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."
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.
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.
Through these windows Count Manuel could see familiar fields, the long avenue of poplars and the rising hills beyond. All was as it had been yesterday, and as all had been since, nearly three years ago, Count Manuel first entered Storisende. All was precisely as it had been, except, to be sure, that until yesterday Dom Manuel's table had stood by the farthest window. He could not remember that until to-day this window had ever been opened, because since his youth had gone out of him Count Manuel was becoming more and more susceptible to draughts.
"It is certainly very curious," Dom Manuel said, aloud, when he had finished with his papers.
He was again approaching the very curious window when his daughter Melicent, now nearly three years old, came noisily, and in an appallingly soiled condition, to molest him. She had bright beauty later, but at three she was one of those children whom human powers cannot keep clean for longer than three minutes.
Dom Manuel kept for her especial delectation a small flat paddle on his writing-table, and this he now caught up.
"Out of the room with you, little pest!" he blustered, "for I am busy."
So the child, as was her custom, ran back into the hallway, and stood there, no longer in the room, but with one small foot thrust beyond the doorsill, while she laughed up at her big father, and derisively stuck out a tiny curved red tongue at the famed overlord of Poictesme. Then Dom Manuel, as was his custom, got down upon the floor to slap with his paddle at the intruding foot, and Melicent squealed with delight, and pulled back her foot in time to dodge the paddle, and thrust out her other foot beyond the sill, and tried to withdraw that too before it was spanked.
So it was they gave over a quarter of an hour to rioting, and so it was that grave young Ruric found them. Count Manuel rather sheepishly arose from the floor, and dusted himself, and sent Melicent into the buttery for some sugar cakes. He told Ruric what were the most favorable terms he could offer the burgesses of Narenta, and he gave Ruric the signed requisitions.
Presently, when Ruric had gone, Dom Manuel went again to the farthest window, opened it, and looked out once more. He shook his head, as one who gives up a riddle. He armed himself, and rode over to Perdigon, whither sainted King Ferdinand had come to consult with Manuel about contriving the assassination of the Moorish general, Al-Mota-wakkil. This matter Dom Manuel deputed to Guivric the Sage; and so was rid of it.
In addition, Count Manuel had on hand that afternoon an appeal to the judgment of God, over some rather valuable farming lands; but it was remarked by the spectators that he botched the unhorsing and severe wounding of Earl Ladinas, and conducted it rather as though Dom Manuel's heart were not in the day's business. Indeed, he had reason, for while supernal mysteries were well enough if one were still a hare-brained lad, or even if one set out in due form to seek them, to find such mysteries obtruding themselves unsought into the home-life of a well-thought-of nobleman was discomposing, and to have the windows of his own house playing tricks on him seemed hardly respectable.
All that month, too, some memory appeared to trouble Dom Manuel, in the back of his mind, while the lords of the Silver Stallion were busied in the pursuit of Othmar and Othmar's brigands in the Taunenfels: and as soon as Dom Manuel had captured and hanged the last squad of these knaves, Dom Manuel rode home and looked out of the window, to find matters unchanged.
Dom Manuel meditated. He sounded the gong for Ruric. Dom Manuel talked with the clerk about this and that. Presently Dom Manuel said: "But one stifles here. Open that window."
The clerk obeyed. Manuel at the writing-table watched him intently. But in opening the window the clerk had of necessity stood with his back toward Count Manuel, and when Ruric turned, the dark young face of Ruric was impassive.
Dom Manuel, playing with the jeweled chain of office about his neck, considered Ruric's face. Then Manuel said: "That is all. You may go."
But Count Manuel's face was troubled, and for the rest of this day he kept an eye on Ruric the young clerk. In the afternoon it was noticeable that this Ruric went often, on one pretext and another, into the Room of Ageus when nobody else was there. The next afternoon, in broad daylight, Manuel detected Ruric carrying into the Room of Ageus, of all things, a lantern. The Count waited a while, then went into the room through its one door. The room was empty. Count Manuel sat down and drummed with his fingers upon the top of his writing-table.
After a while the third window was opened. Ruric the clerk climbed over the sill. He blew out his lantern.
"You are braver than I," Count Manuel said, "it may be. It is certain you are younger. Once, Ruric, I would not have lured any dark and prim-voiced young fellow into attempting this adventure, but would have essayed it myself post-haste. Well, but I have other duties now, and appearances to keep up: and people would talk if they saw a well-thought-of nobleman well settled in life climbing out of his own windows, and there is simply no telling what my wife would think of it"
The clerk had turned, startled, dropping his lantern with a small crash. His hands went jerkily to his smooth chin, clutching it. His face was white as a leper's face, and his eyes now were wild and glittering, and his head was drawn low between his black-clad shoulders, so that he seemed a hunchback as he confronted his master. Another queer thing Manuel could notice, and it was that a great lock had been sheared away from the left side of Ruric's black hair.
"What have you learned," says Manuel, "out yonder?"
