The Merriest Knight

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

  He set it on the table, so all could see that only five strings of the nine remained unbroken—only the strings of brass. Then he turned from the table and went hurriedly yet stumblingly from the chamber and the house, and so home to his inn, and so to bed. And all night he dreamed, and always he was battling for his life with sword or axe or teeth or claws, for now he was a mountainy duke, and next he was himself, and now he was even the doomed and desperate dragon. But he was sleeping peacefully enough—the peace of exhaustion—when aroused by the good taverner with his good breakfast. He felt much better after the bacon and ale.

  "But that performance was a mistake," he told himself. "Not only did I offend the Duchess and wreck her harp, and bedevil those wild mountaineers, but I wrecked and bedeviled my own dreams too. I´ll stick to love' an' 'dove' hereafter—tongue in cheek for laughs and straight for tender tears—and not let the divine afflatus run away with me again."

  * * *

  It was a fine morning, so he rode abroad on Garry. But before they had gone an easy mile, he heard shouts and the thumping of galloping big hoofs behind him. Turning his head, he beheld Duke Boreas and his six pelting after him on great horses as shaggy as themselves; and he would have ridden for dear life then, had not a second glance shown him that all were in silk and velvet like himself, and every head was uncovered, and every feathered cap held high in a big right hand. So he turned about and waited. When Boreas came nigh and drew rein, the six did the same; and when the Duke dismounted to stand, with cap in hand, all followed his example: so, in courtesy, Dinadan dismounted and uncovered too; whereupon Boreas advanced with open arms and a countenance to suit, and clasped Dinadan to his breast.

  "Well met!" he cried, and loosed his arms and clamped both hands on the knight's shoulders. "Me cap's off to you, sir!"

  In truth, his fine headgear, with its feathers and great brooch studded with diamonds, lay unheeded in the dust.

  "Gramercy, sir," murmured Dinadan, wondering what next. "And mine to you, Duke."

  "Hah, but that was a song!" cried Boreas. "Never and nowhere was ever so grand a song as that made before, mauger me head! I’ve heard bards aplenty—the best in the North an' so the best in the whole world—but never a song to match your dragon-song. I fought that grumly monster the long night through, hacking an' hewing like a woodman, till the bed broke down with the violence of our struggle an' woke me up; but the reek of his breath blasting up from his burning vitals stuck in my nose till after breakfast. Sir, no warlock could conjure me up a nightmare to match your dragon!"

  Dinadan was at once pleased and apprehensive.

  "I am glad that you think well of the song, Sir Duke, and pray you to forgive me the nightmare—which, indeed, I had the honor of sharing with you," he said hopefully.

  "Say ye so?" cried Boreas. "Sir, the honor is mine! And wot I think of the song is that if my lamented sire could hear it, he would burst forth from his tomb with pride an' heroic ardor. But come, Sir Dinadan, and honor me by breaking bread at my poor table."

  So they all remounted and rode back to town at a soft pace, and to a castle which King Arthur had placed at the disposal of very important guests. And so they dined; and after hours of chomping and gulping, Duke Boreas dismissed his six gentlemen and told Dinadan a pitiful story and made a strange request.

  He whispered it between gusty hiccups. He had a daughter. (At that Dinadan shivered, despite the buzzing and glow of usquebaugh in head and stomach.) She was his only child and the apple of his eye. (Again the knight shivered.) But she was frail of body and listless of spirit. (Dinadan felt better.) She moped and drooped all day long, and no doctor's physic nor charm nor cure of old wives and witches touched her. She continued to fade away before his eyes. So he had come to Camelot to take King Arthur's own physician back with him to save her dear life; but that learned man was sick abed himself and refused to budge. Then he had all but given up hope of saving her, but upon hearing Dinadan the lutanist, and Dinadan the harper on top of that, hope had been rekindled in his breast. Now he gripped Dinadan's nigh shoulder and prayed him to come to that castle of gloom and sing his dragon-song to the poor child.

  Replete with victuals and drink though Dinadan was, and moved with pity for daughter and father alike, he quaffed another cup and protested that such treatment would more likely kill than cure. The Duke, after due consideration and the filling and emptying of a cup himself, rejected the objection.

