The Merriest Knight

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

  "God forgive me!" he muttered. "My mistake. Forget it. A joke—an' a foul one. But I´ll amend it—with God's help— or I'm no poet nor a merciful man even! Hark now to the truth about love."

  He strummed again, but with soft fingers now. He sang again, but now voice and words alike were as sweet and smooth as honey and dew. And so he made one of the most memorable love songs ever, and one of the longest, though he felt nothing of the grand sentiment for this particular damosel, but only pity and anxiety for her, and the tender memories of lost love over all. Oh, he was a poet all right. And as he saw the green eyes brighten again, and the pale lips and cheeks bloom once more, relief, and pride in his song, carried him high and far beyond that chamber and above the world, where he soared like an eagle and looked down at forest and mountain, castle and croft and people, like a god surveying and approving his own creations: and feeling godlike, he sang like a god; and such was the potency of his performance that he himself soon succumbed to it, and slumped motionless and silent in a trance of enchantment and of sheer exhaustion.

  * * *

  Dinadan was roused from that trance by heavy paws on his shoulders and a gusty whispering in his face. It was Duke Boreas.

  "Look ye! Another miracle!"

  Dinadan looked at the bed, and sat straight and gaped at what he saw there. The damosel's eyes were closed, but lids and lashes lay as lightly as a moth's wings. Her lips were smiling sweetly and as bright as rose petals dew-washed. Her cheeks were pink too, and childily round now instead of thin; and now there was a rosy glow on the alabaster brow as if a fairy lamp burned behind it.

  "She's beautiful!" he gasped, astonished.

  "So she is! And I'm as surprised as you! She wasn't ever before, save to meself and her poor mother an' Nurse Bolster maybe, but now she's a spanking beauty—or ye've bedeviled me eyesight."

  "Nay, nothing like that, Duke. I'm no warlock nor enchanter. She's a beauty all right! I have seen only one more beautiful—but she was false as fair, ah me!—or two, if I count Queen Isoud of Cornwall."

  "Another miracle then, like I said before. First you rouse her to life with the fierce Dragon-song; an' that was only yesterday. An' now you turn her into a ravishing beauty—me poor little sick melancholy lamb—with a song of love. Hah, love! Come to me arms, me dear lad!"

  And he pulled the knight upright from the chair and hugged him hard, exclaiming "Gramercy, gramercy!" the while, over and over.

  Dinadan disengaged himself as gently as possible and said: "Glad to have been of service. Think nothing of it."

  "Think nothing of it, d'ye say? Ho-ho! One of my mountains is yours already, and a high castle to match it—I´ll make a record of it this very day; an' I wouldn't wonder if all my mountains an' castles will be yours when I am done with them, by the look of things. Ha-ha!"

  And he slid an arch glance from Dinadan to the sleeping beauty and back again. The knight, still staggering from the embrace and dismayed at the prospect, gasped and stammered.

  "Nay, nay, God forbid! That's to say—gramercy, gramercy—but may you live a hundred years! I—ah!—pray you to excuse me now. Utterly exhausted! Worse than slaying the dragon."

  "Just so, dear lad. You an' me for the buttery now—I be all atremble meself—an' leave our beauty to her beautiful dreaming."

  So they departed Wanda's bedchamber together and descended to the buttery: and there, after draining one horn himself while Boreas drained three, Dinadan stole away to the little garden, leaving the Duke spellbinding head butler and master-cellarer with a fuddled account of the second miracle, and the sudden ravishing beauty of the Damosel Wanda. And there he sat down in the shade of a little tree full of pink bloom and golden bees and clasped his head with both hands. And so he sat and thought desperately, but to no purpose, of the coil into which he had sung himself. But not for long.

  * * *

  "Noble Sir Dinadan, pray forgive this intrusion," said an anxious voice.

  At that, he looked up and saw a tall youth standing before him, and smiling down at him, but with a troubled countenance.

  He sighed: "Don't mention it. What would you, young sir?"

  "I heard the miracle song—but it wrought no miracle to me, sir, for my eyes have seen her beauty ever," replied the youth, speaking so hurriedly that he all but gabbled. "I was behind the arras when you sang it, and when you were gone, I went to the bedside and looked at her. Ay, she's beautiful! But to me she was always so, though never so rosy as now since she sickened four dreary years ago."