"I cannot tell you," replied Ruric, laughing sillily, "but in place of it, I will tell you a tale. Yes, yes, Count Manuel, I will tell you a merry story of how a great while ago our common grandmother Eve was washing her children one day near Eden when God called to her. She hid away the children that she had not finished washing: and when the good God asked her if all her children were there, with their meek little heads against His knees, to say their prayers to Him, she answered, Yes. So God told her that what she had tried to hide from God should be hidden from men: and He took away the unwashed children, and made a place for them where everything stays young, and where there is neither good nor evil, because these children are unstained by human sin and unredeemed by Christ's dear blood."
The Count said, frowning: "What drunken nonsense are you talking at broad noon? It is not any foolish tatter of legend that I am requiring of you, my boy, but civil information as to what is to be encountered out yonder."
"All freedom and all delight," young Ruric told him wildly, "and all horror and all rebellion."
Then he talked for a while. When Ruric had ended this talking, Count Manuel laughed scornfully, and spoke as became a well-thought-of nobleman.
Ruric whipped out a knife, and attacked his master, crying, "I follow after my own thinking and my own desires, you old, smug, squinting hypocrite!"
So Count Manuel caught Ruric by the throat, and with naked hands Dom Manuel strangled the young clerk.
"Now I have ridded the world of much poison, I think," Dom Manuel said, aloud, when Ruric lay dead at Manuel's feet. "In any event, I cannot have that sort of talking about my house. Yet I wish I had not trapped the boy into attempting this adventure, which by rights was my adventure. I did not always avoid adventures."
He summoned two to take away the body, and then Manuel went to his bedroom, and was clothed by his lackeys in a tunic of purple silk, and a coronet was placed on his gray head, and the trumpets sounded as Count Manuel sat down to supper. Pages in ermine served him, bringing Manuel's food upon gold dishes, and pouring red wine and white from golden beakers into Manuel's gold cup. Skilled music-men played upon viols and harps and flutes while the high Count of Poictesme ate richly seasoned food and talked sedately with his wife.
They had not fared thus when Manuel had just come from herding swine, and Niafer was a servant trudging on her mistress' errands, and when these two had eaten very gratefully the Portune's bread and cheese. They had not any need to be heartened with rare wines when they endured so many perils upon Vraidex and in Dun Vlechlan because of their love for each other. For these two had once loved marvelously. Now minstrels everywhere made songs about their all-conquering love, which had derided death; and nobody denied that, even now, these two got on together amicably.
But to-night Dame Niafer was fretted, because the pastry-cook was young Ruric's cousin, and was, she feared, as likely as not to fling off in a huff on account of Dom Manuel's having strangled the clerk.
"Well, then do you raise the fellow's wages," said Count Manuel.
"That is easily said, and is exactly like a man. Why, Manuel, you surely know that then the meat-cook, and the butler, too, would be demanding more, and that there would be no end to it."
"But, my dear, the boy was talking mad blasphemy, and was for cutting my throat with a great horn-handled knife."
"Of course that was very wrong of him," said Dame Niafer, comfortably, "and not for an instant, Manuel, am I defending his conduct, as I trust you quite understand. But even so, if you had stopped for a moment to think how hard it is to replace a servant nowadays, and how unreliable is the best of them, I believe you would have seen how completely we are at their mercy."
Then she told him all about her second waiting-woman, while Manuel said, "Yes," and "I never heard the like," and "You were perfectly right, my dear," and so on, and all the while appeared to be thinking about something else in the back of his mind.
XXXVI
Excursions from Content
Thereafter Count Manuel could not long remain away from the window through which Ruric had climbed with a lantern, and through which Ruric had returned insanely blaspheming against law and order.
The outlook from this window was somewhat curious. Through the two other windows of Ageus, set side by side with this one, and in appearance similar to it in all respects, the view remained always unchanged, and just such as it was from the third window so long as you looked through the thick clear glass. But when the third window of Ageus was opened, all the sunlit summer world that you had seen through the thick clear glass was gone quite away, and you looked out into a limitless gray twilight wherein not anything was certainly discernible, and the air smelt of spring. It was a curious experience for Count Manuel, thus to regard through the clear glass his prospering domains and all the rewards of his famous endeavors, and then find them vanished as soon as the third window was opened. It was curious, and very interesting; but such occurrences make people dubious about things in which, as everybody knows, it is wisdom's part to believe implicitly.
Now the second day after Ruric had died, the season now being June, Count Manuel stood at the three windows, and saw in the avenue of poplars his wife, Dame Niafer, walking hand in hand with little Melicent. Niafer, despite her lameness, was a fine figure of a woman, so long as he viewed Niafer through the closed window of Ageus. Dom Manuel looked contentedly enough upon the wife who was the reward of his toil and suffering in Dun Vlechlan, and the child who was the reward of his amiability and shrewdness in dealing with the stork, all seemed well so long as he regarded them through the closed third window.