  "Nay, not so, for all she needs is rousing, having been born melancholy of a melancholy mother, poor soul! For years now have I striven, to rouse her to take an interest in life by gentle means and not so gentle, and all to no avail. But that song of yours, Sir Poet—The Slaying of the Dragon'—if that didn't bring her to life, she'd be happier dead."

  Dinadan felt highly flattered but sorely confused too, and he protested again.

  "But if it killed her? Even if she were happier so—which sounds unlikely to me—what of your feelings to find her so?"

  "Me too. The castle is like a tomb from tower to keep. That's why I came away. But I have no fear. Nay, only the fear that we may be too late to save her."

  They set out for the North at the first gleam of morning. Dinadan, on Garry, rode knee to knee with the mountain Duke, and the six mountain Barons came after in couples; and Dinadan's grooms on hackneys, a dozen mountain grooms on shaggy ponies, and wild footmen pulling and pushing on beasts of burden, came streaming after. It was an impressive cavalcade, for Boreas believed himself to be the greatest duke in the world, and paternal anxiety had not dulled his appetite for meat and drink. They traveled till noon, dined prodigiously, and marched again till sunset. They supped deep and long and slept in a portable pavilion. They breakfasted right ducally at dawn, and rode again at sunrise; and the second day was like the first. But the third day differed slightly; and with every succeeding period of twenty-four hours the difference grew, the marches lengthening daily—in time even if not always in leagues—and recesses for eating and sleeping ever shortening proportionately. It was as if the Duke's anxiety for his daughter increased ever with the decreasing of the distance between them.

  The change of tempo relieved Dinadan's mind of nagging though confused suspicions of Boreas' sincerity and his own acumen. This was surely proof that the Duke had not lured him into a wilderness on a wild-goose chase, or worse, with a cock-and-bull story.

  "Well be back in time for the tournament, I suppose," he said one morning, between a bite and a swig of a hasty breakfast before sunrise.

  "Oh, that," grunted Boreas with his mouth full. "Why not?"

  "'Twill be a queer thing then, for you and me to have ado with sharp spears," said Dinadan.

  "With sharp spears?" the Duke spluttered. "Ho, d'ye still bear that madness in mind? Nay, never you an' me, Dinadan—with sharp spears nor blunt neither!"

  "Gramercy! But should my dragon-song fail to rouse the poor damosel—or maybe rouse her to her mortal undoing—what then?"

  "Then will I found a great monastery an' meself turn monk; and you, me friend, will fare home unscathed to the joys an'junketings of Camelot."

  "Not so!" cried Dinadan, moved to the very roots of his generous and impulsive being. "Nay, dear Boreas, I´ll turn monk too!"

  At that, the Duke sprang to his feet and pulled the knight upright and embraced him.

  "Fie upon such dismal talk!" he cried. "You and me with tonsured heads? Nay, well dance at her wedding. To horse! To horse!"

  * * *

  Daily the way grew rougher and the wilderness more rugged. They toiled up and down hills, and in the gloom of hanging black woods, and so into the ultimate mountains by steep glens and crooked gorges, climbing to the croak of ravens and scream of eagles, and so came at last to the Castle of Winds.

  The young Damosel Wanda was still alive, but in bed and deeper sunk than ever before in that curse of melancholia inherited from her mother, who had died of it. Her tresses were gold, but paler than daffodils; her face was small, and as pale a
nd still as a mask of alabaster; the color of her eyes Dinadan could not tell when he was first brought to her, for they were closed; and the narrow hands crossed on her breast were as still and white as if she were the marble effigy of a lady on a tomb.

  "Daughter, the valorous knight Sir Dinadan—the greatest poet of this age—has come all the way from Camelot to sing to you," said Boreas.

  The pale lips stirred with a murmured "Gramercy" too faint to hear, but the eyelids stirred not at all.

  The ancient nurse whispered to the Duke: "The poor lamb's past heeding any earthly music. Nought but the Trump o' Doom can rouse her now, I'm feared."

  But Boreas placed a chair for Dinadan and put the harp of the knight's own selection into his hands. Dinadan fingered the strings reluctantly, fearful of breaking that tenuous thread of life with a shrewd or discordant sound.

  "Fear not," Boreas assured him. "Play now."

