THE SILVER STALLION
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BOOKS _by_ MR. CABELL
_Biography_:
BEYOND LIFE
FIGURES OF EARTH
THE SILVER STALLION
DOMNEI
CHIVALRY
JURGEN
THE LINE OF LOVE
THE HIGH PLACE
GALLANTRY
THE CERTAIN HOUR
THE CORDS OF VANITY
FROM THE HIDDEN WAY
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER’S NECK
THE EAGLE’S SHADOW
THE CREAM OF THE JEST
STRAWS AND PRAYER-BOOKS
_Scholia_:
THE LINEAGE OF LICHFIELD
TABOO
THE JEWEL MERCHANTS
---------------------
JURGEN AND THE LAW
(_Edited by Guy Holt_)
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The Silver Stallion
_A Comedy of Redemption_
by
JAMES BRANCH CABELL
[Illustration]
“_Now, the redemption which we as yet
await (continued Imlac), will be that of
Kalki, who will come as a Silver Stallion:
all evils and every sort of folly will perish at
the coming of this Kalki: true righteousness
will be restored, and the minds of men will
be made clear as crystal._”
_Robert M. McBride & Company_
NEW YORK MCMXXVI
------------------------------------------------------------------------
COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY JAMES BRANCH CABELL
FIRST PUBLISHED, 1926
_First Printing, April, 1926_
_Second Printing, April, 1926_
_Third Printing, May, 1926_
_Fourth Printing, May, 1926_
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. BY
QUINN & BODEN COMPANY, INC.
RAHWAY, N.J.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO
CARL VAN DOREN
Could but one luring dream rest dead forever
As dreamers rest at last, with all dreams done,
Redeemers need not be, and faith need never
Lease, for the faithful, homes beyond the sun.
Victoriously that dream—above the sorrow
And subterfuge of living,—still lets fail
No heart to heed its soothing lure.... _To-morrow
Dreams will be true, and faith and right prevail._
_Out of the bright—and, no, not vacant!—heavens
Redeemers will be coming by and by,
En route to make our sixes and our sevens
Neat as a trivet or an apple-pie._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
In this volume the text of Bülg has not
been followed over-scrupulously: but it
is hoped that, in a book intended for
general circulation, none will deplore
such excisions and euphemisms, nor even
such slight additions, as seemed to make
for coherence and clarity and decorum.
The curious are referred to the pages of
_Poictesme en Chanson et Légende_ for a
discussion of the sources of _The Silver
Stallion_; and may decide for themselves
whether or not Bülg has, in Codman’s
phrase, “shown” these legends to be
“spurious compositions of 17th century
origin.” For myself, I here confess to
finding the evidence educed, alike, a bit
inadequate and, as far as goes my purpose,
wholly immaterial. These chronicles, such
as they are, present the only known record
of the latter days of champions whose
youthful exploits have long since been
made familiar to English readers of
Lewistam’s _Popular Tales of Poictesme_:
authentic or not, and irrespective of
whether such legends cannot be quite
definitely proved to have existed earlier
than 1652, here is the sole account we
have anywhere, or are now likely ever to
receive, of the changes that followed in
Poictesme after the passing of Manuel the
Redeemer.
It is as such an account—which for my
purpose was a desideratum,—that I have put
_The Silver Stallion_ into English.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE LORDS THAT POICTESME HAD IN DOM MANUEL’S TIME
_These ten were of the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion_:
_¶ Dom Manuel_, Count of Poictesme, held Storisende and Bellegarde, the
town of Beauvillage and the strong fort at Lisuarte, with all Amneran
and Morven.
_¶ Messire Gonfal of Naimes_, Margrave of Aradol, held Upper Naimousin.
_¶ Messire Donander of Évre_, the Thane of Aigremont, held Lower
Naimousin.
_¶ Messire Kerin of Nointel_, Syndic and Castellan of Basardra, held
West Val-Ardray.
_¶ Messire Ninzian of Yair_, the High Bailiff of Upper Ardra, held
Val-Ardray in the East.
_¶ Messire Holden of Nérac_, Earl Marshal of St. Tara, held Belpaysage.
_¶ Messire Anavalt of Fomor_, the Portreeve and Warden of Manneville,
held Belpaysage Le Bas.
_¶ Messire Coth of the Rocks_, Alderman of St. Didol, held Haut
Belpaysage.
_¶ Messire Guivric of Perdigon_, Heitman of Asch, held Piemontais.
_¶ Messire Miramon of Ranec_, Lord Seneschal of Gontaron, held
Duardenois.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Likewise there were the fiefs of Dom Meunier, Count of Montors, Dom
Manuel’s brother-in-law. Meunier was not of this fellowship: he held
also Giens. Here his wife ruled over Lower Duardenois.
_¶ Othmar Black-Tooth_, whom some called Othmar the Lawless, long held
Valnères and Ogde, until Manuel routed him: thereafter these villages,
with the most of Bovion, stayed masterless.
_¶ Helmas the Deep-Minded_, after a magic was put upon him in the year
of grace 1255, held, in his fashion, the high place at Brunbelois: but
the rest of Acaire, once Lorcha had been taken and Sclaug burned, was no
man’s land. Also upon Upper Morven lived disaffected persons in defiance
of all law and piety.
—_Poictesme en Chanson et Légende._ G. J.
