ship to be rifled of what valuables they had aboard. It is not much,
but it is all I have. And you are to accept my apologies for the
somewhat miscellaneous nature of the cargo, Messire de la
Forêt--consisting, as it does, of armours and gems, camphor and
ambergris, carpets of raw silk, teakwood and precious metals, rugs of
Yemen leather, enamels, and I hardly know what else besides. For
Euthyclos, as you will readily understand, was compelled to masquerade
as a merchant-trader."
Perion shook his head, and declared: "You offer enough to make me a
wealthy man. But I would prefer a sword."
At that Demetrios grimaced, saying, "I had hoped to get off more
cheaply." He unbuckled the crosshandled sword which he now wore and
handed it to Perion. "This is Flamberge," Demetrios continued--"that
magic blade which Galas made, in the old time's heyday, for
Charlemaigne. It was with this sword that I slew my father, and this
sword is as dear to me as your ring was to you. The man who wields it
is reputed to be unconquerable. I do not know about that, but in any
event I yield Flamberge to you as a free gift. I might have known it
was the only gift you would accept." His swart face lighted. "Come
presently and fight with me for Melicent. Perhaps it will amuse me to
ride out to battle and know I shall not live to see the sunset. Already
it seems laughable that you will probably kill me with this very sword
which I am touching now."
The champions faced each other, Demetrios in a half-wistful mirth, and
Perion in half-grudging pity. Long and long they looked.
Demetrios shrugged. Demetrios said:
"For such as I am, to love is dangerous. For such as I am, nor fire nor
meteor hurls a mightier bolt than Aphrodite's shaft, or marks its
passage by more direful ruin. But you do not know Euripides?--a
fidgety-footed liar, Messire the Comte, who occasionally blunders into
the clumsiest truths. Yes, he is perfectly right; all things this
goddess laughingly demolishes while she essays haphazard flights about
the world as unforeseeably as travels a bee. And, like the bee, she
wilfully dispenses honey, and at other times a wound."
Said Perion, who was no scholar:
"I glory in our difference. For such as I am, love is sufficient proof
that man was fashioned in God's image."
"Ey, there is no accounting for a taste in aphorisms," Demetrios
replied. He said, "Now I embark." Yet he delayed, and spoke with
unaccustomed awkwardness. "Come, you who have been generous till this!
will you compel me to desert you here--quite penniless?"
Said Perion:
"I may accept a sword from you. I do accept it gladly. But I may not
accept anything else."
"That would have been my answer. I am a lucky man," Demetrios said, "to
have provoked an enemy so worthy of my opposition. We two have fought
an honest and notable duel, wherein our weapons were not made of steel.
I pray you harry me as quickly as you may; and then we will fight with
swords till I am rid of you or you of me."
"Assuredly, I shall not fail you," answered Perion.
These two embraced and kissed each other. Afterward Demetrios went into
his own country, and Perion remained, girt with the magic sword
Flamberge. It was not all at once Perion recollected that the wearer of
Flamberge is unconquerable, if ancient histories are to be believed,
for in deduction Perion was leisurely.
Now on a sudden he perceived that Demetrios had flung control of the
future to Perion, as one gives money to a sot, entirely prescient of
how it will be used. Perion had his moment of bleak rage.
"I will not cog the dice to my advantage any more than you!" said
Perion. He drew the sword of Charlemaigne and brandished it and cast it
as far as even strong Perion could cast, and the sea swallowed it. "Now
God alone is arbiter!" cried Perion, "and I am not afraid."
He stood a pauper and a friendless man. Beside his thigh hung a
sorcerer's scabbard of blue leather, curiously ornamented, but it was
emptied of power. Yet Perion laughed exultingly, because he was elate
with dreams of the future. And for the rest, he was aware it is less
grateful to remember plaudits than to recall the exercise of that in us
which is not merely human.
20.
_How Perion Got Aid_
Then Perion turned from the Needle of Assignano, and went westward into
the Forest of Columbiers. He had no plan. He wandered in the high woods
that had never yet been felled or ordered, as a beast does in watchful
care of hunters.
He came presently to a glade which the sunlight flooded without
obstruction. There was in this place a fountain, which oozed from under
an iron-coloured boulder incrusted with grey lichens and green moss.