  So his fingers ceased their fumbling, and the harp breathed a melody as of bees and hummingbird moths in blooming lilacs.

  "Louder," urged the Duke.

  So the melody swelled and lifted and quickened, though still of gauzy wings and honeyed blossoms.

  "The dragon now!" urged Boreas in a desperate voice.

  Dinadan looked up then from his flying fingers to the heedless blind mask as pale as alabaster on the pillow as white as marble, and he thought: She is past hearing or caring, so 'twill harm her no more than if she were carved of stone in her own tomb, poor heart. And he looked down again at his fingers and shifted them to the strings of brass and copper; and the air was rent by a brazen clang, then filled and shaken with awful clangor. He stood up then and gave tongue, outshouting the wild tumult of the harp with wilder words; and so he fought and slew that dragon again, but this time with his eyes fixed upon the savage plucking and tearing of his fingers among the maddened harp-strings.

  Then silence, save for the Duke's gusty gasps and snorts. Dinadan glanced aside fearfully and saw the old nurse crouched on the floor with both hands to her ears. Then, and yet more apprehensively, he looked at the bed. He uttered an inarticulate cry, brief but charged with more emotions than relief only, and staggered backward a pace and sat down hard. For the damosel’s eyes were wide open and regarding him—and they were as green as emeralds. And he maintained and returned her look as fixedly, but as a doomed bird the paralyzing stare of a snake.

  God save me! he thought—if it could be called thinking. Green. The greenest I ever saw—God help me!

  And he tried to blink, but could not so much as twitch a lid. He tried to glance aside, but his eyeballs stuck like frost-bound pebbles. Then Boreas grasped both his shoulders with mighty paws, raised him and turned him about, and embraced him.

  "It roused her!" cried the Duke. "Like I knew it would. You've saved her, dear lad! But enough for now. Come away now, for I can see it was a sore strain on your vitality as well as on your fingers an' larynx."

  * * *

  For the moment at least, the spell was broken; and Dinadan departed from that chamber right willingly, though with shaking knees and his host's support and guidance. Together they descended to the buttery, where more than butter was dispensed, and there each of them disposed of two long horns of the very best. Now the four household bards appeared, each with his harp, and louted low to their lord and just as low to Dinadan.

  "Did you hear it?" asked Boreas.

  "Ay, in the antechamber, according to orders," replied the leader of the four, who had a wreath of wilted foliage on his bald pate and a beard of such length and profusion that he wore it tucked into his girdle. "It nigh bras ted me heart an' ears alike," he added.

  "A great song," said the Duke, with a challenging note in his voice.

  "Ay, lord, a masterpiece."

  "Repeat it then, Bard Gomery."

  "Nay, lord, I'm an old man. If I were able, the effort would prove me undoing; and unable, I'd be the ruination of the most terrible grand song ever heard even in these mountains."

  "Fair enough," said Boreas.

  He glanced inquiringly at the other harpers, but each shook his head. So he signaled to the cellarer, who straightway brought two long horns of mountain dew and two great jacks of ale to the bards, knowing their individual tastes in such matters; and he signaled again within the minute, and for refills for Dinadan and himself too. After a short silence disturbed only by gulps and heavy breaths, the youngest of the household bards—but even he was middle-aged and more than fully grown—drew a hairy wrist across his mouth and spoke. "Lord, I´ll essay it."

  At that, Boreas cried: "Right manfully said, good Jard ap Rhys! But first another sip to limber larynx an' fingers. Ho, Master Cellarer, more sips all around!"

  Horns and jacks were filled again. After another liquid silence, Jard ap Rhys wiped his mouth again, then set his jack on the floor and applied both hands to his harp. Well, he had powerful hands, God wot! The clangor was terrific.

  "Hold! You went wrong there!" cried Dinadan, grabbing the nearest instrument and clawing like mad. "This is how it goes!"

  So Jard clawed like mad in imitation, and so the volume of clanging clamor was doubled. Old Gomery quivered and reared like an old warhorse to the braying of trumpets, saying, "I´ll take it now, young feller, me lad!" and pushed himself in, harp and all, between Jard and Sir Dinadan, facing the knight. But Jard refused to give over, and so now there were three harps in uproar together. The air shook; the motes in the sunray from the little window danced; and the curtainy cobwebs among the rafters stirred and shook down dust and the bright shells of sucked-dry wasps and bluebottle flies.

