was completed, then Dom Manuel unarmed, and made himself presentable in
a tunic of white damask and a girdle adorned with garnets and sapphires.
He slipped over his left shoulder a baldric set with diamonds and
emeralds, to sustain the unbloodied sword with which he had conquered
here as upon Vraidex. Over all he put on a crimson mantle. Then the
former swineherd concealed his hands, not yet quite healed, with white
gloves, of which the one was adorned with a ruby, and the other was a
sapphire; and, sighing, Manuel the Redeemer (as he was called
thereafter) entered into his kingdom, and they of Poictesme received him
far more gladly than he them.
Thus did Dom Manuel enter into the imprisonment of his own castle and
into the bonds of high estate, from which he might not easily get free
to go a-traveling everywhither, and see the ends of this world and judge
them. And they say that in her low red-pillared palace Suskind smiled
contentedly and made ready for the future.
[Illustration]
PART FIVE.
THE BOOK OF SETTLEMENT
TO
JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER
Thus _Manuel reigned in vertue and honoure with that noble Ladye his
wyfe: and he was beloued and dradde of high and lowe degree, for he dyde
ryghte and iustice_ according to the auncient Manner, _kepynge hys land
in dignitie and goode Appearance, and hauynge the highest place in hys
tyme._
XXXIII
Now Manuel Prospers
They of Poictesme narrate fine tales as to the deeds that Manuel the
Redeemer performed and incited in the days of his reign. They tell also
many things that seem improbable, and therefore are not included in this
book: for the old songs and tales incline to make of Count Manuel's
heydey a rare golden age.
So many glorious exploits are, indeed, accredited to Manuel and to the
warriors whom he gathered round him in his famous Fellowship of the
Silver Stallion,--and among whom, Holden and courteous Anavalt and Coth
the Alderman and Gonfal and Donander had the pre-eminence, where all
were hardy,--that it is very difficult to understand how so brief a
while could have continued so many doings. But the tale-tellers of
Poictesme have been long used to say of a fine action,--not falsely, but
misleadingly,--"Thus it was in Count Manuel's time," and the tribute by
and by has been accepted as a dating. So has chronology been hacked to
make loftier his fame, and the glory of Dom Manuel has been a magnet
that has drawn to itself the magnanimities of other days and years.
But there is no need here to speak of these legends, about the deeds
which were performed by the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion, because
these stories are recorded elsewhere. Some may be true, the others are
certainly not true; but it is indisputable that Count Manuel grew
steadily in power and wealth and proud repute. Miramon Lluagor still
served him, half-amusedly, as Dom Manuel's seneschal; kings now were
Manuel's co-partners; and the former swineherd had somehow become the
fair and trusty cousin of emperors. And Madame Niafer, the great Count's
wife, was everywhere stated, without any contradiction from her, to be
daughter to the late Soldan of Barbary.
Guivric the Sage illuminated the tree which showed the glorious descent
of Dame Niafer from Kaiumarth, the first of all kings, and the first to
teach men to build houses: and this tree hung in the main hall of
Storisende. "For even if some errors may have crept in here and there,"
said Dame Niafer, "it looks very well."
"But, my dear," said Manuel, "your father was not the Soldan of Barbary:
instead, he was the second groom at Arnaye, and all this lineage is a
preposterous fabrication."
"I said just now that some errors may have crept in here and there,"
assented Dame Niafer, composedly, "but the point is, that the thing
really looks very well, and I do not suppose that even you deny that."
"No, I do not deny that this glowing mendacity adds to the hall's
appearance."
"So now, you see for yourself!" said Niafer, triumphantly. And after
that her new ancestry was never questioned.
And in the meanwhile Dom Manuel had sent messengers over land and sea to
his half-sister Math at Rathgor, bidding her sell the mill for what it
would fetch. She obeyed, and brought to Manuel's court her husband and
their two boys, the younger of whom rose later to be Pope of Rome.
Manuel gave the miller the vacant fief of Montors; and thereafter you
could nowhere have found a statelier fine lady than the Countess
Matthiette de Montors. She was still used to speak continually of what
was becoming to people of our station in life, but it was with a large
difference; and she got on with Niafer as well as could be expected, but
no better.
