The Merriest Knight

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

  "Nay, I am Mark, a Christian!" I cried. "Does not my speech tell you so, good sir? But if you want Latin, I'm your man! Expectans equito. Dum spiro spero. And this poor youth is my companion in adversity."

  He glanced from me to the damosel and back again, and then aside, his eyes glinting as cold as flakes of ice behind the bars of his vizard.

  "So be it," he croaked.

  He jabbed the great sword a hand's-breadth into the turf and let it stand so, swaying, while he fished a folded square of linen, yellow with age, from behind his breastplate. He unfolded and spread the linen on the ground and placed the skull upon it, with reverent care. He knelt, mumbled a prayer, wrapped the skull in the cloth and tucked it under his left arm, and got stiffly to his feet. He raised his rusty vizard—and but for the palely glinting eyes and beaklike nose, his whole face looked to be a tangle of white whiskers. He freed, flourished, and shouldered the long sword.

  "Come to the Mere of Herons," he commanded.

  I followed old Young Roland at a cautious distance, but Sylvia pressed upon me toe-to-heel, even with a grip on the back of my belt at times. I could feel her shivers. Now and then we passed uninhabited, broken huts with fallen roof-trees, singly and in desolate clusters.

  "The handiwork of Young Roland," croaked our guide, with a terrible gesture of arm and sword.

  He set a hard pace, possessed by the energy of madness, and the endurance and agility of a goat; and I put from my mind all thought of breaking away while he held that sword. I was thankful when we came at last to a margin of the mere, and two rough but undamaged huts, and our guide halted.

  "Await me here, while I prepare food and drink for you," he said, with a glittering backward glance.

  Then he stooped double and entered one of the hovels, still with the sword in his right hand and the linen-wrapped skull under his left arm. Sylvia came to my side and clung to me. There we stood as if spellbound, with daunting smells of rank smoke, live embers, cold ashes, old bones, and rotting hides in our noses. Her tremors shook me.

  She whispered: "Are you still—afraid of him—dear Mark?"

  "I never was—of that old loon!" I whispered back. "But I don't like him—nor trust him. And now is our chance to escape," I added.

  "Look! He is making up the fire for supper! And we shall have more strength for escaping after we have eaten," she said.

  A puff of dark smoke spangled with red sparks belched up from a hole in the sagging roof. "Now! Come away now!" I urged.

  "But I am hungry," she protested, though she continued to quiver and quake with fear.

  I was about to drag her away, but just then the terrible creature reappeared, brushing sparks from his whiskers.

  He had left his helmet and breastplate and the skull within, but the sword was still long and naked in his right hand. Now he was all hide and hair and fur—of wolf and fox and wildcat and of his hideous self.

  "Await me there—and you shall eat and drink your fill," he said; but to me it sounded more like a threat than an invitation to supper.

  He stalked to the edge of the mere, where a small raft was moored among greening rushes and osiers. He stood his sword upright in the mud and made a great step onto the raft. There he crouched and pulled a squirming net up and inward. He flung six fat carp ashore, one by one. They jumped on the grass like tumblers at a fair. (I had no memories of tumblers or fairs, but Brother Ambrose had told me of them.) Sylvia laughed, though she still shivered.

  "I can do better than those fat fishes," she cried.

  She released my arm, took a few mincing steps, then sprang high, turned heels-over-head in air, and came lightly to earth on her feet. She sprang again, but turned over backward that time. She was taut for a third skyward leap, but I jumped and clutched her and held her tight.

  "Would you break your neck?" I protested.

  She changed from hard to soft in my embrace. I might have thought she possessed neither sinew or bone, had I not known better.

  "What is my neck to you?" she whispered.

  I gazed down at her neck, while cudgeling my brain for a seemly answer to her question. But I could think of nothing that would not have sounded foolish. I was about to loosen my arms, though without haste, when Roland passed close to us, with the six fish in a willow basket, and glanced at us in passing with eyes like flakes of mica in a rock. So I did not loosen my hold upon Sylvia. He stooped and reentered the hut. We remained motionless and silent. He reappeared in a minute, and stood and eyed us bleakly.