Bülg. Strasburg, 1785. [Pp. 87-88.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
BOOK ONE: LAST SIEGE OF THE FELLOWSHIP
PAGE
I Child’s Talk 3
II Economics of Horvendile 7
III How Anavalt Lamented the Redeemer 17
IV Fog Rises 21
BOOK TWO: THE MATHEMATICS OF GONFAL
V Champion at Misadventure 27
VI The Loans of Power 31
VII Fatality the Second 39
VIII How the Princes Bragged 42
IX The Loans of Wisdom 46
X Relative to Gonfal’s Head 49
XI Economics of Morvyth 56
BOOK THREE: TOUPAN’S BRIGHT BEES
XII The Mage Emeritus 61
XIII Economics of Gisèle 67
XIV The Changing That Followed 73
XV Disastrous Rage of Miramon 76
XVI Concerns the Pleiades and a Razor 78
XVII Epitome of Marriage 81
XVIII Koshchei is Vexed 87
XIX Settlement: in Full 90
BOOK FOUR: COTH AT PORUTSA
XX Idolatry of an Alderman 97
XXI The Profits of Pepper Selling 104
XXII Toveyo Dances 110
XXIII Regrettable Conduct of a Corpse 113
XXIV Economics of Yaotl 119
XXV Last Obligation upon Manuel 122
XXVI The Realist in Defeat 128
BOOK FIVE: “MUNDUS VULT DECIPI”
XXVII Poictesme Reformed 133
XXVIII Fond Motto of a Patriot 138
XXIX The Grumbler’s Progress 141
XXX Havoc of Bad Habits 145
XXXI Other Paternal Apothegms 149
XXXII Time Gnaws at All 153
XXXIII Economics of Coth 158
BOOK SIX: IN THE SYLAN’S HOUSE
XXXIV Something Goes Wrong: and Why 171
XXXV Guivric’s Journey 175
XXXVI The Appointed Enemy 178
XXXVII Too Many Mouths 182
XXXVIII The Appointed Lover 186
XXXIX One Warden Left Uncircumvented 190
XL Economics of Glaum-Without-Bones 194
XLI The Gratifying Sequel 203
BOOK SEVEN: WHAT SARAÏDE WANTED
XLII Generalities at Ogde 207
XLIII Prayer and the Lizard Maids 213
XLIV Fine Cordiality of Sclaug 219
XLV The Gander Also Generalizes 222
XLVI Kerin Rises in the World 229
XLVII Economics of Saraïde 232
XLVIII The Golden Shining 237
XLIX They of Nointel 239
BOOK EIGHT: THE CANDID FOOTPRINT
L Indiscretion of a Bailiff 247
LI The Queer Bird 250
LII Remorse of a Poor Devil 260
LIII Continuation of Appalling Pieties 263
LIV Magic That was Rusty 267
LV The Prince of Darkness 270
LVI Economics of Ninzian 277
BOOK NINE: ABOVE PARADISE
LVII Maugis Makes Trouble 283
LVIII Showing that Even Angels May Err 287
LIX The Conversion of Palnatoki 290
LX In the Hall of the Chosen 293
LXI Vanadis, Dear Lady of Reginlief 297
LXII The Demiurgy of Donander Veratyr 300
LXIII Economics of Sidvrar 305
LXIV Through the Oval Window 308
LXV The Reward of Faith 314
BOOK TEN: AT MANUEL’S TOMB
LXVI Old Age of Niafer 317
LXVII The Women Differ 324
LXVIII Radegonde is Practical 332
LXIX Economics of Jurgen 335
LXX All Ends Perplexedly 349
------------------------------------------------------------------------
HEREWITH BEGINS THE HISTORY OF
THE BIRTH AND OF THE TRIUMPHING OF
THE GREAT LEGEND ABOUT MANUEL THE
REDEEMER, WHOM GONFAL REPUDIATED
AS BLOWN DUST, AND MIRAMON, AS AN
IMPOSTOR, AND WHOM COTH REPUDIATED
OUT OF HONEST LOVE: BUT WHOM GUIVRIC
ACCEPTED, THROUGH TWO SORTS OF
POLICY; WHOM KERIN ACCEPTED AS AN
HONORABLE OLD HUMAN FOIBLE, AND
NINZIAN, AS A PATHETIC AND SERVICEABLE
JOKE; WHOM DONANDER ACCEPTED
WHOLE-HEARTEDLY (TO THE ETERNAL JOY
OF DONANDER), AND WHO WAS ACCEPTED
ALSO BY NIAFER, AND BY JURGEN THE
PAWNBROKER, AFTER SOME LITTLE PRIVATE
RESERVATIONS: AND HEREINAFTER
IS RECORDED THE MANNER OF THE
GREAT LEGEND’S ENGULFMENT
OF THESE PERSONS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BOOK ONE
LAST SIEGE OF THE FELLOWSHIP
_“They shall be, in the siege, both against Judah and against
Jerusalem.”_
—ZECHARIAH, xii, 2.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
—Et la route, fait elle aussi un
grand tour?
—Oh, bien certainement, étant
donné qu’elle circonvient à la
fois la destinée et le bon sens.
—Puisqu’il le faut, alors! dit
Jurgen; d’ailleurs je suis
toujours disposé à goûter
n’importe quel breuvage au moins
une fois.
—LA HAULTE HISTOIRE DE JURGEN.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_1._
_Child’s Talk_
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
THEY relate how Dom Manuel that was the high Count of Poictesme, and was
everywhere esteemed the most lucky and the least scrupulous rogue of his
times, had disappeared out of his castle at Storisende, without any
reason or forewarning, upon the feast day of St. Michael and All the
Angels. They tell of the confusion and dismay which arose in Dom
Manuel’s lands when it was known that Manuel the Redeemer—thus named
because he had redeemed Poictesme from the Northmen, through the aid of
Miramon Lluagor, with a great and sanguinary magic,—was now gone, quite
inexplicably, out of these lands.