  "The words now!" bellowed Boreas, waving his right arm, horn and all, and spattering the company with mountain dew.

  "The dragon!" shouted Dinadan: and Gomery and Jard ap Rhys shouted it like a close echo.

  Now Dinadan sang, and the mountain bards bawled and chanted word for word with him and no more than a breath behind him. It was tremendous, devastating, exhausting.

  "Never again!" gasped the poet, dropping the borrowed harp and flopping across the buttery-hatch.

  * * *

  He rested for an hour in a little garden of roses. After dinner, he and Boreas rode softly in a crooked valley for a few hours. Then he idled in the garden till supper; and after supper he retired early to bed and slept fitfully, dragon-ridden. He breakfasted in bed. Refreshed and elegantly dressed, he accompanied Boreas to Wanda's chamber. They found the damosel sitting high against the pillows, with wide-open eyes and slightly parted lips; and now her lips were like the petals of a wild rose, and there was even a faint suggestion of pink in her thin cheeks.

  "My darling, this is Sir Dinadan, in case you don't remember him from yesterday," said the fond father.

  "I remember him," she murmured, smiling faintly.

  Dinadan bowed low.

  "He saved your life, darling," the Duke told her.

  "Gramercy," she murmured. "It was wonderful."

  "She took her broth like a good girl this morning, an' a duck egg too," said the old nurse.

  The Duke exclaimed, "God be praised—an' this knight too—for the miracle of the age!" And he asked softly: "D'ye crave more music now, me darling? Maybe something soft an' low this time, or merry an' jinxing like young lovers dancing? If so, just ask Sir Dinadan prettily, and you 11 get it."

  The damosel did not look at her father, but continued to gaze greenly at Dinadan; and Dinadan continued to gaze back eye to eye, for he could not help himself, and maintained a polite and serene countenance despite internal tremors of foreboding.

  "Please," she sighed.

  Now Boreas set a chair close beside the bed and prayed his guest to sit: so the bodeful poet sat. Now Boreas produced a lute and presented it.

  "Soft and low now, dear friend," he whispered.

  So, with a shrewd effort, Dinadan lowered his gaze from the green eyes to the lute on his knee and played soft and low. He played a weeping willow tree and a little weeping wind to sob in it. No
w the Duke drew up another chair and seated himself; and the willow wept and the little wind sobbed, on and on and on. Soon the old nurse came to Dinadan's shoulder and whispered: "Ye've played 'em both to sleep, sir."

  Dinadan ventured to lift his gaze from the lute-strings to the face on the pillow. Sure enough, her eyes were shut. But even while he toyed with the thought of slipping out and away to the refuge of the garden, they opened wide, and full upon him.

  "Nay, I am not asleep, though dreaming a magic dream," she murmured. "And I tried to put words to the dream bred of your magic music," she murmured on. "But I am not a poet, and am in no wise magical, but you are the greatest poet in Christendom. So I pray you, of your gentleness, to double the magic with your voice."

  She smiled. And he essayed a smile in return, but achieved only a desperate grimace.

  "At your service," he mumbled, for lack of an honest excuse; for how could he, who had come here for the sole purpose, and of his own free will, to minister to this damosel with song, now refuse her request for more? "What will you?"

  "A song of love," she sighed.

  Now God defend me! he thought wildly; and again he tried to detach his gaze from hers, but again in vain. Keep your head now, and sing her the bitter truth of it, he told himself. Cure her of that blind folly. Kill it now while still blind and feeble and harmless in her ignorant heart. Crush it like the viper it is—the very serpent of the Fool's Paradise!

  "So be it," he muttered. "A song of love. A song of lies."

  And he strummed a string, and straightway began to sing a song so harsh and bitter that experienced gallant dames, including broad-minded queens and tough old duchesses even, had blanched at it and stopped their ears against it before now. But when he saw the light fade in her green eyes, the red fade in her lips, and the dawn-pink of eglantine flee her thin cheeks, pity filled and melted him, and resolution and voice failed him. Remorse smote him, and panic lest he had roused her to life yesterday with the fiercest song he had ever made, only to break her innocent heart now with the deadliest song any man had ever made.