by Mike Ashley
As the lady accepted this information in silence (a very busy silence, but he didn’t know that), he thought no more of it till the following morning, when Master John told him that the widow had questioned him, John, exhaustively concerning Sir Gayling’s life, condition, affairs and establishment; and he confessed that he had answered her fully, though against his better judgment. The old squire was suspicious and uneasy, but the old knight laughed at him, saying that the lady’s curiosity was perfectly natural. Even when his anxious friend suggested that she was contemplating a second English marriage, he refused to be alarmed. Days and nights passed and ran into weeks – days of ease and good cheer, and nights in feather beds – so peacefully that Master John forgot his suspicions of the dame’s intentions and both old stargazers forgot their mission. Nothing in the place was too good for them, and their servants and horses grew fat and frisky with idleness and high living.
But this idyllic time came to an end. One morning the widowed daughter of the chieftain and mother of the beautiful damosel requested an astonishing service of the knight. Addressing him as Cousin Gayling, and with a hand on his shoulder and a compelling gleam in her eyes, she advised him to set out for home within the week, so as to establish Clara comfortably before the first hard frosts. The stargazer could only gape, at that: but when she added that Clara would prove to be the ideal wife for him, he cried out in agonized protest. She laughed at him kindly, even affectionately, and made known her plans to him patiently and with the utmost good humor, as if to a dull but beloved child. His continued protests became feebler and feebler, though no less agonized. The damosel herself was of no help to him. When he protested to her that she could not possibly want him for a husband, she contradicted him, politely but firmly.
Well, they were married by the domestic chaplain of Prince Powys before many witnesses. The bride and her mother were radiant, the company was merry; but Sir Gayling and Master John were dazed beyond words. They set out for home with a formidable escort, to which the prince and neighboring chiefs had contributed generously to assure them a safe passage of the Marches. Twenty leagues south of the border, the bulk of the escort turned about and withdrew. Only the bride and her grandfather, her mother, her harpist ex-governess the Damosel Mary, the family counselor Joseph and a score of clansmen on mountain ponies remained in addition to the original English party. Forty leagues farther on, every Welsh heart save Dame Clara’s, Damosel Mary’s and Joseph’s was seized by irresistible and unreasoning nostalgia for the mountains and airs of home; and in a fit of mob panic, the old chief and the widow and their highland cavalry wheeled about and headed back on the long road to Wales.
The ladies were somewhat dashed by that, but Sir Gayling, who had feared that his mother-in-law intended to make of Joyous Vale her permanent abode, congratulated himself and Master John . . . Two days later, they were joined by two cavaliers who introduced themselves as Sir Drecker and Sir Barl, knights-errant from King Arthur’s court. Their manners were excellent, and they made themselves very entertaining; especially Sir Drecker, and he very particularly to Sir Gayling and Master John, to whom he declared a keen interest in astrology – and a lamentable ignorance of it.
From then onward all the way to Joyous Vale, the two old stargazers belabored their pupil’s ears with stellar truths and mysteries. But the dwarf noted the furtive rovings and oblique glances of Drecker’s small but lively eyes. Trust Joseph – by his own telling! He warned his mistress against the stranger, and received in return an enigmatic smile. His warning to Sir Gayling won a promise of consideration upon the proper drawing up and study of Sir Drecker’s horoscope, which would require at least ten days. But Joseph continued to watch and suspect, wore a shirt of chain-mail under his tunic, and added a short sword to his armament of daggers.
They reached Joyous Vale in safety, however, and found all as the astrologers had left it five months before, save for a few natural deaths and those mostly of old age. Dame Clara established herself and her ex-governess in the best bedroom, and Sir Gayling and Master John returned thankfully to their old quarters and neglected telescope at the top of the tower and set to work on Sir Drecker’s horoscope. What might have happened if that task had been completed is anybody’s guess, for upon the departure of the self-styled knights-errant within the week, the astrologers laid it aside and forgot it in the pursuit of more abstruse stellar secrets.