For whither Manuel had gone, no man nor any woman could say with
certainty. At Storisende he had last been seen by his small daughter
Melicent, who stated that Father, mounted on a black horse, had ridden
westward with Grandfather Death, on a white one, to a far place beyond
the sunset. This was quite generally felt to be improbable.
Yet further inquiry had but made more deep the mystery as to the manner
of Dom Manuel’s passing. Further inquiry had disclosed that the only
human eyes anywhere which had, or could pretend to have, rested upon Dom
Manuel after Manuel had left Storisende were those of a little boy
called Jurgen, the son of Coth of the Rocks. Young Jurgen, after having
received from his father an in no way unusual whipping, had run away
from home, and had not been recaptured until the following morning. The
lad reported that during his wanderings he had witnessed, toward dusk,
upon Upper Morven, a fearful eucharist in which the Redeemer of
Poictesme had very horribly shared. Thereafter—so the child’s tale
ran,—had ensued a transfiguration, and a prediction as to the future of
Poictesme, and Dom Manuel’s elevation into the glowing clouds of
sunset....
Now, these latter details had been, at their first rendering, blubbered
almost inarticulately. For, after just the initiatory passages of this
supposed romance, the parents of Jurgen, in their first rapturous relief
at having recovered their lost treasure, had, of course, in the manner
of parents everywhere, resorted to such moral altitudes and to such
corporal corrections as had disastrously affected the putative small
liar’s tale. Then, as the days passed, and they of Poictesme still
vainly looked for the return of their great Dom Manuel, the child was of
necessity questioned again: and little Jurgen, after sulking for a
while, had retold his story without any detected deviation.
It certainly all sounded quite improbable. Nevertheless, here was the
only explanation of the land’s loss tendered anywhere by anybody: and
people began half seriously to consider it. Say what you might, this
immature and spanked evangelist had told a story opulent in details
which no boy of his age could well, it seemed, have invented. Many
persons therefore began sagely to refer to the mouths of babes and
sucklings, and to nod ominously. Moreover, the child, when yet further
questioned, had enlarged upon Manuel’s last prediction as to the future
glories of Poictesme, to an extent which made incredulity seem rather
unpatriotic; and Jurgen had amplified his horrific story of the manner
in which Manuel had redeemed his people from the incurred penalties of
their various sins up to and including that evening.
The suggested inference that there was to be no accounting anywhere for
one’s unavoidable misdemeanors up to date,—among which Dom Manuel had
been at pains to specify such indiscretions as staying out all night
without your parents’ permission,—was an arrangement which everybody,
upon consideration, found to be more and more desirable. Good-hearted
persons everywhere began, with virtually a free choice thus offered
between belief and disbelief, to prefer to invest a little, it well
might be, remunerative faith in the story told with such conviction by
this sweet and unsullied child, rather than in the carping comments of
materialists,—who, after all, could only say, well out of earshot of
Coth of the Rocks, that this young Jurgen was very likely to distinguish
himself thereafter, either in the pulpit or upon some gallows.
Meanwhile one woeful fact was, in any case, undeniable: the saga of that
quiet, prospering grand thief of a Manuel had ended with the
inconsequent, if the not actually incredible, tales of these two little
children; and squinting tall gray Manuel of the high head had gone out
of Poictesme, nobody could say whither.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_2._
_Economics of Horvendile_
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
AND meanwhile too the Redeemer’s wife, Dame Niafer, had sent a summoning
to each of the nine lords that, with Manuel, were of the Fellowship of
the Silver Stallion: and all these met at Storisende, as Niafer
commanded them, for a session or, as they more formally called it, a
siege of this order.
Now this fellowship took its name from the banner it had fought under so
destroyingly. Upon that sable banner was displayed a silver stallion,
which was rampant in every member and was bridled with gold. Dom Manuel
was the captain of this fellowship; and it was made up of the nine
barons who, under Manuel, had ruled Poictesme. Each had his two stout
castles and his fine woodlands and meadows, which he held in fealty to
Dom Manuel: and each had a high name for valor.
Four of these genial murderers had served, under the Conde de Tohil
Vaca, in Manuel’s first and utterly disastrous campaign against the
Northmen: but all the nine had been with Manuel since the time of the
great fighting about Lacre Kai, and throughout Manuel’s various troubles
with Oribert and Thragnar and Earl Ladinas and Sclaug and Oriander, that
blind and coldly evil Swimmer who was the father of Manuel; and in all
the other warrings of Manuel these nine had been with him up to the end.
And the deeds of the lords of the Silver Stallion had fallen very little
short of Manuel’s own deeds. Thus, it was Manuel, to be sure, who killed
Oriander: that was a family affair. But Miramon Lluagor, the Seneschal
of Gontaron, was the champion who subdued Thragnar and put upon him a
detection and a hindrance: and it was Kerin of Nointel—the Syndic and,
after that, the Castellan of Basardra,—who captured and carefully burned
Sclaug. Then, in the quelling of Othmar Black-Tooth’s rebellion, Ninzian
of Yair, the High Bailiff of Upper Ardra, had killed eleven more of the
outlaws than got their deaths by Manuel’s sword. It was Guivric of
Perdigon, and not Manuel, who put the great Arabian Al-Motawakkil out of
life. And in the famous battle with the Easterlings, by which the city
of Megaris was rescued, it was Manuel who got the main glory and, people
said, a three nights’ loan of the body of King Theodoret’s young sister;
but capable judges declared the best fighting on that day was done by
Donander of Évre, then but a boy, whom Manuel thereafter made Thane of
Aigremont.
