Fortune

The dawn came, yet Sir Richard Pendragon came not. I then made a proposal to our mistress, who had spent the night like a veritable captain walking upon her battlements. It was that I should be permitted to sally out into the plain with the hundred men remaining in our hands, in order that I might seek for our good friends, and if they were in need of succour to bear it to them.

To this proposal madam assented. The Count of Nullepart, however, was greatly averse from it. He declared it to be the height of impolicy to withdraw from the castle the whole of its defence. It was in vain that I pointed out that as far as the eye could scan none of our enemy was visible. It would seem that the Castilian host had withdrawn in the night. Yet, greatly to my chagrin, it was given to the Count of Nullepart to prevail in his contention. It was doubtless due to the weight of his years that madam saw fit to revoke her permission.

The hours passed, however, and still Sir Richard Pendragon came not. Then it was that some sort of consternation began to fall upon us. Yet, as our high hopes began to wane a little, and anxious faces were to be seen on every hand, the Countess Sylvia refused stoutly to believe that misfortune had overtaken her arms.

Never could a demeanour have been more steadfast than hers in the face of an ever-growing dismay. All through the blazing heat of the forenoon the Count of Nullepart and I remained with her upon the battlements, regarding that fair and wide-stretching plain below. Full many leagues were unrolled before us. Here were the dotted points of the spires and clustered houses of the imperial city of Toledo; there was the flashing silver ribbon of the Tagus curling in and out among the hills and meadows. Yet, strain our eyes as we might, there was never a sign of the Castilian host, nor of the redoubtable Sir Richard Pendragon and his mounted company.

In the face of this mystery we knew not what to believe. A great army had vanished from before our eyes. The white tents, hundreds in number, that were spread over the broad plain, were still exposed to the glare of the pitiless sun, yet all that day not a solitary soldier was to be seen about them. Such a remarkable circumstance encouraged even stout minds to attribute the whole matter to the exercise of the dark powers. For some were only too ready to believe that they were wielded by the Englishman. Indeed, it was recalled by many that he had more than once been heard to confess himself as a wizard.

Night fell again, yet still Sir Richard Pendragon came not. And as far as the most distant horizon no sign of an armed host was visible. The Countess Sylvia refused her food that evening, and summoned the chaplain of his lordship’s grace, a holy father of the Cistercians. She spent the night upon her knees in the chapel.

When the morning dawned she came out again to the battlements to resume her watch. Although her cheeks were wan and her looks were sad, they had lost nothing of their noble ardour. It seemed that foreboding had fallen upon her. And then in the lowest depths of her distress, she summoned the Count of Nullepart to her harshly, and bade him go immediately and cut off the ears of the spawn of darkness.

It was in vain that the Count of Nullepart urged his mistress to relent. Yet I must tell you, good reader, that in her present humour he durst not enforce her too much, lest he also were shorn. So, finding that his reluctance did but inflame her instancy, he had no other course save to go forth to obey.

The King of Castile was indeed a bitter enemy, and he had the name of a merciless prince. Therefore in the fortunes of war he was entitled to small consideration, yet the worshipful Count of Nullepart, as tardily enough he went forth to do the bidding of his mistress, was yet a person of civility and of a philosophical enlightenment which was only possible to one of the foremost minds of the age. Thus, upon taking counsel with myself upon the subject, the worshipful Count of Nullepart had recourse to a subterfuge, which, however, must have placed his own ears, if not his life, in jeopardy. Instead of obeying this severe ordination, he went and hid himself against the time when madam should have forgot her resolve.

How far this expedient served the Count of Nullepart will presently be shown. At noon, as madam still watched from the battlements, refusing all food, and suffering none to come near her, she summoned the Count of Nullepart again. As he was not to be found, she had me brought to her, and with much sternness bade me “go immediately and cut off the head of the bloody-minded prince.”

Now, though the peril of the act was so great, I was fully determined to follow the course I had enjoined upon the Count of Nullepart. But suddenly the Countess Sylvia uttered a shrill cry, and then it was seen she had already ceased to regard her recent order.

Calling me back to her side, she bade me look out over the battlements, and tell her what I saw. And that which I had to inform her was that a mounted company was approaching through the plain.

For more than an hour we stood at gaze, seeking to discern who this might be. Howbeit, so slowly, and, as it seemed, so wearily, did the cavalcade come towards us, that at the end of that period it appeared hardly to have made a league. Yet, as we stood with our eyes forever strained upon the bright sunlight, and with I know not what wild speculations in our brains, I think I never saw our noble mistress with such a signal beauty in her mien.

None dared speak to her as the tardy minutes passed. At gaze upon the topmost pinnacle of the conning-tower, with her small and slender woman’s form tense as an arrow upon a bow, so that it seemed to poise itself midway between the green plain and the blue sky, all the ardour of her soul seemed to merge in her glance. It was as though her proud heart was overmounted in the yearning for victory.

It was from the lips of our mistress, and by the agency of her two thought-wingèd eyes, that the glad news proclaimed itself.

“’Tis he,” she said softly; “’tis him of England. It is Sirrah Red Dragon, the sweet giant, the valiant foreigner!”

As our mistress spoke these words, she placed her small white hand on my sleeve that was near to her, and it was like that of a small child that is fit only to grasp a toy. Yet when I felt the hot flame of passion that was burning in it, and its gentle trembling that was like the autumn willow, the hot blood of my youth surmounted me, and had I dared—and yet, reader, I must declare to you that I dared not—I would have paid half the course of nature to enfold this regal form to my breast.

I was waked from the trance of my desire by a profound sigh. It was of a melodious yet half mirthful bitterness. Without turning about I knew it to proceed from the Count of Nullepart. Yet, such was its delicacy that it lured me to turn my eyes to meet his own. And as they came together, we found within the gaze of one another the high yearning of our souls an hundred times reflected.

“Ah, my dear friend,” he lisped in the gentle and charming melody of his speech, which yet could not still the tumult of my soul, “have you forgot the Princess, she whom we serve yet see not, she whom we clasp yet cannot retain?”

“I curse that English robber!” I hissed in his ears. “I ask you, Sir Count, why does not the devil claim his own?”

“The better to plague an honest community, my dear friend,” said the Count of Nullepart, with a soft laugh. “Yet, on his part, this gigantic and monstrous Maximus Homo is a profligate, happy and careless son of the earth, who forever disdains the caresses that our Princess Fortune casts upon him. To her he is the prince who mocks her with the valiant insolency of his prodigal nature.”

And, as if to show that the worshipful Count of Nullepart had truly rendered his philosophy, at this moment a high yearning cry, like that of a soul in durance, was proclaimed in our ears. And we saw a crystal tear within each of the orbs of our mistress, within each of those orbs that were wont to look proud at the sun.