Winter came and passed uneventfully. Sir Gayling and Master John were happy with their books and arguments, and since philosophically accepting the rumored Welsh astrologer and his peerless instrument as mere myths, with their telescope too. Also, they became aware of improvements in food and service, and the whole economy and atmosphere of the place; and each confessed to himself, though neither to the other, that the adventure into Wales had been nothing worse than a loss of time. April brought back Sir Drecker and Sir Barl. Drecker’s original intention was (by Joseph’s reckoning) to carry off Lady Clara and the old knight’s treasure-chests, but he changed it for the more ambitious plan of marrying the lady and settling down as a lord of lands. The first step toward his goal – the transforming of a wife to a widow – was mere child’s play for him, but then difficulties developed. The gates of the great house were closed and barred against him. Accepting that as a purely provocative gesture on the lady’s part, he subdued the tenantry, murdering and robbing and despoiling just enough to show her who was master, and bided his time.
That is the story, as told (rather more than less) by the Welsh manikin Joseph to the squire Peter and by the said Peter to King Torrice.
“It’s a queer tale, but I’ve heard queerer,” said the King. “How old did you say she is?”
“I didn’t say, but Joseph told me she will be eighteen very soon,” Peter answered.
“Eighteen or eight hundred,” the King muttered. “If but eighteen, how can she be what I believe her to be – the achievement and the end of my quest?” He looked at Peter keenly and added: “If that is the whole story, why has Merlin dragged us into the affair? He is not one to take all the trouble of conjuring up a forge and shoeing our horses just to save a distressed lady from a tyrant. But whatever and whoever she is, and whatever that old fox’s game may be, we are committed to her protection.”
He looked back at the farmyard from which he and his squire had come away and saw it empty. He turned the other way then, and looking widely over meadows and cornlands and orchards, saw the little cavalcade enter the outer court of the great house; and he sighed. Peter, who looked too and also saw that Lady Clara rode pillion with Sir Lorn, chuckled to see that Damosel Mary rode pillion with Gervis.
“This is no laughing matter,” the King reproved mildly; and he added: “Have you forgotten that the rogue Drecker is at large?”
Peter replied that he had not forgotten Drecker’s escape.
“Has it occurred to you that he will return some day, any day now, with all the cut-throats and robbers from forty leagues around at his heels?” demanded Torrice.
“It has, sir; but, knowing that you would bring the subject up in plenty of time for us to do something about it, I haven’t worried over it, sir,” replied Peter.
The King looked embarrassed and muttered: “I hope you are right, but I must confess that I had quite forgotten the peril we are in – not the rogue, but the menace of him – until now, God forgive me!”
The Lady Rides with a Hand on Sir Lorn’s Sword-Belt
The Lady Clara rode home on Sir Lorn’s pillion, up on the great white stallion Bahram.
“King Torrice told me of your quest,” she murmured.
He neither spoke in reply nor did he turn his head to glance at her. She murmured again, leaning a little closer to his apparently unresponsive back.
“But how can it be one and the same quest, if he searches for that which he has never known, and you for something you have known and lost?”
Lorn continued to gaze straight to his front in silence. The great warhorse’s advance w
as very slow, despite much showy action. He tossed his head and plumed his silver tail; but high though he lifted each massive hoof in turn, it was only to set it down softly on practically the same spot of ground.
“You heard his song?” she murmured. “The things he called me? Poor old man! – it must have been the wine he drank. If I am a wicked old witch, how can I be the end of his quest? And yet he truly believes me to be both, it seems – poor me! – and he is unhappy and afraid now for his quest’s end.”
“Not afraid,” he said. “Whatever he may believe, he is not afraid of it. He has never feared anything – neither its end nor its beginning.”
“Do you too take me for a witch?”
He let that pass.
She sighed: “You do not take me for the end of your quest, that is sure.”
Her right hand, which grasped his sword-belt, transmitted a slight quiver to her heart.
