus
all men stayed at no larger liberty to criticize its provisos than his
circumstances had granted to Dom Manuel, upon whom marrying had put the
obligation to provide, in one way or another way, for his wife and
child.
[Illustration]
XXXII
The Redemption of Poictesme
When then these matters were concluded, and the future of Poictesme had
been arranged in every detail, then Miramon Lluagor's wife told him that
long words and ink-bottles and red seals were well enough for men to
play with, but that it was high time something sensible was done in this
matter, unless they expected Niafer to bring up the baby in a ditch.
The magician said, "Yes, my darling, you are quite right, and I will see
to it the first thing after dinner."
He then said to Dom Manuel, "Now Horvendile informs me that you were
duly born in a cave at about the time of the winter solstice, of a
virgin mother and of a father who was not human."
Manuel replied, "Certainly that is true. But why do you now stir up
these awkward old stories?"
"You have duly wandered from place to place, bringing wisdom and
holiness to men--"
"That also is generally known."
"You have duly performed miracles, such as reviving dead persons and so
on--"
"That too is undeniable."
"You have duly sojourned with evil in a desert place, and have there
been tempted to despair and blaspheme and to commit other iniquities."
"Yes, something of the sort did occur in Dun Vlechlan."
"And, as I well know, you have by your conduct of affairs upon Vraidex
duly disconcerted me, who am the power of darkness--"
"Ah! ah! you, Miramon, are then the power of darkness!"
"I control all dreams and madnesses, Dom Manuel; and these are the main
powers of darkness."
Manuel seemed dubious, but he only said: "Well, let us get on! It is
true that all these things have happened to me, somehow."
The magician looked at the tall warrior for a while, and in the dark
soft eyes of Miramon Lluagor was a queer sort of compassion. Miramon
said, "Yes, Manuel, these portents have marked your living thus far,
just as they formerly distinguished the beginnings of Mithras and of
Huitzilopochtli and of Tammouz and of Heracles--"
"Yes, but what does it matter if these accidents did happen to me,
Miramon?"
"--As they happened to Gautama and to Dionysos and to Krishna and to all
other reputable Redeemers," Miramon continued.
"Well, well, all this is granted. But what, pray, am I to deduce from
all this?"
Miramon told him.
Dom Manuel, at the end of Miramon's speaking, looked peculiarly solemn,
and Manuel said: "I had thought the transformation surprising enough
when King Ferdinand was turned into a saint, but this tops all! Either
way, Miramon, you point out an obligation so tremendous that the less
said about it, the wiser; and the sooner this obligation is discharged
and the ritual fulfilled, the more comfortable it will be for
everybody."
So Manuel went away with Miramon Lluagor into a secret place, and there
Dom Manuel submitted to that which was requisite, and what happened is
not certainly known. But this much is known, that Manuel suffered, and
afterward passed three days in an underground place, and came forth on
the third day.
Then Miramon said: "All this being duly performed and well rid of, we do
not now violate any messianic etiquette if we forthwith set about the
redemption of Poictesme. Now then, would you prefer to redeem with the
forces of good or with the forces of evil?"
"Not with the forces of evil," said Manuel, "for I saw many of these in
the high woods of Dun Vlechlan, and I do not fancy them as allies. But
are good and evil all one to you of the Léshy?"
"Why should we tell you, Manuel?" says the magician.
"That, Miramon, is a musty reply."
"It is not a reply, it is a question. And the question has become musty
because it has been handled so often, and no man has ever been able to
dispose of it."
Manuel gave it up, and shrugged. "Well, let us conquer as we may, so
that God be on our side."
Miramon replied: "Never fear! He shall be, in every shape and
attribute."
So Miramon did what was requisite, and from the garrets and dustheaps of
Vraidex came strong allies. For, to begin with, Miramon dealt unusually
with a little fish, and as a result of these dealings came to them,
during the afternoon of the last Thursday in September, as they stood on
the seashore north of Manneville, a darkly colored champion clad in
yellow. He had four hands, in which he carried a club, a shell, a lotus
and a discus; and he rode upon a stallion whose hide glittered like new
silver.
Manuel said, "This is a good omen, that the stallion of Poictesme should
have aid brought to it by yet another silver stallion."
"Let us not speak of this bright stallion," Miramon hastily replied,
"for until this Yuga is over he has no name. But when the minds of all
men are made clear as crystal then a christening will be appointed for
this stallion, and his name will be Kalki, and by the rider upon this
stallion Antan will be redeemed."
"Well," Manuel said, "that seems fair enough. Meanwhile, with this dusky
gentleman's assistance, I gather, we are to redeem Poictesme."
"Oh, no, Dom Manuel, he is but the first of our Redeemers, for there is
nothing like the decimal system, and you will remember it was in our
treaty that in Poictesme all things are to go by tens forever."
Thereafter Miramon did what was requisite with some acorns, and the
splutterings were answered by low thunder. So came a second champion to
aid them. This was a pleasant looking young fellow with an astonishingly
red beard: he had a basket slung over his shoulder, and he carried a
bright hammer. He rode in a chariot drawn by four goats.
"Come, this is certainly a fine stalwart fighting-man," says Manuel,
"and to-day is a lucky day for me, and for this ruddy gentleman also, I
hope."
"To-day is always his day," Miramon replied, "and do you stop
interrupting me in my incantations, and hand me that flute."
So Manuel stayed as silent as that brace of monstrous allies while
Miramon did yet another curious thing with a flute and a palm-branch.
Thereafter came an amber-colored champion clad in dark green, and
carrying a club and a noose for the souls of the dead. He rode upon a
buffalo, and with him came an owl and a pigeon.
