Fortune

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.