Upon the rock a woman sat, her chin propped by one hand, and she
appeared to consider remote and pleasant happenings. She was clothed
throughout in white, with metal bands about her neck and arms; and her
loosened hair, which was coloured like straw, and was as pale as the
hair of children, glittered about her, and shone frostily where it lay
outspread upon the rock behind her.
She turned toward Perion without any haste or surprise, and Perion saw
that this woman was Dame Mélusine, whom he had loved to his own hurt
(as you have heard) when Perion served King Helmas. She did not speak
for a long while, but she lazily considered Perion's honest face in a
sort of whimsical regret for the adoration she no longer found there.
"Then it was really you," he said, in wonder, "whom I saw talking with
Demetrios when I awakened to-day."
"You may be sure," she answered, "that my talking was in no way
injurious to you. Ah, no, had I been elsewhere, Perion, I think you
would by this have been in Paradise." Then Mélusine fell again to
meditation. "And so you do not any longer either love or hate me,
Perion?" Here was an odd echo of the complaint Demetrios had made.
"That I once loved you is a truth which neither of us, I think, may
ever quite forget," said Perion, very quiet. "I alone know how utterly
I loved you--no, it was not I who loved you, but a boy that is dead
now. King's daughter, all of stone, O cruel woman and hateful, O sleek,
smiling traitress! to-day no man remembers how utterly I loved you, for
the years are as a mist between the heart of the dead boy and me, so
that I may no longer see the boy's heart clearly. Yes, I have forgotten
much. ...Yet even to-day there is that in me which is faithful to you,
and I cannot give you the hatred which your treachery has earned."
Mélusine spoke shrewdly. She had a sweet, shrill voice.
"But I loved you, Perion--oh, yes, in part I loved you, just as one
cannot help but love a large and faithful mastiff. But you were
tedious, you annoyed me by your egotism. Yes, my friend, you think too
much of what you owe to Perion's honour; you are perpetually squaring
accounts with heaven, and you are too intent on keeping the balance in
your favour to make a satisfactory lover." You saw that Mélusine was
smiling in the shadow of her pale hair. "And yet you are very droll
when you are unhappy," she said, as of two minds.
He replied:
"I am, as heaven made me, a being of mingled nature. So I remember
without distaste old happenings which now seem scarcely credible. I
cannot quite believe that it was you and I who were so happy when youth
was common to us... O Mélusine, I have almost forgotten that if the
world were searched between the sunrise and the sunsetting the Mélusine
I loved would not be found. I only know that a woman has usurped the
voice of Mélusine, and that this woman's eyes also are blue, and that
this woman smiles as Mélusine was used to smile when I was young. I
walk with ghosts, king's daughter, and I am none the happier."
"Ay, Periori," she wisely answered, "for the spring is at hand, intent
upon an ageless magic. I am no less comely than I was, and my heart, I
think, is tenderer. You are yet young, and you are very beautiful, my
brave mastiff... And neither of us is moved at all! For us the spring
is only a dotard sorcerer who has forgotten the spells of yesterday. I
think that it is pitiable, although I would not have it otherwise." She
waited, fairy-like and wanton, seeming to premeditate a delicate
mischief.
He declared, sighing, "No, I would not have it otherwise."
Then presently Mélusine arose. She said:
"You are a hunted man, unarmed--oh, yes, I know. Demetrios talked
freely, because the son of Miramon Lluagor has good and ancient reasons
to trust me. Besides, it was not for nothing that Pressina was my
mother, and I know many things, pilfering light from the past to shed
it upon the future. Come now with me to Brunbelois. I am too deeply in
your debt, my Perion. For the sake of that boy who is dead--as you tell
me--you may honourably accept of me a horse, arms, and a purse, because
I loved that boy after my fashion."
"I take your bounty gladly," he replied; and he added conscientiously:
"I consider that I am not at liberty to refuse of anybody any honest
means of serving my lady Melicent."
Mélusine parted her lips as if about to speak, and then seemed to think
better of it. It is probable she was already informed concerning
Melicent; she certainly asked no questions. Mélusine only shrugged,
and laughed afterward, and the man and the woman turned toward
Brunbelois. At times a shaft of sunlight would fall on her pale hair
and convert it into silver, as these two went through the high woods
that had never yet been felled or ordered.
PART FOUR
AHASUERUS
_Of how a knave hath late compassion
On Melicent's forlorn condition;
For which he saith as ye shall after hear:
"Dame, since that game we play costeth too dear,
My truth I plight, I shall you no more grieve
By my behest, and here I take my leave
As of the fairest, truest and best wife
That ever yet I knew in all my life."_
21.
