OF THE RIGOURS TO BE SUFFERED BY THE INFAMOUS KING
THE proud tears were still in the eyes of our mistress, when she looked
all about her swiftly with the features of a hawk. In ringing tones
she cried, “Bring forth the spawn of darkness. We will now arrange his
fate.”
When the Count of Nullepart and myself made to obey this command, as
you will believe, gentle reader, we had grave concern lest madam should
observe the presence of the captive’s ears. And such was her present
humour that I think we did well to have apprehension of the penalty
that might overtake us. Greatly doubtful, we led forth the Castilian
from his durance and brought him into the room.
The King of Castile entered the presence of his victorious adversaries
with a calm and noble smile. Yet no sooner did his gaze fall upon the
grey-bearded noblemen with halters about their necks than his eyes
drooped, and a great anguish seemed to cloud them.
The relentless eyes of madam were fixed upon her foe.
“Dost thou see them, bloody-minded one?” said she. “These old bears
shall have the fangs drawn out of their chaps so that they shall bite
no more.”
Then, like a veritable sovereign princess, she turned to Sir Richard
Pendragon, to whom all the success of her arms was due.
“Avise us, Sirrah Red Dragon. Avise us in what manner we shall cast out
these several parcels of beastliness that encumber the earth.”
“By our lady!” said the English giant, rubbing the palm of one hand
slowly round that of the other, “if that is not my honest gossip, John
Castilian, I am a poor mad soul! English Richard gives a greeting to
you, John Castilian, a greeting to your most excellent King’s majesty.”
Upon this speaking, Sir Richard Pendragon was like to crack his head on
the ground with his lowly obeisance.
Although the King of Castile seemed all broken by the disaster that had
overtaken his arms, upon hearing the voice of Sir Richard Pendragon he
looked up and received his mockery with an unflinching glance.
“Foreign robber,” he said simply, “you have borne yourself as a true
captain. I make you my service. And as the life of myself and the lives
of my honourable friends are forfeit to your cunning I hope that they
may profit you.”
These words, spoken only as a King could deliver them, brought a sort
of whimsical pity to the mocking face of the English barbarian.
“Dost thou remember, John Castilian,” he said, with that softness
which the Count of Nullepart and I knew was wont to accompany his most
ferocious designs, “that summer’s morning a twelvemonth since, when
thou flungest one of a gentle and kindly nurture, a good mother’s son,
into the deepest dungeon of your Spanish palace, and chained him by
the leg, with foul straws for his pillow, and with lean rats and large
beetles for his only familiar company?”
“Yes, foreign robber, I remember it to my sorrow,” said the King of
Castile coldly. “And had I broke you upon the wheel and thrown your
corpse to the dogs a day before my reckoning, I should not now be
mourning for not having done so.”
“John Castilian,” said the Englishman, “you speak in the wise of
an unfortunate famous ancestor of mine own. He was called Sir
Procrastinatus, owing to the unlucky habit of his mind that he
continually put off till the morrow that which he should have done the
day; a habit that in the process of nature grew upon the unlucky wight
in such a measure that upon the last day of his life he failed to die
until after his friends had buried him. Can it be, John Castilian, that
yourself is a victim to a like preoccupancy? For I understand from
madam’s gracious ladyship that your trench hath been dug the last three
days in the kitchen midden.”
“No, no, Sirrah Red Dragon, that is not so,” said madam ruthlessly.
“The spawn of darkness is entitled to no burial. We will hang it upon a
fork on the outer barbican to poison the crows and the vultures and the
unclean fowls of the air.”
“A thousand pardons, ladyship,” said Sir Richard Pendragon. “It appears
I am the victim of a misinformation.”
“Do you avise us, Sirrah Red Dragon, so that the bloody-minded prince
shall begin his dying immediately. But we would have him take not less
than one-and-twenty days to the consummation of it, for we would have
him drain the dregs of the cup he hath prepared for others.”
It was here, however, that Sir Richard Pendragon began to stroke his
beard. Mad he was, and whimsical, yet beyond all things he had a mind
for affairs. Therefore he was fain to speak aside with the Count of
Nullepart and myself.
“By my troth,” he said, “it would be a happy deliverance of a bad man
if John Castilian was hung on the gate with a spike through his neck.
But grievously do I doubt me of the wisdom of the policy. We are but
three hundred men-at-arms, and Castile is a broad dominion. If we put
out the life of this prince, the queen-mother will gather new forces
and come again to the gate. And honest Dickon is fain to observe that
the old bitch wolf will be found with a longer tooth than the whelp.”
That this was the voice of wisdom we had no thought to deny. Therefore
it behoved us to spread the light of statecraft before our mistress.
Yet, as you will readily believe, such a task was no light one. Still,
accomplished it must be, although he who would turn a woman aside from
her vengeance may be said to take his life in his hand.
Sir Richard Pendragon, however, was the last man in the world to blench
before the face of danger. And so, with a most humble civility that
rendered the sinister laughter of his eyes the more formidable, he
addressed the Countess Sylvia.
“Madam,” said he, “was old honest Dickon dreaming o’ nights when he
heard the grace of your ladyship’s nobility declare that he might
command her anything?”
The fair damask cheek of our mistress grew again like that of a
carnation; again were her eyes filled with proud shining.