And early in the summer of the first year of Manuel's reign (just after
Dom Manuel fetched to Storisende the Sigel of Scoteia, as the spoils of
his famous fight with Oriander the Swimmer), the stork brought to Niafer
the first of the promised boys. For the looks of the thing, this child
was named, not after the father whom Manuel had just killed, but after
the Emmerick who was Manuel's nominal father: and it was this Emmerick
that afterward reigned long and notably in Poictesme.
So matters went prosperously with Dom Manuel, and there was nothing to
trouble his peace of mind, unless it were some feeling of responsibility
for the cult of Sesphra, whose worship was now increasing everywhere
among the nations. In Philistia, in particular, Sesphra was now
worshipped openly in the legislative halls and churches, and all other
religion, and all decency, was smothered under the rituals of Sesphra.
Everywhere to the west and north his followers were delivering windy
discourses and performing mad antics, and great hurt came of it all by
and by. But if this secretly troubled Dom Manuel; the Count, here as
elsewhere, exercised to good effect his invaluable gift for holding his
tongue.
Nor did he ever speak of Freydis either, though it is recorded that when
news came of the end which she had made in Teamhair under the oppression
of the Druids and the satirists, Dom Manuel went silently into the Room
of Ageus, and was not seen any more that day. That in such solitude he
wept is improbable, for his hard vivid eyes had forgotten this way of
exercise, but it is highly probable that he remembered many things, and
found not all of them to his credit.
So matters went prosperously with gray Manuel; he had lofty palaces and
fair woods and pastures and ease and content, and whensoever he went
into battle attended by his nine lords of the Silver Stallion, his
adversaries perished; he was esteemed everywhere the most lucky and the
least scrupulous rogue alive: to crown all which the stork brought by
and by to Storisende the second girl, whom they named Dorothy, for
Manuel's mother. And about this time too, came a young poet from England
(Ribaut they called him, and he met an evil end at Coventry not long
thereafter), bringing to Dom Manuel, where the high Count sat at supper,
a goose-feather.
The Count smiled, and he twirled the thing between his fingers, and he
meditated. He shrugged, and said: "Needs must. But for her ready wit, my
head would have been set to dry on a silver pike. I cannot well ignore
that obligation, if she, as it now seems, does not intend to ignore it."
Then he told Niafer he must go into England.
Niafer looked up from the marmalade with which she was finishing off her
supper, to ask placidly, "And what does that dear yellow-haired friend
of yours want with you now?"
"My dear, if I knew the answer to that question it would not be
necessary for me to travel oversea."
"It is easy enough to guess, though," Dame Niafer said darkly, although,
in point of fact, she too was wondering why Alianora should have sent
for Manuel; "and I can quite understand how in your sandals you prefer
not to have people know about such doings, and laughing at you
everywhere, again."
Dom Manuel did not reply; but he sighed.
"--And if any importance whatever were attached to my opinion in this
house I might be saying a few things; but, as it is, it is much more
agreeable, all around, to let you go your own hard-headed way and find
out by experience that what I say is true. So now, Manuel, if you do not
mind, I think we had better be talking about something else a little
more pleasant."
Dom Manuel still did not say anything. The time, as has been noted, was
just after supper, and as the high Count and his wife sat over the
remnants of this meal, a minstrel was making music for them.
"You are not very cheerful company, I must say," Niafer observed, in a
while, "although I do not for a moment doubt your yellow-haired friend
will find you gay enough--"
"No, Niafer, I am not happy to-night."
"Yes, and whose fault is it? I told you not to take two helpings of that
beef."
"No, no, dear snip, it is not indigestion, but rather it is that music,
which is plaguing me."
"Now, Manuel, how can music bother anybody! I am sure the boy plays his
violin very nicely indeed, especially when you consider his age."
Said Manuel:
"Yes, but the long low sobbing of the violin, troubling as the vague
thoughts begotten by that season wherein summer is not yet perished from
the earth, but lingers wanly in the tattered shrines of summer, speaks
of what was and of what might have been. A blind desire, the same which
on warm moonlit nights was used to shake like fever in the veins of a
boy whom I remember, is futilely plaguing a gray fellow with the gray
wraiths of innumerable old griefs and with small stinging memories of
long-dead delights. Such thirsting breeds no good for staid and aging
men, but my lips are athirst for lips whose loveliness no longer exists
in flesh, and I thirst for a dead time and its dead fervors to be
reviving, so that young Manuel may love again.