  "The skull of Sir Bevan has ceased to sweat," he said.

  My companion shivered against me. I had nothing to say: but an icy, twitching tingle went up my spine and crept on my scalp. My arms twitched and tightened.

  "Which means, I take it, that the good knight is satisfied at last with my poor efforts to avenge his ignominious death at the hands of unregenerate savages," resumed the madman. "So now my task in this benighted wilderness is accomplished, and I can return to the world and resume my interrupted career of chivalry with an easy conscience."

  He paused, and his tongue-tip, startling red, flickered for an instant between his hidden lips.

  "Go a day's march to the north, a two days' march to the east and south and west, and you will find no man nor woman nor child," he continued. "They stayed and were killed, or they fled to securer retreats. Neither will you find that water-sprite. I killed her. I slew that nymph, that witch, whose sea-green eyes and hair like sunlight spun through young beech leaves, and round breasts whiter and softer than sea-foam, lured me from my duty. She had no soul. There are many and various witches—beautiful and forever young—unchanged by the years, being soulless— yet reduced to nothing by a sword-stroke. The blessed Bishop Hew of Ludsgate wrote a book about all such, for a warning—about water-sprites, wood-nymphs, marsh-maids, and mermaids of rocky coasts and sandy places, and the White Sisters and Queen Blanche—all lovely to sight and touch, all deadly to knightly souls."

  He drew breath and lowered his baleful glance.

  "He takes me for a witch," sighed Sylvia.

  He lifted his gaze to my face.

  "Beware the White Maid of Tintagel!" he croaked.

  Then he turned and stooped and went into the hut again.

  Sylvia shivered in my arms, and I shook with her shivering and my own.

  "Now's our time!" she shrilled against my breast. "Let us go—let me go now—come away, you dolt!—or he will kill me as he did the beautiful water-sprite—the mad and wicked old fool!"

  She squirmed in my arms.

  "But your hunger?" I protested.

  Smoke and the smell of scorching fish came out to us. But the damosel's hunger was forgotten, evidently; for she thrust and twisted so violently—all the softness of her slender body turned suddenly to sinew and bone again— as to escape from my embrace. She ran swiftly toward a rocky knoll. I remained stock-still for a moment, in two minds. Would I run too, or stop and fight? How could I serve her best? What chance had I, with a short sword, against that mad but war-wise old squire and his long sword? I shook off my hesitancy and ran too. Sylvia went flashing and turning upward among boulders and bushes, and I followed at my best pace. She checked, turned and crouched in a clump of stunted thorns, and I stumbled to my knees beside her.

  "Look!" she gasped.

  I peered out and down through the screen of little leaves.

  The hairy old avenger issued from the hut bent double, and straightened his long back slowly. He carried a smoking trencher in his hands. He weaved his shaggy head from side to side, and I saw the pale glimmer of his eyes as they turned in their bony sockets. The searching glance checked at last at the base of our knoll, then slid upward slowly, over bushes and boulders, to the very thicket from which we gazed down at him. Again it checked for a moment, gleamed fixedly and yet more balefully, then flickered aside.

  "He saw us!" cried Sylvia against my shoulder, in a voice as thin as the pipe of a grasshopper, yet vibrant with horror.

 
He set the trencher down on the grass, then moved to the smaller hut with grotesque action, as if he walked on sticks, but with frightful speed. There he plucked open a small door and was enveloped by belching smoke. But he did not flinch; and when the smoke thinned, we saw that he held a long, wide and flat object in his hands. He stood the thing against the wall of the hut.

  "It's bacon," sighed my companion.

  "A smoke-cured side of a wild pig," I whispered back. "I know it well—sliced and grilled. Brother Ambrose and I had a bigger smokehouse than that. The swine of our mountains fed on beechnuts and acorns and truffles and all manner of sweet roots, and their flesh was exceedingly sweet, and not too fat."

  I said that to take Sylvia's mind off her terror of the madman, who by then had carried the great side of smoke-cured meat into the larger hut.