“He is mad, I fear, for how else could he think me beautiful? And now he is unhappy because of me, in his new madness, and you are still unhappy in your old madness. So your unhappiness is my fault too, for if I were actually as your dear grandfather sees me in his madness, you might forget your loss or mistake me for the lost one. But I am not, and you do not; and so two brave knights are unhappy because of me – one in the foolish belief that his quest is ended, and the other because he knows that he has not found what he seeks.”
Again her hand transmitted a quiver from his sword-belt to her heart. He spoke a word; but it was to Bahram, who instantly stopped his shilly-shallying and went forward at a purposeful walk. But not for long.
“I fear I’ll be shaken right off, at this pace,” the lady whispered.
At another word from Lorn, Bahram resumed his dilatory posturings.
“If I were a witch,” she said, “I would make myself appear to the king as you see me, and to you as he sees me.”
Though the only response she received was by way of the telltale belt, she smiled quite contentedly at the knowledge that, no matter how he might pretend to ignore her, she could make him tremble like a leaf . . .
Later, Dame Clara told one of the ancient servitors to find Joseph and send him to her. It took four of the old men the better part of an hour to carry out the order.
“Take my compliments to King Torrice, and remind him that I am expecting him and Sir Lorn and their gentlemen to supper,” she instructed the manikin. “And don’t take all night about it,” she admonished gently.
“They won’t come,” he said, consequentially. “Too busy. Even Sir Lorn is busy. And why shouldn’t he be busy now – that moonstruck quester! – since ’tis all the fault of his fuddling?”
Before Dame Clara could speak, for astonishment and indignation, Damosel Mary spoke.
“How now, little man? If you have forgotten my teachings of ten years ago, I shall have to take your education in hand again.”
Joseph had not forgotten. Sadly deflated, he recalled to mind the matter and the occasions referred to by the gray-haired damosel. That stalwart and learned governess had not confined her instructions to little Clara, but had given the household dwarf and mascot a course in manners that, being much needed and long overdue, had proved extremely painful to the recipient. Now he ducked and turned to slip out by the way he had swaggered in; but Lady Clara was upon him like a falcon on a partridge.
“No, you don’t!” she cried. “Oh, you saucy knave, how dare you speak so? For a pin, I’d send you back where you came from! Fuddling? What d’ye mean by that, you jackanapes? How dare you speak so of that – of your betters? For a pin – at one more word – I’ll shake you out of your boots, you wicked Joseph!”
She had him in both hands. Her face was pink; her eyes shot fire and her lofty head-dress was askew. She shook him like a clout.
“And quite rightly too,” said the old ex-governess judicially. “The silly rascal has outgrown his boots anyhow. But stay your hand, my dear, I beg you, so that he may tell us more of this business that’s afoot – unless he invented it to puff up his own importance – before he loses the power of speech, which might happen if he bit off his tongue.”
Clara complied instantly, but kept a grip on Joseph with one hand while straightening her headdress with the other.
“Now then, out with it!” she demanded, but in a softer and reasonable tone of voice. “Tell us what it is they are all so busy about.”
He hung limp and gasping in the grip of the small white hand and rolled his eyes piteously. Never before had he been treated with violence, or angry words even, by his beautiful young mistress.
“He needs wine, poor fellow!” she cried.
The damosel thought so too, and brought it quickly. He drained the cup and recovered his breath and something of his assurance.
“It’s the rogue Drecker,” he said.
“Drecker? But he’s gone,” the ladies protested.
“That’s it,” he said. “He’s gone, whole and horsed. Would they fear him now if he were dead and buried with the others? They’d not give him a thought. But now they must guard against his return.”
“But he dare not come back!” Clara cried.
The dwarf shot an oblique glance at Mary; and as she was not watching him, but gazing thoughtfully at nothing, he risked a sneer.