"I think--" said Manuel.
"You do not!" said Miramon. "You only talk and fidget, because you are
upset by the appearance of your allies; and such talking and fidgeting
is very disturbing to an artist who is striving to reanimate the past."
Thus speaking, Miramon turned indignantly to another evocation. It
summoned a champion in a luminous chariot drawn by scarlet mares. He was
golden-haired, with ruddy limbs, and was armed with a bow and arrows: he
too was silent, but he laughed, and you saw that he had several tongues.
After him came a young shining man who rode on a boar with golden
bristles and bloodied hoofs: this warrior carried a naked sword, and on
his back, folded up like a cloth, was a ship to contain the gods and all
living creatures. And the sixth Redeemer was a tall shadow-colored
person with two long gray plumes affixed to his shaven head: he carried
a sceptre and a thing which, Miramon said, was called an ankh, and the
beast he rode on was surprising to observe, for it had the body of a
beetle, with human arms, and the head of a ram, and the four feet of a
lion.
"Come," Manuel said, "but I have never seen just such a steed as that."
"No," Miramon replied, "nor has anybody else, for this is the Hidden
One. But do you stop your eternal talking, and pass me the salt and that
young crocodile."
With these two articles Miramon dealt so as to evoke a seventh ally.
Serpents were about the throat and arms of this champion, and he wore a
necklace of human skulls: his long black hair was plaited remarkably;
his throat was blue, his body all a livid white except where it was
smeared with ashes. He rode upon the back of a beautiful white bull.
Next, riding on a dappled stag, came one appareled in vivid stripes of
yellow and red and blue and green: his face was dark as a raincloud, he
had one large round eye, white tusks protruded from his lips, and he
carried a gaily painted urn. His unspeakable attendants leaped like
frogs. The jolliest looking of all the warriors came thereafter, with a
dwarfish body and very short legs; he had a huge black-bearded head, a
flat nose, and his tongue hung from his mouth and waggled as he moved.
He wore a belt and a necklace, and nothing else whatever except the
plumes of the hawk arranged as a head-dress: and he rode upon a great
sleek tortoise-shell cat.
Now when these unusual appearing allies stood silently aligned before
them on the seashore, Dom Manuel said, with a polite bow toward this
appalling host, that he hardly thought Duke Asmund would be able to
withstand such Redeemers. But Miramon repeated that there was nothing
like the decimal system.
"That half-brother of mine, who is lord of the tenth kind of sleeping,
would nicely round off this dizain," says Miramon, scratching his chin,
"if only he had not such a commonplace, black-and-white appearance,
apart from being one of those dreadful Realists, without a scrap of
aesthetic feeling--No, I like color, and we will levy now upon the
West!"
So Miramon dealt next with a little ball of bright feathers. Then a last
helper came to them, riding on a jaguar, and carrying a large drum and a
flute from which his music issued in the shape of flames. This champion
was quite black, but he was striped with blue paint, and golden feathers
grew all over his left leg. He wore a red coronet in the shape of a
rose, a short skirt of green paper, and white sandals; and he carried a
red shield that had in its centre a white flower with the four petals
placed crosswise. Such was he who made up the tenth.
Now when this terrible dizain was completed the lord of the seven
madnesses laid fire to a wisp of straw, and he cast it to the winds,
saying that thus should the anger of Miramon Lluagor pass over the land.
Then he turned to these dreadful ten whom he had revivified from the
dustheaps and garrets of Vraidex, and it became apparent that Miramon
was deeply moved.
Said Miramon:
"You, whom I made for man's worship when earth was younger and fairer,
hearken, and learn why I breathe new life into husks from my
scrap-heaps! Gods of old days, discrowned, disjected, and treated as
rubbish, hark to the latest way of the folk whose fathers you succored!
They have discarded you utterly. Such as remember deride you, saying:
"'The brawling old lords that our grandfathers honored have perished, if
they indeed were ever more than some curious notions bred of our
grandfathers' questing, that looked to find God in each rainstorm coming
to nourish their barley, and God in the heat-bringing sun, and God in
the earth which gave life. Even so was each hour of their living touched
with odd notions of God and with lunacies as to God's kindness. We are
more sensible people, for we understand all about the freaks of the wind
and the weather, and find them in no way astounding. As for whatever
gods may exist, they are civil, in that they let us alone in our
lifetime; and so we return their politeness, knowing that what we are
doing on earth is important enough to need undivided attention.'
"Such are the folk that deride you, such are the folk that ignore the
gods whom Miramon fashioned, such are the folk whom to-day I permit you
freely to deal with after the manner of gods. Do you now make the most
of your chance, and devastate all Poictesme in time for an earlyish
supper!"
The faces of these ten became angry, and they shouted, "Blaerde Shay
Alphenio Kasbue Gorfons Albuifrio!"
All ten went up together from the sea, traveling more swiftly than men
travel, and what afterward happened in Poictesme was for a long while a
story very fearful to hear and heard everywhere.
Manuel did not witness any of the tale's making as he waited alone on
the seashore. But the land was sick, and its nausea heaved under
Manuel's wounded feet, and he saw that the pale, gurgling, glistening
sea appeared to crawl away from Poictesme slimily. And at Bellegarde and
Naimes and Storisende and Lisuarte, and in all the strongly fortified
inland places, Asmund's tall fighting-men beheld one or another of the
angry faces which came up from the sea, and many died swiftly, as must
always happen when anybody revives discarded dreams, nor did any of the
Northmen die in a shape recognizable as human.