  "This may be just as good," whispered Sylvia. "It looked good from here. And maybe he did not see us, after all. I think he would have run after us if he had seen us. I think that maybe he is so mad he has forgotten all about us."

  I knew she was aware of her hunger again, and more keenly than before.

  "I don't know about that, but I mean to make a raid on his smokehouse as soon as he sleeps," I said.

  "Some mad people never sleep," she replied, in a desperate voice. "And if he is truly a warlock, he never needs to sleep."

  "That old loon is no warlock," I told her firmly. "He's nothing but a bad old man with an addled brain. Him and his sweating skull! I'm not afraid of him—not while I have an eye on him. Strong as he is, he is all bones and bristle. He is not as strong as that loathly jongleur I killed. If I had his great sword, or even if he had only a short sword like mine, I would take all the bacon we need, willy-nilly, from right under his whiskers."

  The sight and talk of bacon had revived my courage even as it had sharpened Sylvia's hunger. The mad old squire emerged from the gloom of the larger hut again, and placed a second trencher beside the first. Sylvia pinched my arm.

  "Sliced and broiled," she whispered. Old Young Roland fetched a brown loaf and a black leather bottle from the hut, then squatted close to the feast, with his front toward our knoll, and fell to. He clutched at the provender with both hands. Never had I seen or read of such unmannerly behavior. The sight would have shocked and infuriated dear Brother Ambrose. He fed his champing maw with both hands, stuffing it with bread and baked fish and bacon all at once, and washing the gluttonous mouthfuls down, at risk of strangulation, with mighty swigs at the leather bottle.

  "May he choke to death on a great fish-bone!" prayed Sylvia, staring in horrid fascination. "But don't look at him, dear Mark," she went on, still looking herself. "He does it to tease our hunger and thirst—to tempt us down—the old devil!"

  I was of her opinion, but I did not close my eyes or avert my gaze. We both continued to gaze at the sickening sight as if bewitched.

  "Look!" she gasped, pinching me again.

  He had drained that great bottle. He shook it, then flung it from him. Then he heaved and hoisted himself until his stiff knees were straight under him. His face was raised to the thicket in which we crouched. Despite the fading daylight, we could see the pale glimmer of his eyes.

  "He is coming for us!" gasped Sylvia, pulling and plucking at me and trembling against me. "Come away! He's a devil! A warlock! Not a man to fight like a man!"

  "Wait," I said.

  The monster moved grotesquely, more than ever as if his legs were sticks—as if they were crooked sticks. He stepped over the trenchers and came three paces toward our knoll, still staring up at our thicket. Sylvia trembled against me but made no sound. He halted and stood swaying. He turned, stepped back across the trenchers, and leaped to the open door of his den and disappeared within, quick as a fox.

  "You see," whispered Sylvia. "The drink has not slowed him. If he were human, he could not move so fast. He'd be drunk."

  "He's human," I muttered.

  But I was beginning to doubt it.

  "Look!" gasped Sylvia.

  He was back at the point from which he had leaped. Now he had a boar-spear in his left hand, and a second leather bottle in his right. He let the spear fall at his feet and raised the bottle with both hands. He lifted it high above his head and toward our hiding-place, as if in salute, and uttered a cry of hate and derision and diabolical mirth which still rings in my ears in nightmares. It chilled the marrow of my bones; but at the same time, it filled my heart with a red fury of hate—for Sylvia's sake. For she was clinging to me now in a passion of terror, all but strangling me with her slender arms. Her face was pressed hard against my neck.

  "There, there!" I croaked. "Hell not harm you—man or devil!"

  And I kept my eyes on him. I saw him tip the vessel to his upturned mouth and hold it there while my hot heart thumped ten times. He lowered it and uttered that hellish cry again.

  "Ill kill him for that!" I swore.

  He drank again. I loosened Sylvia's arms a little, the better to breathe.

  "He knows we are here," I said. "Let me stand straight and uncramp my muscles. He is still swigging at the second bottle."