_How Demetrios Held His Chattel_
It is a tale which they narrate in Poictesme, telling how Demetrios
returned into the country of the pagans and found all matters there as
he had left them. They relate how Melicent was summoned.
And the tale tells how upon the stairway by which you descended from
the Women's Garden to the citadel--people called it the Queen's
Stairway, because it was builded by Queen Rudabeh very long ago when
the Emperor Zal held Nacumera--Demetrios waited with a naked sword.
Below were four of his soldiers, picked warriors. This stairway was of
white marble, and a sphinx carved in green porphyry guarded each
balustrade.
"Now that we have our audience," Demetrios said, "come, let the games
begin."
One of the soldiers spoke. It was that Euthyclos who (as you have
heard) had ventured into Christendom at the hazard of his life to
rescue the proconsul. Euthyclos was a man of the West Provinces and had
followed the fortunes of Demetrios since boyhood.
"King of the Age," cried Euthyclos, "it is grim hearing that we must
fight with you. But since your will is our will, we must endure this
testing, although we find it bitter as aloes and hot as coals. Dear
lord and master, none has put food to his lips for whose sake we would
harm you willingly, and we shall weep to-night when your ghost passes
over and through us."
Demetrios answered:
"Rise up and leave this idleness! It is I that will clip the ends of my
hair to-night for the love of you, my stalwart knaves. Such weeping as
is done your wounds will perform."
At that they addressed themselves to battle, and Melicent perceived she
was witnessing no child's play. The soldiers had attacked in unison,
and before the onslaught Demetrios stepped lightly back. But his sword
flashed as he moved, and with a grunt Demetrios, leaning far forward,
dug deep into the throat of his foremost assailant. The sword
penetrated and caught in a link of the gold chain about the fellow's
neck, so that Demetrios was forced to wrench the weapon free, twisting
it, as the dying man stumbled backward. Prostrate, the soldier did not
cry out, but only writhed and gave a curious bubbling noise as his soul
passed.
"Come," Demetrios said, "come now, you others, and see what you can win
of me. I warn you it will be dearly purchased."
And Melicent turned away, hiding her eyes. She was obscurely conscious
that a wanton butchery went on, hearing its blows and groans as if from
a great distance, while she entreated the Virgin for deliverance from
this foul place.
Then a hand fell upon Melicent's shoulder, rousing her. It was
Demetrios. He breathed quickly, but his voice was gentle.
"It is enough," he said. "I shall not greatly need Flamberge when I
encounter that ruddy innocent who is so dear to you."
He broke off. Then he spoke again, half jeering, half wistful. Said
Demetrios:
"I had hoped that you would look on and admire my cunning at swordplay.
I was anxious to seem admirable somehow in your eyes ... I failed. I
know very well that I shall always fail. I know that Nacumera will
fall, that some day in your native land people will say, 'That aged
woman yonder was once the wife of Demetrios of Anatolia, who was
pre-eminent among the heathen.' Then they will tell of how I cleft the
head of an Emperor who had likened me to Priapos, and how I dragged his
successor from behind an arras where he hid from me, to set him upon
the throne I did not care to take; and they will tell how for a while
great fortune went with me, and I ruled over much land, and was dreaded
upon the wide sea, and raised the battlecry in cities that were not my
own, fearing nobody. But you will not think of these matters, you will
think only of your children's ailments, of baking and sewing and
weaving tapestries, and of directing little household tasks. And the
spider will spin her web in my helmet, which will hang as a trophy in
the hall of Messire de la Forêt."
Then he walked beside her into the Women's Garden, keeping silence for
a while. He seemed to deliberate, to reach a decision. All at once
Demetrios began to tell of that magnanimous contest which he had fought
out in Theodoret's country with Perion of the Forest.
"To do the long-legged fellow simple justice," said the proconsul, as
epilogue, "there is no hardier knight alive. I shall always wonder
whether or no I would have spared him had the water-demon's daughter
not intervened in his behalf. Yes, I have had some previous dealings
with her. Perhaps the less said concerning them, the better." Demetrios
reflected for a while, rather sadly; then his swart face cleared. "Give
thanks, my wife, that I have found an enemy who is not unworthy of me.
He will come soon, I think, and then we will fight to the death. I
hunger for that day."