"To-night now surely somewhere, while this music sets uncertain and
probing fingers to healed wounds, an aging woman, in everything a
stranger to me, is troubled just thus futilely, and she too remembers
what she half forgets. 'We that of old were one, and shuddered heart to
heart, with our young lips and our souls too made indivisible,'--thus
she is thinking, as I think--'has life dealt candidly in leaving us to
potter with half measures and to make nothing of severed lives that
shrivel far apart?' Yes, she to-night is sad as I, it well may be; but I
cannot rest certain of this, because there is in young love a glory so
bedazzling as to prevent the lover from seeing clearly his
co-worshipper, and therefore in that dear time when we served love
together I learned no more of her than she of me.
"Of all my failures this is bitterest to bear, that out of so much
grieving and aspiring I have gained no assured knowledge of the woman
herself, but must perforce become lachrymose over such perished tinsels
as her quivering red lips and shining hair! Of youth and love is there
no more, then, to be won than virginal breasts and a small white belly
yielded to the will of the lover, and brief drunkenness, and afterward
such puzzled yearning as now dies into acquiescence, very much as the
long low sobbing of that violin yonder dies into stillness now the song
is done?"
So it was that gray Manuel talked in a half voice, sitting there
resplendently robed in gold and crimson, and twiddling between his
fingers a goose-feather.
"Yes," Niafer said, presently, "but, for my part, I think he plays very
nicely indeed."
Manuel gave an abrupt slight jerking of the head. Dom Manuel laughed.
"Dear snip," said he, "come, honestly now, what have you been meditating
about while I talked nonsense?"
"Why, I was thinking I must remember to look over your flannels the
first thing to-morrow, Manuel, for everybody knows what that damp
English climate is in autumn--"
"My dearest," Manuel said, with grave conviction, "you are the archetype
and flawless model of all wives."
[Illustration]
XXXIV
Farewell to Alianora
Now Dom Manuel takes ship and goes into England: and for what happened
there we have no authority save the account which Dom Manuel rendered on
his return to his wife.
Thus said Dom Manuel:
He went straight to Woodstock, where the King and Queen then were. At
Woodstock Dom Manuel was handsomely received, and there he passed the
month of September--
(_"Why need you stay so long, though?" Dame Niafer inquired.
"Well," Manuel explained, "one thing led to another, as it were."
"H'm!" Niafer remarked._)
He had presently a private talk with the Queen. How was she dressed? As
near as Manuel recalled, she wore a green mantle fastened in front with
a square fermoir of gems and wrought gold; under it, a close fitting
gown of gold-diapered brocade, with tight sleeves so long that they half
covered her hands, something like mitts. Her crown was of floriated
trefoils surmounting a band of rubies. Of course, though, they might
have been only garnets--
(_"And where was it that she dressed up in all this finery to talk with
you in private?"
"Why, at Woodstock, naturally."
"I know it was at Woodstock, but whereabouts at Woodstock?"
"It was by a window, my dear, by a window with panes of white glass and
wooden lattices and a pent covered with lead."
"Your account is very circumstantial, but where was the window?"
"Oh, now I understand you! It was in a room."
"What sort of room?"
"Well, the walls were covered with gay frescoes from Saxon history; the
fireplace was covered with very handsomely carved stone dragons; and the
floor was covered with new rushes. Indeed, the Queen has one of the
neatest bedrooms I have ever seen."
"Ah, yes," said Niafer: "and what did you talk about during the time
that you spent in your dear friend's bedroom?"_)
Well, he found all going well with Queen Alianora (Dom Manuel continued)
except that she had not yet provided an heir for the English throne, and
it was this alone which was troubling her. It was on account of this
that she had sent for Count Manuel.
"It is considered not to look at all well, after three years of
marriage," the Queen told him, "and people are beginning to say a number
of unkind things."
"It is the common fate of queens," Dom Manuel replies, "to be exposed to
the criticism of envious persons."
"No, do not be brilliant and aphoristic, Manuel, for I want you to help
me more practically in this matter."
"Very willingly will I help you if I can. But how can I?"
"Why, you must assist me in getting a baby,--a boy baby, of course."
"I am willing to do all that I can, because certainly it does not look
well for you to have no son to be King of England. But how can I, of all
persons, help you in this affair?"