Yet Holden of Nérac, the Marshal of St. Tara, was the boldest of them
all, and was very well able to hold his own in single combat with any of
those that have been spoken of: Coth of the Rocks had not ever quitted
any battle-field except as a conqueror: and courteous Anavalt of Fomor
and light-hearted Gonfal of Naimes—who had the worst names among this
company for being the most cunning friends and coaxers of women,—these
two had put down their masculine opposers also in gratifyingly large
numbers.
In fine, no matter where the lords of the Silver Stallion had raised
their banner against an adversary, it was in that place they made an end
of that adversary: for there was never, in any time, a hardier gang of
bullies than was this Fellowship of the Silver Stallion in the season
that they kept earth noisy with the clashing of their swords and
darkened heaven with the smoke of the towns they were sacking, and when
throughout the known world men had talked about the wonders which these
champions were performing with Dom Manuel to lead them. Now they were
leaderless.
These heroes came to Storisende; and with Dame Niafer they of course
found Holy Holmendis. This saint was then very lately come out of
Philistia, to console the Countess in her bereavement. But they found
with her also that youthful red-haired Horvendile under whom Dom Manuel,
in turn, had held Poictesme, by the terms of a contract which was not
ever made public. Some said this Horvendile to be Satan’s friend and
emissary, while others declared his origin to lurk in a more pagan
mythology: all knew the boy to be a master of discomfortable strange
magics such as were unknown to Miramon Lluagor and Guivric the Sage.
This Horvendile said to the nine heroes, “Now begins the last siege of
the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion.”
Donander of Évre was the youngest of them. Yet he spoke now, piously and
boldly enough. “But it is our custom, Messire Horvendile, to begin each
siege with prayer.”
“This siege,” replied Horvendile, “must nevertheless begin without any
such religious side-taking. For this is the siege in which, as it was
prophesied, you shall be both against Judah and against Jerusalem, and
against Thebes and Hermopolis and Avalon and Breidablik and all other
places which produce Redeemers.”
“Upon my word, but who is master here!” cried Coth of the Rocks,
twirling at his long mustachios. This gesture was a sure sign that
trouble brewed.
Horvendile answered: “The master who held Poictesme, under my whims, has
passed. A woman sits in his place, his little son inherits after him. So
begins a new romance; and a new order is set afoot.”
“Yet Coth, in his restless pursuit of variety, has asked a wholly
sensible question,” said Gonfal, the tall Margrave of Aradol. “Who will
command us, who now will give us our directions? Can Madame Niafer lead
us to war?”
“These things are separate. Dame Niafer commands: but it is I—since you
ask,—who will give to all of you your directions, and your dooms too
against the time of their falling, and after that to your names I will
give life. Now, your direction, Gonfal, is South.”
Gonfal looked full at Horvendile, in frank surprise. “I was already
planning for the South, though certainly I had told nobody about it. You
are displaying, Messire Horvendile, an uncomfortable sort of wisdom
which troubles me.”
Horvendile replied, “It is but a little knack of foresight, such as I
share with Balaam’s ass.”
But Gonfal stayed more grave than was his custom. He asked, “What shall
I find in the South?”
“What all men find, at last, in one place or another, whether it be with
the aid of a knife or of a rope or of old age. Yet, I assure you, the
finding of it will not be unwelcome.”
“Well,”—Gonfal shrugged,—“I am a realist. I take what comes, in the true
form it comes in.”
Now Coth of the Rocks was blustering again. “I also am a realist. Yet I
permit no upstart, whether he have or have not hair like a carrot, to
give me any directions.”
Horvendile answered, “I say to you—”
But Coth replied, shaking his great bald head: “No, I will not be
bulldozed in this way. I am a mild-mannered man, but I will not tamely
submit to be thus browbeaten. I believe, too, that Gonfal was
insinuating I do not usually ask sensible questions!”
“Nobody has attempted—”
“Are you not contradicting me to my face! What is that but to call me a
liar! I will not, I repeat, submit to these continued rudenesses.”
“I was only saying—”
But Coth was implacable. “I will take directions from nobody who storms
at me and who preserves no dignity whatever in our hour of grief. For
the rest, the children agree in reporting that, whether he ascended in a
gold cloud or traveled more sensibly on a black horse, Dom Manuel went
westward. I shall go west, and I shall fetch Dom Manuel back into
Poictesme. I shall, also, candidly advise him, when he returns to ruling
over us, to discourage the tomfooleries and the ridiculous rages of all
persons whose brains are overheated by their hair.”
“Let the West, then,” said Horvendile, very quietly, “be your direction.
And if the people there do not find you so big a man as you think
yourself, do not you be blaming me.”
These were his precise words. Coth himself conceded the coincidence,
long afterward....
“I, Messire Horvendile, with your permission, am for the North,” said
Miramon Lluagor. This sorcerer alone of them was upon any terms of
intimacy with this Horvendile. “I have yet upon gray Vraidex my Doubtful
Castle, in which an undoubtable and a known doom awaits me.”
“That is true,” replied Horvendile. “Let the keen North and the cold
edge of Flamberge be yours. But you, Guivric, shall have the warm wise
East for your direction.”
That allotment was uncordially received. “I am comfortable enough in my
home at Asch,” said Guivric the Sage. “At some other time, perhaps— But,
really now, Messire Horvendile, I have in hand a number of quite
important thaumaturgies just at the present! Your suggestion is most
upsetting. I know of no need for me to travel east.”
“With time you will know of that need,” said Horvendile, “and you will
obey it willingly, and you will go willingly to face the most pitiable
and terrible of all things.”
Guivric the Sage did not reply. He was too sage to argue with people
when they talked foolishly. He was immeasurably too sage to argue with,
of all persons, Horvendile.