His hand trembled somewhat as he now opened this window, to face gray sweetly-scented nothingness. But in the window glass, you saw, the appearance of his flourishing gardens remained unchanged: and in the half of the window to the right hand were quivering poplars, and Niafer and little Melicent were smiling at him, and the child was kissing her hand to him. All about this swinging half of the window was nothingness; he, leaning out, and partly closing this half of the window, could see that behind the amiable picture was nothingness: it was only in the old glass of Ageus that his wife and child appeared to live and move.
Dom Manuel laughed, shortly. "Hah, then," says he, "that tedious dear nagging woman and that priceless snub-nosed brat may not be real. They may be merely happy and prosaic imaginings, hiding the night which alone is real. To consider this possibility is troubling. It makes for even greater loneliness. None the less, I know that I am real, and certainly the grayness before me is real. Well, no matter what befell Ruric yonder, it must be that in this grayness there is some other being who is real and dissatisfied. I must go to seek this being, for here I become as a drugged person among sedate and comfortable dreams which are made doubly weariful by my old master's whispering of that knowledge which was my father's father's."
Then in the gray dusk was revealed a face that was not human, and the round toothless mouth of it spoke feebly, saying, "I am Lubrican, and I come to guide you if you dare follow."
"I have always thought that 'dare' was a quaint word," says Manuel, with the lordly swagger which he kept for company.
So he climbed out of the third window of Ageus. When later he climbed back, a lock had been sheared from the side of his gray head.
Now the tale tells that thereafter Dom Manuel was changed, and his attendants gossiped about it. Dame Niafer also was moved to mild wonderment over the change in him, but did not think it very important, because there is never any accounting for what a husband will do. Besides, there were other matters to consider, for at this time Easterlings came up from Piaja (which they had sacked) into the territories of King Theodoret, and besieged Megaris, and the harried King had sent messengers to Dom Manuel.
"But this is none of my affair," said Manuel, "and I begin to tire of warfare, and of catching cold by sleeping on hard-won battle-fields."
"You would not take cold, as I have told you any number of times," declared Niafer, "if you would eat more green vegetables instead of stuffing yourself with meat, and did not insist on overheating yourself at the fighting. Still, you had better go."
"My dear, I shall do nothing of the sort."
"Yes, you had better go, for these Easterlings are notorious pagans—"
"Now other persons have been pagans once upon a time, dear snip—"
"A great many things are much worse, Manuel," says Niafer, with that dark implication before which Dom Manuel always fidgeted, because there was no telling what it might mean. "Yes, these Easterlings are quite notorious pagans, and King Theodoret has at least the grace to call himself a Christian, and, besides, it will give me a chance to get your rooms turned out and thoroughly cleaned."
So Manuel, as was his custom, did what Niafer thought best. Manuel summoned his vassals, and brought together his nine lords of the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion, and, without making any stir with horns and clarions, came so swiftly and secretly under cover of night upon the heathen Easterlings that never was seen such slaughter and sorrow and destruction as Dom Manuel wrought upon those tall pagans before he sat down to breakfast.
He attacked from Sannazaro. The survivors therefore fled, having no choice, through the fields east of Megaris. Manuel followed, and slew them in the open.
The realm was thus rescued from dire peril, and Manuel was detained for a while in Megaris, by the ensuing banquets and religious services and the executions of the prisoners and the nonsense of the King's sister. For this romantic and very pretty girl had set King Theodoret to pestering Manuel with magniloquent offers of what Theodoret would do and give if only the rescuer of Megaris would put aside his ugly crippled wife and marry the King's lovely sister.
Manuel laughed at him. Some say that Manuel and the King's sister dispensed with marriage: others accuse Dom Manuel of exhibiting a continence not very well suited to his exalted estate. It is certain, in any event, that he by and by returned into Poictesme, with a cold in his head to be sure, but with fresh glory and much plunder and two new fiefs to his credit: and at Storisende Dom Manuel found that his rooms had been thoroughly cleaned and set in such perfect order that he could lay hands upon none of his belongings, and that the pastry-cook had left.
"It simply shows you!" says Dame Niafer, "and all I have to say is that now I hope you are satisfied."
Manuel laughed without merriment. "Everything is in a conspiracy to satisfy me in these sleek times, and it is that which chiefly plagues me."
He chucked Niafer under the chin, and told her she should be thinking of what a famous husband she had nowadays, instead of bothering about pastry-cooks. Then he fell to asking little Melicent about how much she had missed Father while Father was away, and he dutifully kissed the two other children, and he duly admired the additions to Emmerick's vocabulary during Father's absence. And afterward he went alone into the Room of Ageus.
Thereafter he was used to spend more and more hours in the Room of Ageus, and the change in Count Manuel was more and more talked about. And the summer passed: and whether or no Count Manuel had, as some declared, contracted unholy alliances, there was no denying that all prospered with Count Manuel, and he was everywhere esteemed the most lucky and the least scrupulous rogue alive. But, very certainly, he was changed.