  "D'ye say so?" cried Dinadan eagerly; and he got to his feet as eagerly. "D'ye say she was always beautiful to you— this Damosel Wanda—as beautiful before my song as after?"

  "Ay, sir, by my halidom! White or red, thin or round, she is beautiful to me."

  "Hah! A real lover then, true and constant an' blind! And quite mad, God help you! Who are you, young sir? And what would you of me?"

  "Sir, I am Lyon ap Denys, bred from little boyhood as a page in this great house and kindly nourished, and now I am captain of the castle guard. And Wanda and I were playmates daily, and she loved me even as I love her, until that melancholy sickness from which you roused her befell her. And of you, noble an' generous Sir Dinadan, I ask only that you return to Camelot and your amorous queens an' merry dames an' leave my dear love to me."

  "I would leave her to you blithely, my friend—but what if she sank again into that melancholy trance?"

  "Nay, sir, then would I rouse her out of it even as you did, for I have your wonderful dragon-song in my ears an' fingers to the last immortal word an' clang."

  "Hah! So you are a skilled harper then?"

  "Ay, sir, as any in these mountains."

  "Good! But what if her sudden beauty should pass as suddenly as my song of love brought it into being?"

  "Why, sir, she would still be beautiful to me."

  "Just so—and still loved by the Duke, but not still beautiful to his proud eyes. Then her father would come seeking me; and not only for her beauty's sake but for her health's sake too."

  Lyon admitted this ruefully.

  "Now harky to me," said Dinadan. "I am as eager to be gone as you are to have me go; and when you show me your ability to keep the zest for life afire in your damosel's heart an' veins an' pretty lips, then I´ll be off, and with an easy conscience."

  "But I am a fumbler at the lute," sighed Lyon. "We are all harpers an' bawlers in these mountains, God help me!"

  "God help you indeed! But you have a voice and ears and fingers, and you're a lover, so I´ll essay to amend your incapacity." And stepping closer, Dinadan spoke on for a full minute in an earnest whisper.

  * * *

  After the midday feast, Dinadan excused himself from cup and horn on the plea of an aching head, but instead of retiring to his couch he went secretly from the castle and its purlieus and into a high glen, taking the borrowed lute with him; and there he was soon joined by Lyon ap Denys. There the two remained till the westing sun was wheeling on the mountain-top, passing the lute back and forth between them, and fingering the strings turn and turn about, and singing soft and low in turn and sometimes together.

  Soon after sunrise next day, Duke Boreas roused his guest to accompany him to Wanda's bedside.

  "But mayhap she still sleeps," protested Dinadan.

  "An' wot if she does?" chuckled the Duke. "Thanks to you, me darling chick is now as easy to look at asleep as awake."

  So the knight dressed hastily and went reluctantly. They were halted in the antechamber by unexpected sounds from within.

  "Wot goes on?" gasped Boreas.

  Dinadan shushed him and whispered, "Quiet now! 'Tis music—save the mark!—of lute an' voice. Now what the devil?"

  "Music?" snarled the Duke, but into his beard. "I never before heard such villainous discordant twiddlin' an' cat-erwaulin'! Enough to undo all your miracle-making!" And he would have charged across the antechamber and into the bedroom beyond but for Dinadan's restraining hand and voice.


  "Easy does it now," the knight cautioned. "Well take a look first." And his grip on the Duke's arm was like iron.

  So they went softly to the curtains which hung across the doorway and parted them a finger's breadth and peeked within: and what they saw there dumbfounded them both.

  The damosel sat high and leaned forward and sidewise, with wide eyes green and bright as emeralds yet mistily soft, and lips and cheeks and brow all roses and roseate snow; and a youth knelt on both knees beside the bed, fumbling unhandily at complaining lute-strings and croaking like a raven; and a little way off, the old nurse dozed in her chair.

  Dinadan loosed the curtains from his left hand but tightened the grip of his right on the Duke's arm. And he moved backward and turned around, removing and turning the stupefied Duke with him. And so they withdrew from the antechamber; and it was not till they were in the hall below that either spoke.