“Yet that,” observed Holden of Nérac, “exhausts the directions: and it
leaves no direction for the rest of us.”
Horvendile looked at this Holden, who was with every reason named the
Bold; and Horvendile smiled. “You, Holden, already take your directions,
in a picturesque and secret manner, from a queen—”
“Let us not speak of that!” said Holden, between a smirk and some alarm.
“—And you will be guided by her, in any event, rather than by me. To you
also, Anavalt of Fomor, yet another queen will call resistlessly by and
by, and you, who are rightly named the Courteous, will deny her nothing.
So to Holden and to Anavalt I shall give no directions, because it is
uncivil to come between any woman and her prey.”
“But I,” said Kerin of Nointel, “I have at Ogde a brand-new wife whom I
prize above all the women I ever married, and far above any mere crowned
queen. Not even wise Solomon,” now Kerin told them, blinking, in a sort
of quiet scholastic ecstasy, “when that Judean took his pick of the
women of this world, accompanied with any queen like my Saraïde: for she
is in all ways superior to what the Cabalists record about Queen Naäma,
that pious child of the bloodthirsty King of Ammon, and about Queen
Djarada, the daughter of idolatrous Nubara the Egyptian, and about Queen
Balkis, who was begotten by a Sheban duke upon the person of a female
Djinn in the appearance of a gazelle. And only at the command of my dear
Saraïde would I leave home to go in any direction.”
“You will, nevertheless, leave home, very shortly,” declared Horvendile.
“And it will be at the command and at the personal urging of your
Saraïde.”
Kerin leaned his head to one side, and he blinked again. He had just Dom
Manuel’s trick of thus opening and shutting his eyes when he was
thinking, but Kerin’s mild dark gaze in very little resembled Manuel’s
piercing, vivid and rather wary consideration of affairs.
Kerin then observed, “Yet it is just as Holden said, and every direction
is preëmpted.”
“Oh, no,” said Horvendile. “For you, Kerin, will go downward, whither
nobody will dare to follow you, and where you will learn more wisdom
than to argue with me, and to pester people with uncalled-for
erudition.”
“It follows logically that I,” laughed young Donander of Évre, “must be
going upward, toward paradise itself, since no other direction whatever
remains.”
“That,” Horvendile replied, “happens to be true. But you will go up far
higher than you think for; and your doom shall be the most strange of
all.”
“Then must I rest content with some second-rate and commonplace
destruction?” asked Ninzian of Yair, Who alone of the fellowship had not
yet spoken.
Horvendile looked at sleek Ninzian, and Horvendile looked long and long.
“Donander is a tolerably pious person. But without Ninzian, the Church
would lack the stoutest and the one really god-fearing pillar it
possesses anywhere in these parts. That would be the devil of a
misfortune. Your direction, therefore, is to remain in Poictesme, and to
uphold the edifying fine motto of Poictesme, for the world’s benefit.”
“But the motto of Poictesme,” said Ninzian, doubtfully, “is _Mundus vult
decipi_, and signifies that the world wishes to be deceived.”
“That is a highly moral sentiment, which I may safely rely upon you
alike to concede and prove. Therefore, for you who are so pious, I shall
slightly paraphrase the Scripture: and I declare to all of you that
neither will I any more remove the foot of Ninzian from out of the land
which I have appointed for your children; so that they will take heed to
do all which I have commanded them.”
“That,” Ninzian said, looking markedly uncomfortable, “is very
delightful.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_3._
_How Anavalt Lamented the Redeemer_
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
THEN Madame Niafer arose, black-robed and hollow-eyed, and she made a
lament for Dom Manuel, whose like for gentleness and purity and loving
kindliness toward his fellows she declared to remain nowhere in this
world. It was an encomium under which the attendant warriors stayed very
grave and rather fidgety, because they recognized and shared her grief,
but did not wholly recognize the Manuel whom she described to them.
And the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion was decreed to be disbanded,
because of the law of Poictesme that all things should go by tens
forever. There was no fighting-man able to fill Manuel’s place: and a
fellowship of nine members was, as Dame Niafer pointed out, illegal.
It well might be, however, she suggested, with a side glance toward
Holmendis, that some other peculiarly holy person, even though not a
warrior— At the same instant Coth said, with a startling and astringent
decisiveness, “Bosh!”
His confrères felt the gross incivility of this interruption, but felt,
too, that they agreed with Coth. And so the fellowship was proclaimed to
be disbanded.
Then Anavalt of Fomor made a lament for the passing of that noble order
whose ranks were broken at last, and for Dom Manuel also Anavalt raised
a lament, praising Manuel for his hardihood and his cunning and his
terribleness in battle. The heroes nodded their assent to this more
intelligible sort of talking.
“Manuel,” said Anavalt, “was hardy. It was not wise for any enemy to
provoke him. When that indiscretion was committed, Manuel made himself
as a serpent about the city of that enemy, girdling his prey all round:
he seized the purlieus of that city, and its cattle, and its boats upon
the rivers. He beleaguered that city everywhere, he put fire to the
orchards, he silenced the mill-races, he prevented the plowers from
plowing the land; and the people of that city starved, and they ate up
one another, until the survivors chose to surrender to Dom Manuel. Then
Manuel raised his gallows, he whistled in his headsmen, and there were
no more survivors of that people.”
And Anavalt said also: “Manuel was cunning. With a feather he put a
deception upon three kings, but the queens that he played his tricks on
were more than three, nor was it any feather that he diddled them with.
