Figures of Earth Page 16
Thus Manuel came again to Freydis. He had his first private talk with her in a room that was hung with black and gold brocade. White mats lay upon the ground, and placed irregularly about the room were large brass vases filled with lotus blossoms. Here Freydis sat on a three-legged stool, in conference with a panther. From the ceiling hung rigid blue and orange and reddish-brown serpents, all dead and embalmed; and in the middle of the ceiling was painted a face which was not quite human, looking downward, with evil eyes half closed, and with its mouth half open in discomfortable laughter.
Freydis was clad in scarlet completely, and, as has been said, a golden panther was talking to her when Dom Manuel came in. She at once dismissed the beast, which smiled amicably at Dom Manuel, and then arched high its back in the manner of all the cat tribe, and so flattened out into a thin transparent goldness, and, flickering, vanished upward as a flame leaves a lampwick.
"Well, well, you bade me come to you, dear friend, when I had need of you," says Manuel, very cordially shaking hands, "and nobody's need could be more great than mine."
"Different people have different needs," Freydis replied, rather gravely, "but all passes in this world."
"Friendship, however, does not pass, I hope."
She answered slowly: "It is we who pass, so that the young Manuel whom I loved in a summer that is gone, is nowadays as perished as that summer's gay leaves. What, grizzled fighting-man, have you to do with that young Manuel who had comeliness and youth and courage, but no human pity and no constant love? and why should I be harboring his lighthearted mischiefs against you? Ah, no, gray Manuel, you are quite certain no woman would do that; and people say you are shrewd. So I bid you very welcome to Sargyll, where my will is the only law."
"You at least have not changed," Dom Manuel replied, with utter truth, "for you appear today, if anything, more fair and young than you were that first night upon Morven when I evoked you from tall flames to lend life to the image I had made. Well, that seems now a lengthy while ago, and I make no more images."
"Your wife would be considering it a waste of time," Queen Freydis estimated.
"No, that is not quite the way it is. For Niafer is the dearest and most dutiful of women, and she never crosses my wishes in anything."
Freydis now smiled a little, for she saw that Manuel believed he was speaking veraciously. "At all events," said Freydis, "it is a queer thing surely that in the month which is to come the stork will be fetching your second child to a woman resting under my roof and in my golden bed. Yes, Thurinel has just been telling me of your plan, and it is a queer thing. Yet it is a far queerer thing that your first child, whom no stork fetched nor had any say in shaping, but whom you made of clay to the will of your proud youth and in your proud youth's likeness, should be limping about the world somewhere in the appearance of a strapping tall young fellow, and that you should know nothing about his doings."
"Ah! what have you heard? and what do you know about him, Freydis?"
"I suspicion many things, gray Manuel, by virtue of my dabblings in that gray art which makes neither for good nor evil."
"Yes," said Manuel, practically, "but what do you know?"
She took his hand again. "I know that in Sargyll, where my will is the only law, you are welcome, false friend and very faithless lover."
He could get no more out of her, as they stood there under the painted face which looked down upon them with discomfortable laughter.
So Manuel and Niafer remained at Sargyll until the baby should be delivered. King Ferdinand, then in the midst of another campaign against the Moors, could do nothing for his vassal just now. But glittering messengers came from Raymond Bérenger, and from King Helmas, and from Queen Stultitia, each to discuss this and that possible alliance and aid by and by. Everybody was very friendly if rather vague. But Manuel for the present considered only Niafer and the baby that was to come, and he let statecraft bide.
Then two other ships, that were laden with Duke Asmund's men, came also, in an attempt to capture Manuel: so Freydis despatched a sending which caused these soldiers to run about the decks howling like wolves, and to fling away their swords and winged helmets, and to fight one against the other with hands and teeth until all were slain.
The month passed thus uneventfully. And Niafer and Freydis became the best and most intimate of friends, and their cordiality to each other could not but have appeared to the discerning rather ominous.
"She seems to be a very good-hearted sort of a person," Niafer conceded, in matrimonial privacy, "though certainly she is rather queer. Why, Manuel, she showed me this afternoon ten of the drollest figures to which—but, no, you would never guess it in the world,—to which she is going to give life some day, just as you did to me when you got my looks and legs and pretty much everything else all wrong."
"When does she mean to quicken them?" Dom Manuel asked: and he added, "Not that I did, dear snip, but I shall not argue about it."
"Why, that is the droll part of it, and I can quite understand your unwillingness to admit how little you had remembered about me. When the man who made them has been properly rewarded, she said, with, Manuel, the most appalling expression you ever saw."
"What were these images like?" asked Dom Manuel.
Niafer described them: she described them unsympathetically, but there was no doubt they were the images which Manuel had left unquickened upon Upper Morven.
Manuel nodded, smiled, and said: "So the man who made these images is to be properly rewarded! Well, that is encouraging, for true merit should always be rewarded."
"But, Manuel, if you had seen her look! and seen what horrible misshapen creatures they were—!"
"Nonsense!" said Manuel, stoutly: "you are a dear snip, but that does not make you a competent critic of either physiognomy or sculpture."