  Sylvia loosed her arms and withdrew her face from my neck, but stood up when I did, and continued to shiver against me. I continued to watch the madman, straining my eyes against the dusk. I saw him fling the second bottle from him even as he had flung the first. I saw him stoop and recover the short spear, though he stumbled in the act.

  "Good!" I cried, grasping my iron-shod staff. "He is coming—and with only a boar-spear. He has forgotten his great sword. Hah—he stumbles again! The drink has gone to his head—the mead or usquebaugh or strong ale. He is no more a warlock than was that accursed jongleur, and will as surely die."

  "No, no!" she begged, gripping me by an arm and pulling at me. "He is old and crafty—even if he's not a warlock. Come away now! He only pretends to be drunk—the easier to catch us. He would burn me for a witch! Run, you fool!"

  That did it. My courage had begun to waver and the urge of my hateful rage to weaken, but both flamed up again, hotter and higher, and yet cold and steady with bitterness at that word from her dear lips. Fool!

  "Not so!" I cried. Tve run far enough from that wicked knave! You run, if you must—but this fool stays and fights!"

  I wrenched free of her and pushed my way through and clear of the screening thicket, staff in hand. Staff against short spear. It would be a fair fight. Brother Ambrose had always preached the virtue of fair fighting.

  He was halfway up the slope, leaping and stumbling. The ground was steep, and rough with knuckles of rock and great boulders. I moved down to meet him, but not as fast as he moved up toward me. Nor as crookedly; for he sprang from side to side in his ascent, and even his stumbles were out of line. Once he came down on all fours and remained so for seconds, swaying his dropped head from side to side as if utterly befuddled and exhausted, as harmless and as defenseless as a toad, and completely at my mercy for the moment.

  "Now!" cried Sylvia, behind me. "Strike now!"

  But I was not in striking distance; and how was I to slay one that made no effort to attack or escape or defend himself, though he were Satan himself? Two strides would have placed me in my staffs length of his unprotected, befuddled head: one stroke would have cracked that hoary skull like a nut—but my feet stuck to the ground. Good Brother Ambrose had instilled the spirit of knightly chivalry into my very muscles and nerves.

  Sylvia screamed—and he was upon me. I twisted aside, fending with my unready staff. The head of the jabbing spear missed my neck, but the shaft and the hand gripped on it hit hard. But even as I staggered from that blow, I struck with my left hand. My knife was in my left hand. I felt it pierce tough leather, and the jar of hand and hilt on bone; and a scream so terrible and bestial and despairing rang out that I loosed the grip of my tingling fingers. The writhing body fell away from me. It fell to the ground, still screaming like a damned soul. It rolled on the steep slope, still screaming.

 
; Now Sylvia was upon me.

  "Well struck—by God's grace!" she cried. "He will kill no more babes and women and water-sprites. To the bacon now! And the long sword!"

  "My knife," I said, dazedly. "It is a good knife."

  But when she pulled at my empty left hand, I followed her down from the knoll, still in a daze.

  "The saints and angels were on your side, or you would be dead now and I—would be dying," she said, dropping my hand and facing me with a long look that was half of fond reproach and half anger. "A child could have speared you to the heart while you stood gawking—but for the unseen hand that turned the point aside."

  "But it is the madman who is dead—and of my knife," I said.

  "An accident—by God's grace," she answered. "You ignored my cry. You had him at your mercy, but stood like a fool—with no thought of me."

  "He lay helpless and defenseless—so I believed. And it was my duty as a Christian and a gentleman to wait till he could regain his feet," I protested.

  "And he regained them—and struck to slay you!" she cried, with bitter scorn. "Must all the saints and angels always be on hand to save you from your stubborn folly? And what of a Christian gentleman's duty to me?"

  "I have already slain two men in your service, and the death of the jongleur was no accident," I said. "And I have fed and sheltered you to the best of my ability; and now I shall go to his hut and bring out that side of bacon and what bread I can find there, so that the Damosel of Montclair may eat her fill tonight and tomorrow, and even until she find a more satisfactory provider and companion."