"Now, Manuel, after getting three children you surely ought to know what
is necessary!"
Dom Manuel shook a gray head. "My children came from a source which is
exhausted."
"That would be deplorable news if I believed it, but I am sure that if
you will let me take matters in hand I can convince you to the
contrary--"
"Well, I am open to conviction."
"--Although I scarcely know how to begin, because I know that you will
think this hard on you--"
He took her hand. Dom Manuel admitted to Niafer without reserve that
here he took the Queen's hand, saying: "Do not play with me any longer,
Alianora, for you must see plainly that I am now eager to serve you. So
do not be embarrassed, but come to the point, and I will do what I can."
"Why, Manuel, both you and I know perfectly well that, even with your
Dorothy ordered, you still hold the stork's note for another girl and
another boy, to be supplied upon demand, after the manner of the
Philistines."
"No, not upon demand, for the first note has nine months to run, and the
other falls due even later. But what has that to do with it?"
"Now, Manuel, truly I hate to ask this of you, but my need is desperate,
with all this criticizing and gossip. So for old time's sake, and for
the sake of the life I gave you as a Christmas present, through telling
my dear father an out-and-out story, you must let me have that first
promissory note, and you must direct the stork to bring the boy baby to
me in England, and not to your wife in Poictesme."
So that was what Dame Alianora had wanted.
(_"I knew that all along" observed Dame Niafer,--untruthfully, but
adhering to her general theory that it was better to appear omniscient
in dealing with one's husband._)
Well, Dom Manuel was grieved by the notion of being parted from his
child prior to its birth, but he was moved alike by his former fondness
for Alianora, and by his indebtedness to her, and by the obligation that
was on him to provide as handsomely as possible for his son. Nobody
could dispute that as King of England, the boy's station in life would
be immeasurably above the rank of the Count of Poictesme's younger
brother. So Manuel made a complaint as to his grief and as to Niafer's
grief at thus prematurely losing their loved son--
(_"Shall I repeat what I said, my dear?"
"No, Manuel, I never understand you when you are trying to be highflown
and impressive."_)
Well, then, Dom Manuel made a very beautiful complaint, but in the
outcome Dom Manuel consented to this sacrifice.
He would not consent, though, to remain in England, as Alianora wanted
him to do.
"No," he said, nobly, "it would not look at all well for you to be
taking me as your lover, and breaking your marriage-vows to love nobody
but the King. No, Alianora, I will help you to get the baby you need,
inasmuch as I am indebted to you for my life and have two babies to
spare, but I am not willing to have anything to do with the breaking of
your marriage-vows, because it is a crime which is forbidden by the Holy
Scriptures, and of which Niafer would certainly hear sooner or later."
(_"Oh, Manuel, you did not say that!"
"My dear, those were my exact words. And why not?"
"That was putting it sensibly of course, but it would have sounded much
better if you had expressed yourself entirely upon moral grounds. It is
most important, Manuel, as I am sure I have told you over and over
again, for people in our position to show a proper respect for morality
and religion and things of that sort whenever they come up in the
conversation; but there is no teaching you anything except by bitter
experience, which I sincerely hope may be spared you, and one might as
well be arguing with a brick wall, and so you may go on"_)
Well, the Queen wept and coaxed, but Manuel was firm. So Manuel spent
that night in the Queen's room, performing the needful incantations, and
arranging matters with the stork, and then Dom Manuel returned home. And
that--well, really that was all.
Such was the account which Dom Manuel rendered his wife. "And upon the
whole, Niafer, I consider it a very creditable stroke of business, for
as King of England the child will enjoy advantages which we could never
have afforded him."
"Yes," said Niafer, "and what does that dear friend of yours look like
nowadays?"
"--Besides, should the boy turn out badly our grief will be considerably
lessened by the circumstance that, through never seeing this son of
ours, our affection for him will never be inconveniently great."
"There is something in that, for already I can see that Emmerick
inherits his father's obstinacy, and it naturally worries me, but what
does the woman look like nowadays?"
"--Then, even more important than these considerations--."
"Nothing is more important, Manuel, in this very curious sounding
affair, than the way that woman looks nowadays."