All praise of Perion, however worded, was as wine to Melicent.
Demetrios saw as much, noted how the colour in her cheeks augmented
delicately, how her eyes grew kindlier. It was his cue. Thereafter
Demetrios very often spoke of Perion in that locked palace where no
echo of the outer world might penetrate except at the proconsul's will.
He told Melicent, in an unfeigned admiration, of Perion's courage and
activity, declaring that no other captain since the days of those
famous generals, Hannibal and Joshua, could lay claim to such
preeminence in general estimation; and Demetrios narrated how the Free
Companions had ridden through many kingdoms at adventure, serving many
lords with valour and always fighting applaudably. To talk of Perion
delighted Melicent: it was with such bribes that Demetrios purchased
where his riches did not avail; and Melicent no longer avoided him.
There is scope here for compassion. The man's love, if it be possible
so to call that force which mastered him, had come to be an incessant
malady. It poisoned everything, caused him to find his statecraft
tedious, his power profitless, and his vices gloomy. But chief of all
he fretted over the standards by which the lives of Melicent and Perion
were guided. Demetrios thought these criteria comely, he had discovered
them to be unshakable, and he despairingly knew that as long as he
trusted in the judgment heaven gave him they must always appear to him
supremely idiotic. To bring Melicent to his own level or to bring
himself to hers was equally impossible. There were moments when he
hated her.
Thus the months passed, and the happenings of another year were
chronicled; and as yet neither Perion nor Ayrart de Montors came to
Nacumera, and the long plain before the citadel stayed tenantless save
for the jackals crying there at night.
"I wonder that my enemies do not come," Demetrios said. "It cannot be
they have forgotten you and me. That is impossible." He frowned and
sent spies into Christendom.
22.
_How Misery Held Nacumera_
Then one day Demetrios came to Melicent, and he was in a surly rage.
"Rogues all!" he grumbled. "Oh, I am wasted in this paltry age. Where
are the giants and tyrants, and stalwart single-hearted champions of
yesterday? Why, they are dead, and have become rotten bones. I will
fight no longer. I will read legends instead, for life nowadays is no
longer worthy of love or hatred."
Melicent questioned him, and he told how his spies reported that the
Cardinal de Montors could now not ever head an expedition against
Demetrios' territories. The Pope had died suddenly in the course of the
preceding October, and it was necessary to name his successor. The
College of Cardinals had reached no decision after three days'
balloting. Then, as is notorious, Dame Mélusine, as always hand in
glove with Ayrart de Montors, held conference with the bishop who
inspected the cardinals' dinner before it was carried into the
apartments where these prelates were imprisoned together until, in
edifying seclusion from all worldly influences, they should have
prayerfully selected the next Pope.
The Cardinal of Genoa received on the fourth day a chicken stuffed with
a deed to the palaces of Monticello and Soriano; the Cardinal of Parma
a similarly dressed fowl which made him master of the bishop's
residence at Porto with its furniture and wine-cellar; while the
Cardinals Orsino, Savelli, St. Angelo and Colonna were served with food
of the same ingratiating sort. Such nourishment cured them of
indecision, and Ayrart de Montors had presently ascended the papal
throne under the title of Adrian VII, servant to the servants of God.
His days of military captaincy were over. Demetrios deplored the loss
of a formidable adversary, and jeered at the fact that the vicarship of
heaven had been settled by six hens. But he particularly fretted over
other news his spies had brought, which was the information that Perion
had wedded Dame Mélusine, and had begotten two lusty children--Bertram
and a daughter called Blaniferte--and now enjoyed the opulence and
sovereignty of Brunbelois.
Demetrios told this unwillingly. He turned away his eyes in speaking,
and doggedly affected to rearrange a cushion, so that he might not see
the face of Melicent. She noted his action and was grateful.
Demetrios said, bitterly, "It is an old and tawdry history. He has
forgotten you, Melicent, as a wise man will always put aside the dreams
of his youth. To Cynara the Fates accord but a few years; a wanton Lyce
laughs, cheats her adorers, and outlives the crow. There is an
unintended moral here--" Demetrios said, "Yet you do not forget."
"I know nothing as to this Perion you tell me of. I only know the
Perion I loved has not forgotten," answered Melicent.
And Demetrios, evincing a twinge like that of gout, demanded her
reasons. It was a May morning, very hot and still, and Demetrios sat
with his Christian wife in the Court of Stars.