So he laughed the matter aside; and this, as it happened, was the last that Dom Manuel heard of the ten images which he had made upon Upper Morven. But they of Poictesme declared that Queen Freydis did give life to these figures, each at a certain hour, and that her wizardry set them to live as men among mankind, with no very happy results, because these images differed from naturally begotten persons by having inside them a spark of the life of Audela.
Thus Manuel and his wife came uneventfully to August; all the while there was never a more decorous or more thoughtful hostess than Queen Freydis; and nobody would have suspected that sorcery underlay the running of her household. It was only through Dom Manuel's happening to arise very early one morning, at the call of nature, that he chanced to be passing through the hall when, at the moment of sunrise, the night-porter turned into an orange-colored rat, and crept into the wainscoting: and Manuel of course said nothing about this to anybody, because it was none of his affair.
XXVIII
How Melicent Was Welcomed
So the month passed prosperously and uneventfully, while the servitors of Queen Freydis behaved in every respect as if they were human beings: and at the end of the month the stork came.
Manuel and Niafer, it happened, were fishing on the river bank rather late that evening, when they saw the great bird approaching, high overhead, all glistening white in the sunset, except for his thin scarlet legs and the blue shadowings in the hollows of his wings. From his beak depended a largish bundle, in pale blue wrappings, so that at a glance they knew the stork was bringing a girl.
Statelily the bird lighted on the window sill, as though he were quite familiar with this way of entering Manuel's bedroom, and the bird went in, carrying the child. This was a high and happy moment for the fond parents as they watched him, and they kissed each other rather solemnly.
Then Niafer left Manuel to get together the fishing tackle, and she hastened into the house to return to the stork the first of his promissory notes in exchange for the baby. And as Manuel was winding up the lines, Queen Freydis came to him, for she too had seen the stork's approach; and was, she said, with a grave smile, well pleased that the affair
was settled.
"For now the stork has come, yet others may come," says Freydis, "and we shall celebrate the happy event with a gay feast this night in honor of your child."
"That is very kind and characteristic of you," said Manuel, "but I suppose you will be wanting me to make a speech, and I am quite unprepared."
"No, we will have none of your high-minded and devastating speeches at our banquet. No, for your place is with your wife. No, Manuel, you are not bidden to this feast, for all that it is to do honor to your child. No, no, gray Manuel, you must remain upstairs this evening and throughout the night, because this feast is for them that serve me: and you do not serve me any longer, and the ways of them that serve me are not your ways."
"Ah!" says Manuel, "so there is sorcery afoot! Yes, Freydis, I have quite given over that sort of thing. And while not for a moment would I seem to be criticizing anybody, I hope before long to see you settling down, with some fine solid fellow, and forsaking these empty frivolities for the higher and real pleasures of life."
"And what are these delights, gray Manuel?"
"The joy that is in the sight of your children playing happily about your hearth, and developing into honorable men and gracious women, and bringing their children in turn to cluster about your tired old knees, as the winter evenings draw in, and in the cosy fire-light you smile across the curly heads of these children's children at the dear wrinkled white-haired face of your beloved and time-tested helpmate, and are satisfied, all in all, with your life, and know that, by and large, Heaven has been rather undeservedly kind to you," says Manuel, sighing. "Yes, Freydis, yes, you may believe me that such are the real joys of life; and that such pleasures are more profitably pursued than are the idle gaieties of sorcery and witchcraft, which indeed at our age, if you will permit me to speak thus frankly, dear friend, are hardly dignified."
Freydis shook her proud dark head. Her smiling was grim.
"Decidedly, I shall not ever understand you. Doddering patriarch, do you not comprehend you are already discoursing about a score or two of grandchildren on the ground of having a five-minute-old daughter, whom you have not yet seen? Nor is that child's future, it may be, yours to settle—But go to your wife, for this is Niafer's man who is talking, and not mine. Go up, Methuselah, and behold the new life which you have created and cannot control!"
Manuel went to Niafer, and found her sewing. "My dear, this will not do at all, for you ought to be in bed with the newborn child, as is the custom with the mothers of Philistia."
"What nonsense!" says Niafer, "when I have to be changing every one of the pink bows on Melicent's caps for blue bows."
"Still, Niafer, it is eminently necessary for us to be placating the Philistines in all respects, in this delicate matter of your having a baby."
Niafer grumbled, but obeyed. She presently lay in the golden bed of Freydis: then Manuel duly looked at the contents of the small heaving bundle at Niafer's side: and whether or no he scaled the conventional peaks of emotion was nobody's concern save Manuel's. He began, in any event, to talk in the vein which fathers ordinarily feel such high occasions to demand. But Niafer, who was never romantic nowadays, merely said that, anyhow, it was a blessing it was all over, and that she hoped, now, they would soon be leaving Sargyll.
"But Freydis is so kind, my dear," said Manuel, "and so fond of you!"
"I never in my life," declared Niafer, "knew anybody to go off so terribly in their looks as that two-faced cat has done since the first time I saw her prancing on her tall horse and rolling her snake eyes at you. As for being fond of me, I trust her exactly as far as I can see her."
