Then came her father’s misfortune. One day the woodcutter’s right arm was caught and mangled by a falling tree, and he was unable to use it anymore. Thereafter, Lily had to do all the chopping and other heavy work. In his loneliness, frustration, and constant pain, the woodcutter took to drink. He spent half of their scanty earnings on liquor while Lily struggled alone to do the work of two woodcutters. Despite her best efforts, she and her father became poorer.
As time went on, her father became more subject to drunken rages, stupors, and fits of madness. He would berate Lily for not working harder, or he would accuse her of bewitching him. Sometimes he would wander away and not return for days or even weeks. Thus Lily’s young womanhood became little more than incessant sorrow, backbreaking toil, and nagging irritations. She saw herself as unlucky and often wished she could be someone else.
One day while chopping, she noticed a warhorse in full regalia standing all alone in a forest stream, looking uncomfortable and puzzled. Lily waded into the water to investigate. She found that the horse was tethered by his rein to the hand of a dead knight-errant, who lay under the surface of the water. Lily guessed he had been wounded in a battle, had perhaps fainted, and had fallen from his horse into the stream, where, weighed down by his suit of armor, he had drowned in water only waist-deep.
Lily detached the horse from his master’s corpse, led him out of the stream, and tethered him on the bank. Then she dragged out the knight’s body. While she was wondering what to do next, the horse whinnied and gave her a nudge with his nose. Suddenly she understood that the horse was telling her to take the knight’s place. Without hesitating to think, she set about doing so.
With difficulty she extracted the dead knight from his armor and clothing and gave him back to the stream in pristine nakedness. As he drifted away, she found a fortune indeed, in a well-filled purse tied to his belt. She left her own clothing by the stream and dressed herself in knightly armor, which fitted her tolerably well. The metal suit was so clumsy and heavy that she couldn’t mount the horse until she found a huge boulder to climb on first. Once mounted, however, she felt transformed, more powerful than her former self. She said to the horse, “I shall call you Fortune.”
Lily arranged her weapons, slinging her big woodsman’s ax across her back, and settled herself in the saddle. “Go, Fortune,” she said to the horse, and they rode out of the forest.
At first Lily had thought to go home and share her luck with her father. But then she reflected that he would only drink it all away. Moreover, what if she was suspected of having robbed and killed the knight? She would go to the gallows. Impelled by these thoughts, she rode by her father’s cottage without stopping and threw down on the doorstep enough money to keep him in food and drink for a year. Then she set out to travel and see the world.
On the road to town, Lily encountered the same lads who were accustomed to tormenting her. Her heart sank. “They will report me,” she thought desperately. Then she remembered that she was fully covered by the armor. The visor concealed her face. If she didn’t speak, they would have no way to identify her. So she rode toward them boldly.
To her surprise, all the lads bowed down and obsequiously tugged their forelocks as she approached. She smiled inside her helmet. To the largest youth, who had manhandled her most rudely in the past, she gave a buffet with the flat of her sword that rolled him over in the mud. He hastily scrambled up to his knees, babbling, “Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!”
Again she smiled. “Now I am Sir Lily, respected by the country louts,” she said to herself. “Cowardly toadies that they are, what different faces they show to a bearer of weapons!” She began to like the idea of masquerading permanently as a knight-errant.
She camped for several weeks in the hills and practiced using her weapons. With the sharp dagger, she chopped her hair short. She taught herself to speak in a low, masculine-sounding voice. During her leisure hours, she carved a lily out of wood and placed it as a crest on her helmet. When she felt ready, she rode forth in search of adventure.
One day she came to a castle that was still and silent. There were no knights on the battlements, no workers in the fields, no merchants passing in and out of the gate, no flags flying, no cattle or other animals. The only living thing to be seen was a pretty red-haired maiden penned in an iron cage beside the castle gate. She was weeping bitterly.
“What’s the matter?” Lily asked her.
“Oh, Sir Knight, I am the most unfortunate creature in the world,” wailed the maiden. “I am Princess Rose, the king’s daughter. My parents have been taken hostage by a terrible ogre, who holds them captive in the castle and makes me live in this cage until I consent to marry him. I’ll die first. He is hideous and cruel. He has killed all my father’s knights and many of our servants. No one can fight him. The ogre is invulnerable.”
“Why?” Lily asked.
“He has grown a huge magical tree in the castle courtyard. At the top of the tree is a chest, and in that chest the ogre’s heart is hidden. As long as his heart is safe there, nothing can harm him.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Lily, who felt that she had had enough of bullies to last her a lifetime. “I am Sir Lily, and I know how to deal with trees. Is there a secret way into the castle?”