Said Melicent, "It is not unlikely that the Perion men know to-day has
forgotten me and the service which I joyed to render Perion. Let him
who would understand the mystery of the Crucifixion first become a
lover! I pray for old sake's sake that Perion and his lady may taste of
every prosperity. Indeed, I do not envy her. Rather I pity her, because
last night I wandered through a certain forest hand-in-hand with a
young Perion, whose excellencies she will never know as I know them in
our own woods."
Said Demetrios, "Do you console yourself with dreams?" The swart man
grinned.
Melicent said:
"Now it is always twilight in these woods, and the light there is
neither green nor gold, but both colours intermingled. It is like a
friendly cloak for all who have been unhappy, even very long ago.
Iseult is there, and Thisbe, too, and many others, and they are not
severed from their lovers now.. Sometimes Dame Venus passes, riding
upon a panther, and low-hanging leaves clutch at her tender flesh. Then
Perion and I peep from a coppice, and are very glad and a little
frightened in the heart of our own woods."
Said Demetrios, "Do you console yourself with madness?" He showed no
sign of mirth.
Melicent said:
"Ah, no, the Perion whom Mélusine possesses is but a man--a very happy
man, I pray of God and all His saints. I am the luckier, who may not
ever lose the Perion that to-day is mine alone. And though I may not
ever touch this younger Perion's hands--and their palms were as hard as
leather in that dear time now overpast--or see again his honest and
courageous face, the most beautiful among all the faces of men and
women I have ever seen, I do not grieve immeasurably, for nightly we
walk hand-in-hand in our own woods."
Demetrios said, "Ay; and then night passes, and dawn comes to light my
face, which is the most hideous to you among all the faces of men and
women!"
But Melicent said only:
"Seignior, although the severing daylight endures for a long while, I
must be brave and worthy of Perion's love--nay, rather, of the love he
gave me once. I may not grieve so long as no one else dares enter into
our own woods."
"Now go," cried the proconsul, when she had done, and he had noted her
soft, deep, devoted gaze at one who was not there; "now go before I
slay you!" And this new Demetrios whom she then saw was featured like a
devil in sore torment.
Wonderingly Melicent obeyed him.
Thought Melicent, who was too proud to show her anguish: "I could have
borne aught else, but this I am too cowardly to bear without complaint.
I am a very contemptible person. I ought to love this Mélusine, who no
doubt loves her husband quite as much as I love him--how could a woman
do less?--and yet I cannot love her. I can only weep that I, robbed of
all joy, and with no children to bewail me, must travel very tediously
toward death, a friendless person cursed by fate, while this Mélusine
laughs with her children. She has two children, as Demetrios reports. I
think the boy must be the more like Perion. I think she must be very
happy when she lifts that boy into her lap."
Thus Melicent; and her full-blooded husband was not much more
light-hearted. He went away from Nacumera shortly, in a shaking rage
which robbed him of his hands' control, intent to kill and pillage,
and, in fine, to make all other persons share his misery.
23.
_How Demetrios Cried Farewell_
And then one day, when the proconsul had been absent some six weeks,
Ahasuerus fetched Dame Melicent into the Court of Stars. Demetrios lay
upon the divan supported by many pillows, as though he had not ever
stirred since that first day when an unfettered Melicent, who was a
princess then, exulted in her youth and comeliness.
"Stand there," he said, and did not move at all, "that I may see my
purchase."
And presently he smiled, though wryly. Demetrios said next:
"Of my own will I purchased misery. Yea, and death also. It is
amusing.... Two days ago, in a brief skirmish, a league north of Calonak,
the Prankish leader met me hand to hand. He has endeavoured to do this
for a long while. I also wished it. Nothing could be sweeter than to
feel the horse beneath me wading in his blood, I thought.. Ey, well, he
dismounted me at the first encounter, though I am no weakling. I cannot
understand quite how it happened. Pious people will say some deity was
offended, but, for my part, I think my horse stumbled. It does not seem
to matter now. What really matters, more or less, is that it would
appear the man broke my backbone as one snaps a straw, since I cannot
move a limb of me."
"Seignior," said Melicent, "you mean that you are dying!"
He answered, "Yes; but it is a trivial discomfort, now I see that it
grieves you a little."
She spoke his name some three times, sobbing. It was in her mind even
then how strange the happening was that she should grieve for
Demetrios.