  "It was that springal Lyon ap Denys!" gasped Boreas.

  "Ay, and making a travesty of the song I taught him yesterday, bedeviling words an' music both!" exclaimed Dinadan. "And I warned him he hadn't mastered it yet. But he thought differently, it seems. Ay, and he was right! You saw her—eyes an' lips an' all!—twice as beautiful as I made her yesterday with the sweetest love song in the world rendered as only I am capable of? And the way she bent toward him? Hah, there's a lesson for me! A lover is a greater miracle-man than a poet!"

  "Then why the devil didn't the young jackanapes rouse her from her trance long ago?" cried the Duke.

  "He didn't know his power," said Dinadan thoughtfully. "Ay, that's the answer: it took a loveless poet to teach a lover the power of love. Hah, that's a thought! And now, dear Boreas, since you have no further need of me here, I´ll be getting along home."

  The Duke sighed and scratched a hairy cheek. Then he brightened suddenly and clapped a paw on the knight's shoulder.

  "Fair enough, dear Dinadan! Nor much further need of me here neither. So if youll just stop for the wedding, I´ll go along back to Camelot with you."

  Quest’s End

  Though a Lord has wealth, estates, and power, does this satisfy all yearnings?

  —The Book of Maelor

  With the wealth and lands bestowed upon him by Duke Boreas, Sir Dinadan was at a loss for further reasons for denying King Arthur's request that he forsake professional knight-errantry and settle down to a life of lordly respectability. For his loyalty and service, the King handed Dinadan a wondrous purse. There was now no gainsaying his wealth, nor any reasonable prospect of dissipating it in a month, in a year, even in a lifetime. Yet this life of comfort did not prove as agreeable to Dinadan as he once had thought it would.

  "Why so dour?" King Arthur asked Dinadan heartily from farther down the banquet table. "You can make songs all day long with an easy mind and a full stomach, and try them out every night on any company you choose, including Queen Gwynever an' me, without a care for the cost of lute strings."

  "Gramercy," said Dinadan, without enthusiasm.

  "And the next thing we know," the King continued archly, "there 11 be a grand wedding in the royal chapel itself, and then you’ll be making up lullabies an' nursery rhymes."

  The King chuckled in his beard.

  Dinadan forced a wry smile, and excused himself and went home. The King's facetiousness did not amuse him.

  The truth was that, after a year of lordly landed respectability, he was not easily amused. Now that he had every day and night of all the year 'round for songmaking and feasting, divine afflatus and merry carnal appetite alike languished and failed in him. Now he sat, pen or lute in hand, for unhappy hours without inking a single word or twanging a single note. He sat silent and glum in the midst of the very same companies whose risibilities he had tickled with quips and jibes, whose tears he had sprung with ditties of desolated young lovers, and whose very souls he had shaken with his battle pieces in other days.

  "What am I now? Neither poet nor man!" he cried, and cast his pen to the floor and kicked his nearest lute. "My head has become a dried bladder lacking even a fool's dried peas to rattle in it; my heart is a dry clod, yet moldy; and life is savorless on my parched tongue and like ashes in my throat!"

  Then Dinadan would have spent the whole of his evil and enervating wealth in the building and endowment of a great monastery and himself have turned monk, so desperate was his discontent: but King Arthur soon dissuaded him from that pious intention, speaking at first with laughter and quips and quirks, but at last laying down the law right Pendragonly with fist-thumps on the table.

  So Sir Dinadan became as morose and churlish as he had been lively and companionable when a necessitous knight-errant, and seemed neither to find nor give pleasure in any company save that of his gray charger, Garry. Day after day he passed more and more of his time with that great horse, in stall and paddock and idly riding in field and forest.

  * * *

  One morning, his honest servant Dunderkyn said to him, "Master, I hear ye talk with Garry like he was a gentleman and yer boon friend."

  "What of it, good fellow?" returned the knight. "How else would I talk with him? He is my dear an' trusty friend and the longest proven such in the world, and as true a gentleman—ay, and of as noble blood, by my halidom!—as any knight or baron or king astrut on two legs in Camelot."

  "But ye converse like he was answerin' word for word with the tongue of a Christian."