Nobody could outwit Manuel. What he wanted he took, if he could get it
that way, with his strong hand: but, if not, he used his artful head and
his lazy, wheedling tongue, and his other members too, so that the
person whom he was deluding would give Manuel whatever he required. It
was like eating honey, to be deluded by Manuel. I think it is no credit
for a private man to be a great rogue; but the leader of a people must
know how to deceive all peoples.”
Then Anavalt said: “Manuel was terrible. There was no softness in him,
no hesitancy, and no pity. That, too, is not a virtue in a private
person, but in the leader of a people it may well be a blessing for that
people. Manuel so ordered matters that no adversary ever troubled
Poictesme the second time. He lived as a tyrant over us; but it is
better to have one master that you know the ways of than to be always
changing masters in a world where none but madmen run about at their own
will. I do not weep for Manuel, because he would never have wept for me
nor for anybody else; but I regret that man of iron and the protection
he was to us who are not ruthless iron but flesh.”
There was a silence afterward. Yet still the heroes nodded gravely. This
was, in the main, a Manuel whom they all recognized.
Dame Niafer, however, had risen up a little way from her seat, when the
pious gaunt man Holy Holmendis, who sat next to her, put out his hand to
her hand. After this she said nothing: yet it was perfectly clear the
Countess thought that Anavalt had been praising Manuel for the wrong
sort of virtues.
A fire was kindled with that ceremony which was requisite. The banner of
the great fellowship was burned, and the lords of the Silver Stallion
now broke their swords, and they cast these fragments also into this
fire, so that these swords might never defend any other standard. It was
the youth of these nine men and the first vigor and faith of their youth
which perished with the extinction of that fire: and they knew it.
Thereafter the heroes left Storisende. Each rode for his own home, and
they made ready, each in his own fashion, for that new order of
governance which with the passing of Dom Manuel had come upon Poictesme.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_4._
_Fog Rises_
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
NOW Guivric and Donander and Gonfal rode westward with their attendants,
all in one company, as far as Guivric’s home at Asch. And as these three
lords rode among the wreckage and the gathering fogs of November, the
three talked together.
“It is a pity,” said Gonfal of Naimes, “that, while our little Count
Emmerick is growing up, this land must now be ruled by a lame and sallow
person, who had never much wit and who tends already to stringiness.
Otherwise, in a land ruled over by a widow, who is used to certain
recreations, one might be finding amusement, and profit too.”
“Come now,” said loyal Donander of Évre, “but Madame Niafer is a chaste
and good woman who means well!”
“She has yet another quality which is even more disastrous in the ruler
of any country,” returned Guivric the Sage.
“And what hook have you found now to hang a cynicism on?”
“I fear more from her inordinate piety than from her indifferent looks
and her stupid well-meaningness. That woman will be reforming things
everywhere into one gray ruin.”
“Indeed,” said Gonfal, smiling, “these rising fogs have to me very much
the appearance of church incense.”
Guivric nodded. “Yes. Had it been possible, I believe that Madame Niafer
would have preserved and desecrated the fellowship by setting in Dom
Manuel’s place that Holy Holmendis who is nowadays her guide in all
spiritual matters; and who will presently, do you mark my prophesying,
be making a sanctimonious hash of her statecraft.”
“He composed for her, it is well known,” said Gonfal, “the plaint which
she made for Dom Manuel.”
“That was a cataloguing of ecclesiastic virtues,” Guivric said, dryly,
“which to my mind did not very immediately suggest the tall adulterer
and parricide whom we remember. This Holmendis has, thus, already
brought hypocrisy into fashion.”
“He will be Niafer’s main counselor,” Gonfal speculated. “He is a
pushing, vigorous fellow. I wonder now—?”
Guivric nodded again. “Women prefer to take counsel in a bedchamber,” he
stated.
“Come, Guivric,” put in pious young Donander of Évre. “Come now,
whatever his over-charitable opinion of our dead master, this Holmendis
is a saint: and we true believers should speak no ill of the saints.”
“I have nothing against belief, nor hypocrisy either, within reason, nor
have I anything against saints, in their proper place. It is only that
should a saint—and more particularly, a saint conceived and nurtured and
made holy in Philistia,—ever come to rule over Poictesme, and over the
bedchamber of Dom Manuel,” said Guivric, moodily, “that saint would not
be in his proper place. And our day, my friends, would be ended.”
“It is already ended,” Gonfal said, “so far as Poictesme is concerned:
these fogs smell over-strongly of church incense. But these fogs which
rise about Poictesme do not envelop the earth. For one, I shall fare
south, as that Horvendile directed me, and as I had already planned to
do. In the South I shall find nobody so amusing as that fine great
squinting quiet scoundrel of a Manuel. Yet in the South there is a quest
cried for the hand of Morvyth, the dark Queen of Inis Dahut; and, now
that my wife is dead, it may be that I would find it amusing to sleep
with this young queen.”
The others laughed, and thought no more of the light boastfulness of
this Gonfal who was the world’s playfellow. But within the month it was
known that Gonfal of Naimes, the Margrave of Aradol, had in truth
quitted his demesnes, and had traveled southward. And he was the first
of this famous fellowship, after Dom Manuel, to go out of Poictesme, not
ever to return.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BOOK TWO
THE MATHEMATICS OF GONFAL
“_He multiplieth words without knowledge._”
—JOB, xxxv, 16.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_5._
_Champion at Misadventure_
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NOW the tale is of how Gonfal fared in the South, where the people were
Fundamentalists. It is told how the quest was cried; and how, in the
day’s fashion, the hand of Morvyth, the dark Queen of Inis Dahut and of
the four other Isles of Wonder, was promised to the champion who should
fetch back the treasure that was worthiest to be her bridal gift. Eight
swords, they say, were borne to the altar of Pygé-Upsízugos, to be
suitably consecrated, after a brief and earnest address, by the Imaun of
Bulotu. Eight appropriately ardent lovers raised high these swords, to
swear fealty to Queen Morvyth and to the quest of which her loveliness
was the reward. Thus all was as it should be, until they went to sheathe
these swords. Then, one champion among the company, striking his elbow
against his neighbor, had, rather unaccountably, the ill luck to drop
his sword so that it pierced his own left foot.