“You heard aright, Sirrah Red Dragon,” she said softly. “It is my
desire that you command me anything.”
“Then old honest Dickon, a good fellow, kisses your small feet and
makes you a leg, peerless rose of the south, and he asks for the life
of John Castilian.”
The bosom of our mistress heaved rebelliously. Tears of mortified
caprice crept into her eyes. With contempt and bitterness she cast a
glance at the King, who stood in mournful converse with his ministers.
She then confronted her great captain.
“Sirrah Red Dragon,” she said in accents that were choked by a rage of
tears, “do you take the life of the spawn of darkness. Use it as you
will, sirrah. It was you that gave it to me; it is meet that you should
receive it back again. I do not ask upon what pretext you would hold
it; but--but, sirrah,” and her whole form quivered strangely, “I do
ask--I do ask, sirrah, is this the whole of your good pleasure?”
Yet no sooner had she spoke those last unlucky words, and, as it were,
laid bare her proud bosom, than she averted her beautiful cheeks that
were like a scarlet rose, and in the sudden wild rage of her own
weakness, that she whom kings must woo in vain had come herself to woo,
she hid her eyes.
“Nay, by the soul of a nice mother,” said Sir Richard Pendragon, “this
is but a moiety of what her good son would ask you. Having received
the life of John Castilian, he would ask your permission, madam, that
in some sort he may punish him, for you need not to be told that his
crimes are many and abominable.”
“As you say, Sirrah Red Dragon, his crimes are many and abominable,”
said the Countess Sylvia. “I would indeed have you punish him. I would
have you punish him with all possible rigour.”
Speaking thus, she gazed at the unfortunate prince with a power of
resentment that he, who was true to his degree, met with a calm
indifferency.
“All possible rigour,” said Sir Richard Pendragon softly, “is indeed
the best part of the design of your old honest servant. And to that
end, madam, I would ask to deliver John Castilian to you again in order
that you may bestow this dreadful rigor upon him.”
“It is well, Sirrah Red Dragon,” said his mistress. “In this you are
wise. We shall know in what sort to visit the spawn of darkness and
bloody-minded prince.”
“And yet, madam,” said Sir Richard Pendragon, “by the grace of your
ladyship is it not left to old honest Dickon to nominate the weapons of
your severity?”
“Pray do so, Sirrah Red Dragon,” said madam with a courteous
indulgence. “But perhaps you will not omit to weigh the efficacy upon
delicate flesh of hot sharp-pointed nails? And also of hard pieces of
rock upon the sensitive limb bones?”
“Nay, madam,” said Sir Richard Pendragon, “a good mother’s son forgets
not the efficacy of these honest things; yet, under the favour of your
ladyship, if he is minded to speak out of his ripe observation, this
elderly seeker after virtue would venture to recommend an even more
dreadful rigour, a rigour even more salutary.”
“By every manner of means, Sirrah Red Dragon, I would have you
recommend it.”
As the Countess Sylvia spoke she fixed another remorseless glance upon
the unhappy prince.
“That which one who is old, madam,” said the English giant in his
softest voice, “and one who hath been accustomed all his years to grope
for the light of the truth is fain to recommend to the grace of your
ladyship, is the most excessive rigour known to mankind; a greater
rigour which contains all the lesser rigours within itself; a rigour
which poor unlucky manhood, be it that of prince or of peasant, is wont
to regard with the same abhorrence as a sea-coal fire is regarded by
a gib cat with a singed tail. The barbarous and excessive rigour to
which your old honest servant refers, madam, is that which is profanely
called holy matrimony. English Dickon humbly submits, madam, that you
should receive John Castilian in the bonds of wedlock, and so visit the
royal rascal according to his merit.”
Upon the enunciation of this project, which had only been possible
to one of Sir Richard Pendragon’s surpassing boldness, the Count of
Nullepart and myself had a lively fear that madam would drive her
poinard into the heart of her over-presumptuous captain. For when he
spoke in this wise her slender fingers trembled on the jewelled hilt of
her dagger, and she cried out with flaming eyes,--
“Wed the spawn of darkness, sirrah! Wed the bloody-minded prince!”
“Even so, madam,” said the English giant, withdrawing a pace from her
striking hand. “Under your gracious favour, that is the rigour that is
humbly proposed by one who hath grown old in the love of virtue.”
As the Englishman spoke, a change was wrought in the demeanour of the
Countess Sylvia. Like a very woman or a small child, or perchance like
them both (for the worshipful Count of Nullepart assures me that they
are one and the same), she peered into the eyes of her captain. And the
manner of this action, which was one of a furtive modesty, seemed to
imply that she dared hardly to look lest she should discover that which
she feared to see.
“Wed the spawn of darkness!” she breathed softly. “I--I, Sirrah Red
Dragon--I wed the froward prince!”
She continued to repeat these words in a low voice. Yet ever and
anon she peered upwards to the red and hungry eyes of her great
captain, that were full of a sombre and whimsical phantasy. And to the
worshipful Count of Nullepart and to myself, who hung upon each phase
of that which was toward, it seemed to us both, in the curious anguish
of our hearts, that the lifeblood of the little Countess Sylvia ebbed
away from her even as she gazed.