"Ah, my dear," says Manuel, diplomatically, "I did not like to speak of
that, I confess, for you know these blondes go off in their appearance
so quickly--"
"Of course they do, but still--"
"--And it not being her fault, after all, I did not like to tell you
about Dame Alianora's looking so many years older than you do, since
your being a brunette gives you an unfair advantage to begin with."
"Ah, it is not that," said Niafer, still rather grim-visaged, but
obviously mollified. "It is the life she is leading, with her witchcraft
and her familiar spirits and that continual entertaining and excitement,
and everybody tells me she has already taken to dyeing her hair."
"Oh, it had plainly had something done to it," says Manuel, lightly.
"But it is a queen's duty to preserve such remnants of good looks as she
possesses."
"So there, you see!" said Niafer, quite comfortable again in her mind
when she noted the careless way in which Dom Manuel spoke of the Queen.
A year or two earlier Dame Niafer would perhaps have been moved to
jealousy: now her only concern was that Manuel might possibly be led to
make a fool of himself and to upset their manner of living. With every
contented wife her husband's general foolishness is an axiom, and
prudent philosophers do not distinguish here between cause and effect.
As for Alianora's wanting to take Manuel as a lover, Dame Niafer found
the idea mildly amusing, and very nicely indicative of those washed-out,
yellow-haired women's intelligence. To be harboring romantic notions
about Manuel seemed to Manuel's wife so fantastically out of reason that
she half wished the poor creature could without scandal be afforded a
chance to find out for herself all about Manuel's thousand and one
finicky ways and what he was in general to live with.
That being impossible, Niafer put the crazy woman out of mind, and began
to tell Manuel about what had happened, and not for the first time
either, while he was away, and about just how much more she was going to
stand from Sister Math, and about the advantages of a perfectly plain
understanding for everybody concerned. And with Niafer that was the end
of Count Manuel's discharging of his obligation to Alianora.
Of course there were gossips who said this, that and the other. Some
asserted that Manuel's tale in itself contained elements of
improbability: others declared that Queen Alianora, who was far deeplier
versed in the magic of the Apsarasas than was Dom Manuel, could just as
well have summoned the stork without his assistance. It was true the
stork was under no especial obligations to Alianora: even so, said these
gossips, it would have looked far better, and a queen could not be too
particular, and it simply showed you about these foreign Southern women;
and although they of course wished to misjudge no one, there was no
sense in pretending to ignore what everybody practically knew to be a
fact, and was talking about everywhere, and some day you would see for
yourself.
But after all, Dom Manuel and the Queen were the only persons qualified
to speak of these matters with authority, and this was Dom Manuel's
account of them. For the rest, he was sustained against tittle-tattle by
the knowledge that he had performed a charitable deed in England, for
the Queen's popularity was enhanced, and all the English, but
particularly their King, were delighted, by the fine son which the stork
duly brought to Alianora the following June.
Manuel never saw this boy, who afterward ruled over England and was a
highly thought-of warrior, nor did Dom Manuel ever see Queen Alianora
any more. So Alianora goes out of the story, to bring long years of
misery and ruining wars upon the English, and to Dom Manuel no more
beguilements. For they say Dom Manuel could never resist her, because of
that underlying poverty in the correct emotions which, as some say, Dom
Manuel shared with her, and which they hid from all the world except
each other.
[Illustration]
XXXV
The Troubling Window
It seemed, in a word, that trouble had forgotten Count Manuel. None the
less, Dom Manuel opened a window, at his fine home at Storisende, on a
fine, sunlit, warmish morning (for this was the last day of April) to
confront an outlook more perturbing than his hard vivid eyes had yet
lighted on.
So he regarded it for a while. Considerately Dom Manuel now made
experiments with three windows in this Room of Ageus, and found how, in
so far as one's senses could be trusted, the matter stood. Thereafter,
as became an intelligent person, he went back to his writing-table, and
set about signing the requisitions and warrants and other papers which
Ruric the clerk had left there.
Yet all the while Dom Manuel's gaze kept lifting to the windows. There
were three of them, set side by side, each facing south. They were of
thick clear glass, of a sort whose manufacture is a lost art, for these
windows had been among the spoils brought back by Duke Asmund from
nefarious raidings of Philistia, in which country these windows had once
been a part of the temple of Ageus, an immemorial god of the
Philistines. For this reason the room was called the Room of Ageus.