“Dare not?” he questioned, with curling lips. But he kept the curl out of his voice. “With all the outlaws of the forest at his heels? And this time it will be with fire and sword. This time he will take what he wants – and that will be what brought him here the first time, and everything else he can carry off – and hot torches and cold iron for the rest.”
“But our defenders?” she whispered. “They’ll not desert us!”
“Six,” Joseph said contemptuously. “They were enough against six – enough to slay five, anyway. But against sixty or eighty or a hundred? That will be another story.”
“Not so fast, little man,” the governess interrupted. “Why not a thousand, while you are about it? But tell me first, does Drecker’s army grow on trees?”
“You can say that,” the dwarf answered, with more than a hint of his old impudence. “On the ground under the trees, anyhow. Runaway serfs and all manner of masterless knaves, and Gypsies and thieving packmen and renegade warders and archers, and first of all, the band that has been receiving and marketing our beeves and cheeses all the while.”
“And just what have our defenders become so suddenly so busy about?” asked Damosel Mary.
“Bringing the people closer in, with their livestock and goods and gear, and setting them to work on walls and ditches, and making men-at-arms of clodhoppers,” Joseph told her, civilly enough.
“We must get busy too!” Clara cried. “We’re both good bowmen, Mary. We’ll teach the old men to shoot. My grandfather Cadwalledar made me a little bow when I was only four years old; and when I was six, I could pick his cap clean off his head without waking him up, at ten paces. I hit him only once, and that was only a scratch; but after that he always retired to his chamber for his naps. There must be scores of old bows and arrows somewhere about here. We’ll look high and low; and we’ll have new ones made, if need be. I know that one of the cooks used to be a bowyer. We’ll start now. Where has Joseph gone?”
“You let go of him, my dear,” said the damosel resignedly.
“Good riddance to him!” the dame cried. “He would only tell us where to look and then what to do and how. He will be much happier advising the King and Sir Lorn. Now to work!”
When Two Men Look out of One Man’s Eyes
There was little rest in Joyous Vale that night, either within or without the manor house. Lady Clara permitted only the oldest and shakiest members of the household to retire to their couches at the customary hour. As for the old ex-bowyer Tomkyn, it was long past midnight when he was allowed to creep off to bed; and as for the dame and the damosel, they heard the false dawn saluted by sleepy roosters. And so it was without, abroad over the whole manor to the edges of t
he forest on every side. By sunrise, every farmstead and croft had been warned and set astir by one or another of the King’s party, or by Joseph up on one of the King’s ponies: and when the chatelaine, wakened from a short sleep by the hubbub without, looked out from her high window, she rubbed her eyes and looked again. For the inner court was gay with the colored pavilions which Drecker and his rogues had pitched, and left perforce, under the willows beside the river. The chivalry had moved in. The outer courtyard was not so gay, but was far livelier. Here were tents of hide, makeshift shelters of spars and thatch, heaps of country provisions and household gear, pens of swine and poultry, excited women jabbering and gesticulating, gaffers seated on bundles of bedding, and barking dogs and shouting children dashing around.
The home orchard and paddocks also had undergone a startling change. The latter were alive with horned cattle and sheep, all in confusion and many in violent disagreement, and herds and woolly sheep-dogs trying to restore order and keep the peace with sticks and teeth. Through the orchard greenery appeared the tops of hastily constructed stacks of last year’s hay and straw, and arose the bellows, moos and bleats of more displaced livestock. Beyond all this moved wains and wheelless drags, horse-drawn and ox-drawn, the loaded approaching and the empty departing; and groups of rustics coming and going; and here and there a cavalier in half-armor riding this way or that.
Dame and damosel were back at their self-appointed tasks when King Torrice presented himself. He had been in the saddle sixteen hours, with two changes of horses, and yet looked fresh as a daisy. It was only leg and footwork, or sitting on chairs, that fatigued him.
“Lady, I crave your indulgence for the liberties I have taken with your people and property, and shall continue to take, for your own and their good – but all with due respect to your title and lordship, madam,” he pronounced.