The horns sounded afterward, through the narrow streets and over the
bronze and lacquer roofs, and seven of Queen Morvyth’s suitors armed and
rode forth to ransack the world of its chief riches for a year and a
day.
He who did not ride with the others was Gonfal of Naimes. It was three
months, indeed, before his wound was so healed that Gonfal could put
foot to stirrup. And by that time, he calculated regretfully, the riches
of the world must have been picked over with such thoroughness that it
would hardly be worth while for a cripple to be hobbling out to make
himself ridiculous among unsympathetic strangers. His agony, as he
admitted, under this inclement turn of chance, was well-nigh
intolerable; yet nothing was to be gained by blinking the facts: and
Gonfal was, as he also admitted, a realist.
Gonfal, thus, remained at court through the length of a year, and lived
uneventfully in the pagan Isles of Wonder. Gonfal sat unsplendidly snug
while all his rivals rode at adventure in the meadows that are most
fertile in magic and ascended the mountains that rise beyond
plausibility in the climates most favorable to the unimaginable. But
Gonfal’s sufficing consolation appeared to be that he sat, more and more
often, with the Queen.
However, the Margrave of Aradol, alone of Morvyth’s suitors, had
overpassed his first youth; the aging seem to acquire a sort of
proficiency in being disappointed, and to despatch the transaction with
more ease: and so, Queen Morvyth speculated, the Margrave of Aradol
could perhaps endure this cross of unheroic tranquillity—even over and
above his natural despair, now he had lost all hope of winning her,—with
an ampler fortitude than would have been attainable by any of the
others.
Besides, their famousness was yet to be won, their exploits stayed, as
yet, resplendent and misty magnets which drew them toward the future.
But this Gonfal, who had come into Inis Dahut after so much notable
service under Manuel of Poictesme and the unconquerable banner of the
Silver Stallion, had in his day, the young Queen knew, been through
eight formal wars, with any amount of light guerrilla work. He had slain
his satisfactory quota of dragons and usurpers and ogres, and, also some
years ago, had married the golden-haired and starry-eyed and
swan-throated princess who is the customary reward of every champion’s
faithful attendance to derring-do.
Now, in the afternoon of Gonfal’s day, with his princess dead, and with
the realms that he had shared with her all lost,—and with his overlord
Count Manuel too departed from this world, and with the banner of the
Silver Stallion no longer followed by any one,—now this tall Gonfal went
among his fellows in Inis Dahut a little aloofly. Yet the fair-bearded
man went smilingly, too, as one who amuses himself at a game which he
knows to be not very important: for he was, as he said, a realist, even
in the pagan Isles of Wonder.
And Morvyth, the dark Queen of the five Isles of Wonder, was annoyed
by the bantering ways of her slow-spoken lover; she did not like these
ways: she would put out of mind the question whether this man was
being bitterly amused by his own hopeless infatuation or by
something—incredible as that seemed,—about her. But that question
would come back into her mind: and Morvyth, with an habitual light
lovely gesture, would tidy the hair about her ears, and would go again
to talk with Gonfal, so that she might, privately and just for her own
satisfaction, decide upon this problem. Besides, the man had rather
nice eyes.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_6._
_The Loans of Power_
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
NOW, when the year was over, and when the bland persistent winds of
April had won up again out of the South, the heroes returned, each with
his treasure. Each brought to Morvyth a bridal gift as miraculous as the
adventures through which it had been come by: and all these adventures
had been marvelous beyond any easy believing.
Indeed, as the Queen remarked, in private, their tales were hardly
credible.
“And yet, I think, these buoyant epics are based upon fact,” replied
Gonfal. “Each of these men is the shrewd, small and ill-favored third
son of a king. It is the law that such unprepossessing midgets should
prosper, and override every sort of evil, in the Isles of Wonder and all
other extra-mundane lands.”
“But is it fair, my friend, is it even respectful, to the august and
venerable powers of iniquity, that these whippersnappers—?”
Gonfal replied: “Nobody contends, I assure you, that such easy conquests
are quite sportsmanlike. Nevertheless, they are the prerogatives of the
third son of a king. So, as a realist, madame, I perforce concede that
fortune, hereabouts, regards these third sons with a fixed grin of
approval. Even foxes and ants and ovens and broomsticks put aside their
customary taciturnity, to favor these royal imps with invaluable advice:
all giants and three-headed serpents must, I daresay, confront them with
a half-guilty sense of committing felo-de-se: and at every turn of the
road waits an enamored golden-haired princess.”
Now not every one of these truisms appeared, to the dark eyes of
Morvyth, wholly satisfactory.
“Blondes do not last,” said Morvyth, “and I am a queen.”
“That is true,” Gonfal admitted. “I am not certain every third prince
prospers with a queen. I can recall no authority upon the point.”
“My friend, there is not any doubt that these dauntless champions have
prospered everywhere. And it is another trouble for me now to decide
which one has fetched back the treasure that is worthiest to be my
bridal gift.”
Gonfal pursed up his remarkably red and soft-looking lips. He regarded
the young Queen for a brief while, and throughout that while he wore his
odd air of considering an amusing matter which was of no great
importance.