"Yet, Niafer, I have heard you declare, time and again—"
"But if you did, Manuel, one has to be civil."
Manuel shrugged, discreetly. "You women!" he observed, discreetly.
"—As if it were not as plain as the nose on her face—and I do not suppose that even you, Manuel, will be contending she has a really good nose,—that the woman is simply itching to make a fool of you, and to have everybody laughing at you, again! Manuel, I declare I have no patience with you when you keep arguing about such unarguable facts!"
Manuel, exercising augmented discretion, now said nothing whatever.
"—And you may talk yourself black in the face, Manuel, but nevertheless I am going to name the child Melicent, after my own mother, as soon as a priest can be fetched from the mainland to christen her. No, Manuel, it is all very well for your dear friend to call herself a gray witch, but I do not notice any priests coming to this house unless they are especially sent for, and I draw my own conclusions."
"Well, well, let us not argue about it, my dear."
"Yes, but who started all this arguing and fault-finding, I would like to know!"
"Why, to be sure I did. But I spoke without thinking. I was wrong. I admit it. So do not excite yourself, dear snip."
"—And as if I could help the child's not being a boy!"
"But I never said—"
"No, but you keep thinking it, and sulking is the one thing I cannot stand. No, Manuel, no, I do not complain, but I do think that, after all I have been through with, sleeping around in tents, and running away from Northmen, and never having a moment's comfort, after I had naturally figured on being a real countess—" Niafer whimpered sleepily.
"Yes, yes," says Manuel, stroking her soft crinkly hair.
"—And with that silky hell-cat watching me all the time,—and looking ten years younger than I do, now that you have got my face and legs all wrong,—and planning I do not know what—"
"Yes, to be sure," says Manuel, soothingly: "you are quite right, my dear."
So a silence fell, and presently Niafer slept. Manuel sat with hunched shoulders, watching the wife he had fetched back from paradise at the price of his youth. His face was grave, his lips were puckered and protruded. He smiled by and by, and he shook his head. He sighed, not as one who is grieved, but like a man perplexed and a little weary.
Now some while after Niafer was asleep, and when the night was fairly advanced, you could hear a whizzing and a snorting in the air. Manuel went to the window, and lifted the scarlet curtain figured with ramping gold dragons, and he looked out, to find a vast number of tiny bluish lights skipping about confusedly and agilely in the darkness, like shining fleas. These approached the river bank, and gathered there. Then the assembled lights began to come toward the house. You could now see these lights were carried by dwarfs who had the eyes of owls and the long beaks of storks. These dwarfs were jumping and dancing about Freydis like an insane body-guard.
Freydis walked among them very remarkably attired. Upon her head shone the uraeus crown, and she carried a long rod of cedar-wood topped with an apple carved in bluestone, and at her side came the appearance of a tall young man.
So they all approached the house, and the young man looked up fixedly at the unlighted window, as though he were looking at Manuel. The young man smiled: his teeth gleamed in the blue glare. Then the whole company entered the house, and from Manuel's station at the window you could see no more, but you could hear small prancing hoof-beats downstairs and the clattering of plates and much whinnying laughter. Manuel was plucking irresolutely at his grizzled short beard, for there was no doubt as to the strapping tall young fellow.
Presently you could hear music: it was the ravishing Nis air, which charms the mind into sweet confusion and oblivion, and Manuel did not make any apparent attempt to withstand its wooing. He hastily undressed, knelt for a decorous interval, and climbed vexedly into bed.
XXIX
Sesphra of the Dreams
In the morning Dom Manuel arose early, and left Niafer still sleeping with the baby. Manuel came down through the lower hall, where the table was as the revelers had left it. In the middle of the disordered room stood a huge copper vessel half full of liquor, and beside it was a drinking-horn of gold. Manuel paused here, and drank of the sweet heather-wine as though he had need to hearten himself.
The thing came up out of the glistening ripples of brown water, and the thing embraced Manuel and kissed him. "I am pagan," the thing said, in a sweet mournful voice, "and therefore I might not come to you until your love was given to the unchristened. For I was not ever christened, and so my true name is not known to anybody. But in the far lands where I am worshipped as a god I am called Sesphra of the Dreams."
"I did not give you any name," said Manuel; and then he said: "Sesphra, you that have the appearance of Alianora and of my youth! Sesphra, how beautiful you are!"
"Is that why you are trembling, Manuel?"
"I tremble because the depths of my being have been shaken. Since youth went out of me, in the high woods of Dun Vlechlan, I have lived through days made up of small frettings and little pleasures and only half earnest desires, which moved about upon the surface of my being like minnows in the shoals of a still lake. But now that I have seen and heard you, Sesphra of the Dreams, and your lips have touched my lips, a passion moves in me that possesses all of me, and I am frightened."
"It is the passion which informs those who make images. It is the master you denied, poor foolish Manuel, and the master who will take no denial."
"Sesphra, what is your will with me?"
"It is my will that you and I go hence on a long journey, into the far lands where I am worshipped as a god. For I love you, my creator, who gave life to me, and you love me more than aught else, and it is not right that we be parted."