  "Quite, good Dunderkyn. We recall happier, if leaner, days, when every morning promised something brave and new of song or adventure; and nights of frost when we shared the one cloak, and days when we shared the last barley loaf; and parlous moments of combat when I turned cut or thrust from him with sword or shield or very breastplate, and he saved me from disaster with tricky side step or mighty leap, and many a time with hoofs and teeth. Ah yes, my Garry and I have brave things and kind to recall and talk over."

  So Dunderkyn went back to his currycombs and brushes fully convinced that his master was mad or bewitched. Otherwise, why had he, horse-loving Groom Dunderkyn, never heard a human word from Garry or any other horse noble or simple, but only neighs, whinnies, snuffles, and snorts?

  At an early hour of the very next night, honest Dunderkyn received sure proof of his master's madness or bewitchment or whatever ailed him. He was no more than abed when roused by Sir Dinadan and taken covertly to the knight's private quarters; and there his lord and master displayed a parchment bearing a seal of red wax, and pronounced its contents to him, as follows—for Dunderkyn was no clerk.

  "To All Men, noble, gentle, and simple, greeting. Know ye by this Instrument, I, Dinadan, a knight of King Arthur hys Court and Fellowship, do ordain my trusty servant hight Dunderkyn to keep and gouvern in my Name and Authority all my lands and habitations of this my Barony yclept Dragonford and all other my lawful possessions, goods, gear, rights, and privileges; and to this I set for All Men to know, and for any man to deny at risk of my displeasure and correction, my Unicorn seal and my hand and style thus

  —Dinadan of Dragonford."

  Dunderkyn was dumbfounded; and when the knight bade him help to arm him he obeyed in silence; and it was not until they were in the stable, and Garry too was panoplied as if for war, that he found his voice and raised it in protest.

  "This be madness! Wot would ye, all armed an' caparisoned, man an' horse, i' the dark o' the night? This be grammarye!"

  "Nay, friend, not madness but sanity," returned Dinadan kindly. "As to grammarye, 'tis but the enchantment of our lost free ways; and we would break its spell with indulgence—one more last adventure of youth—and so have done with it."

  But Dunderkyn was skeptical and shook his heavy head.

  "See you not?" the knight continued. "We rode on a quest, however nameless, and left it unachieved. It awaits us somewhere—my questing Garry and me—to be fulfilled. After that fulfillment, and the quest ended, we shall know peace."

  "Death," said the groom, heavily. "For lord an' churl, death be the las
t adventure, abroad or abed."

  Dinadan let that pass and mounted into the high saddle.

  "Not so fast, Master!" cried the groom. "However mad, would ye go on a fool's chase without provision for man or beast? Would ye have noble Garry starve on thorns an' bitter lichens in some bedeviled desert?"

  "God forbid!" said Dinadan, and straightway dismounted.

  Now Dunderkyn fetched the big plowhorse which had followed Garry so stoutly throughout the entire length and breadth of Britain, and saddled him and fixed bags of oats and beans before and behind. Next, he fetched a leather bottle, and a smoked ham, and other victuals in two baskets, and hung and tied these on as well as he could. Then he made to get up himself, but Dinadan pulled him down again.

  "Nay, honest friend, this madness is not for you," said the knight.

  "Who will save ye from murderous wenches with knives in their garters then?" cried the fellow.

  "Without you, trusty friend, to deliver me, I shall eschew all such ambushed perils. Once skewered by one such, or nigh enough, twice shy!"

  "Even so, Master—which same I venture to doubt—who will play groom to Garry an' Punch an' squire to yerself?"

  "I can ply as brisk a currycomb as any varlet."

  "But yerself, Master? The unbucklin' an' unlatchin' at day's end, and the bucklin' and' latchin' every mornin'? There be two buckles at the back ye'd need an arm six foot long an' double-jointed to handle aright on yerself."

  "True!—or near enough. But now my need of a trusty seneschal overweighs my need of a squire. So you, steadfast and hard-tried friend and servant, trustiest of all men either noble or simple, must hold and keep Dragonford even against the world, till my return. You have my written warrant, which King Arthur and all just lords will honor and no court of law will deny. And here is my ring."