“Madame,” Gonfal then said, “I would distinguish. To be worthiest, a
thing must first be worthy.”
At this the slender brows of Morvyth went up. “But upon that ebony
table, my friend, are potent magics which control all the wealth of the
world.”
“I do not dispute that. I merely marvel—as a perhaps unpractical
realist,—how such wealth can be termed a gift, when it at utmost is but
a loan.”
“Now do you tell me,” commanded Morvyth, “just what that means!”
But Gonfal before replying considered for a while the trophies which
were the increment of his younger, smaller and more energetic rivals’
heroism. These trophies were, indeed, sufficiently remarkable.
Here, for one thing,—fetched from the fiery heart of the very dreadful
seven-walled city of Lankha, by bustling little Prince Chedric of Lorn,
after an infinity of high exploits,—was that agate which had in the
years that are long past preserved the might of the old emperors of
Macedon. Upon this strange jewel were to be seen a naked man and nine
women, portrayed in the agate’s veinings: and this agate assured its
wearer of victory in every battle. The armies of the pagan Isles of
Wonder would be ready, at the first convenient qualm of patriotism or
religious faith, to lay waste and rob all the wealthiest kingdoms in
that part of the world, should Morvyth choose that agate as her bridal
gift.
And yet Gonfal, as he now put it aside, spoke rather sadly, and said
only, “Bunkhum!” in one or another of the foreign tongues which he had
acquired during his mundivagant career of knight-errantry.
Gonfal then looked at an onyx. It was the onyx of Thossakan. Its wearer
had the power to draw out the soul of any person, even of himself, and
to imprison that soul as a captive inside this hollowed onyx; and its
wearer might thus trample anywhither resistlessly. Beyond the somber
gleaming of this onyx showed the green lusters of an emerald, which was
engraved with a lyre and three bees, with a dolphin and the head of a
bull. Misfortune and failure of no sort could enter into the house
wherein was this Samian gem. But the brightest of all the ensorcelled
stones arrayed upon the ebony table was the diamond of Luned, whose
wearer might at will go invisible: and to this Cymric wonder Gonfal
accorded the tribute of a shrug.
“This diamond,” said Gonfal then, “is a gift which a well-balanced
person might loyally tender to his queen, but hardly to his prospective
wife. I speak as a widower, madame: and I assure you that Prince Duneval
of Orc we may dismiss from our accounting, as a too ardent lover of
danger.”
Morvyth thought this very clever and naughty and cynical of him, but
smilingly said nothing. And Gonfal touched the offering of pompous
little Thorgny of Vigeois. This was the gray sideritis, which, when
bathed in running waters and properly propitiated, told with the weak
voice of an infant whatever you desired to learn. The secrets of war and
statecraft, of all that had ever happened anywhere, and of all arts and
trades, were familiar to the wearer of the gray sideritis. And Gonfal
touched, more gingerly, the moonstone of Naggar Tura, whose cutting edge
no material substance could resist, so that the strong doors of an
adversary’s treasure house, or the walls of his fortified city, could be
severed with this gem just as a knife slices an apple.
Yet equally marvelous, in another fashion, was this moonstone’s
neighbor, a jewel of scarlet radiancy streaked with purple. All that was
needed to ensure a prosperous outcome of whatsoever matter one had in
hand could be found engraved upon this stone, in the lost color called
tingaribinus. For the wearer of this stone—a fragment, as the most
reputable cantraps attested, of the pillar which Jacob raised at
Beth-El,—it was not possible to fail in any sort of worldly endeavor.
Yet Gonfal put this too aside, speaking again in a foreign language
unfamiliar to Morvyth, and saying, “Hohkum!”
And then, but not until then, Gonfal answered Queen Morvyth.
“I mean,” he said, “that with my own eyes I have seen that sturdy knave
Dom Manuel attain to the summit of human estate, and thence pass,
bewilderingly, into nothingness. I mean that, through the virtues of
these amulets and periapts and other very dreadful manifestations of
lithomancy, a monarch may retain, for a longer season than did Manuel,
much money and acreage and all manner of power, and may keep all these
fine things for a score or for two-score or even for three-score of
years. But not for four-score years, madame: for by that time the riches
and the honors of this world must fall away from every mortal man; and
all that can remain of the greatest emperor or of the most dreadful
conqueror will be, when four-score years are over, picked bones in a
black box.”
And Gonfal said also: “Such is now the estate of Alexander, for all that
he once owned this agate. Achilles, who wore the sideritis and was so
notable at Troy, is master of no larger realm. And to Augustus and
Artaxerxes and Attila—here to proceed no further in the alphabet,—quite
similar observations apply. These men went very ardently about this
earth, the vigor of their misconduct was truly heroic, and the sound of
their names is become as deathless as is the sound of the wind. But once
that four-score years were over, their worldly power had passed as the
dust passes upon the bland and persistent wind which now is come up out
of the South to bring new life into Inis Dahut, but to revive nothing
that is dead. Just so must always pass all worldly honors, as just such
dust.”
Then Gonfal said: “Just so—with my own eyes,—I have seen Dom Manuel
tumbled from the high estate which that all-overtrampling rogue had
purchased and held so unscrupulously; and I have seen his powerfulness
made dust. These occasional triumphs of justice, madame, turn one to
serious thinking.... Therefore it seems to me that these questing
gentlemen are offering you no gift, but only a loan. I perforce
consider—as a realist, and with howsoever appropriate regret,—that the
conditions of the quest have not been fulfilled.”
The Queen deliberated his orotundities. And she regarded Gonfal with a
smile which now was like his smiling, and which appeared not very
immediately connected with the trituration they were speaking of.