Princess Rose told her of a waste pipe on the north side of the castle that led into the underground dungeons. “I used to play there as a child, until I was caught and forbidden. But surely a noble knight like yourself wouldn’t enter a castle by so ignominious a route.”
“Nothing that accomplishes its purpose is ignominious,” Lily said.
Under cover of darkness, she rode around to the north side of the castle, tethered Fortune, and removed her armor. Carrying only her dagger and her ax, she crawled through the waste pipe and made her way into the castle courtyard. There stood the magic tree, huge and black against the night sky. Lily went to work with her ax and soon cut through the thick trunk. The tree tottered and fell with a tremendous crash.
The ogre, roused from sleep, came roaring out of the castle with a torch in each hand. He was a nightmarish creature, twice as tall as a man, with one eye in the middle of his forehead and long tusks sticking out of his mouth. He lunged at Lily, who deftly eluded him and darted to the fallen crest of the tree. There she found a wooden chest wedged among the branches. With one blow of her ax she broke the chest, exposing the ogre’s heart, which was beating wildly. Lily plunged her dagger into it. Just as he was reaching out to seize her, the ogre pitched forward on his face and lay still.
Lily took a bunch of keys from the dead monster’s belt and went off to free Princess Rose from her cage. When she was released, the princess threw her arms around Lily and kissed her. “You are my noble white knight, valiant Sir Lily,” she cried. “You must come into the castle. My parents will want to meet you and make a celebratory feast for you.”
The king and queen were released from their prison and reunited with their daughter amid much rejoicing. The dead ogre and his tree were cleared away, and all was made ready for a great feast. Additional servants were hired from neighboring estates. Soon the castle was a hive of activity, as preparations were made to celebrate the destruction of the ogre, who had oppressed the whole countryside for a long time.
The grateful king and queen presented Lily with a new velvet cloak to wear to the feast, and Princess Rose with her own hands embroidered a golden lily on it. At the banquet table the king arose and made a speech, praising Lily as the kingdom’s bravest knight, even though “still a beardless youth.” He went on to say that, true to kingly tradition, he intended to give Sir Lily half his kingdom and the hand of his daughter in marriage.
Lily choked on her mouthful of roast goose and had to drink a few hasty swallows of wine.
“My handsome white knight is becomingly modest,” said Rose, kissing her tenderly.
Quite taken aback, Lily hardly knew what to say. She managed to rise to her feet and thank the king graciously en
ough. But after she sat down, she leaned over and whispered in Rose’s ear, “We have to talk.”
When they met together in a private room, Lily told Rose that she was a woman and revealed the whole story of her false knighthood. Princess Rose sat in silence for a few minutes. Then she began to laugh. She laughed and laughed, so infectiously that Lily had to join in.
“It’s the best joke ever,” Rose said, wiping her eyes. “All those proud warriors, outdone by a woman who chops wood. Lily, I love you anyway. We’ll be married, you and I. It will be for the great good of the kingdom, which has been needing an efficient government for a long time. Eventually we’ll be king and queen. I’ll keep your secrets, and you’ll keep mine.”
Lily said doubtfully, “I’m not sure I can carry off this deception forever.”
“Nonsense. You’re adventurous, or you wouldn’t have done what you did in the first place. Don’t doubt yourself now. We’ll have fun with this, you’ll see.”
In the end, Lily agreed. She was married to Princess Rose in a gorgeous ceremony, and they settled down to live together. The servants said they seemed very happy, because they always laughed a lot in their private apartments, behind closed doors.
When Lily and Rose took over rulership of the country, their subjects came to honor and love them very much. King Lily often rode among the people on his noble horse, Fortune, to visit with them in person and listen to their troubles, which he usually put right. Queen Rose was greatly praised for her common sense, her benevolence to the poor, and her many good works.
There were occasional whispers about their sexual proclivities, which were not always strictly orthodox. It was said that the queen took lovers from time to time, and so did the king when he was traveling abroad. It was even said that the king took male lovers, as had several other kings recorded by the histories. Unlike those others, however, King Lily chose men who had never showed homosexual tendencies before, nor did they afterward. It was puzzling. Nevertheless, not one of them could be induced to gossip about the king’s sexual tastes.
Lily and Rose governed well and were beloved by their people. They raised two children, who were trained to govern after King Lily. On the whole, they lived happily ever after.
In the deep forest far away, a small bag of money was anonymously left once a month on the doorstep of a crippled old woodcutter, who soon used it to drink himself to death.
EIGHTEEN
It is puzzling that Gothic cathedral builders chose to decorate their “houses of God” with a plethora of demonic figures, even more than divine ones. Presumably, the idea was to make common folk visualize devils clearly enough to fear the possibility of spending eternity in their company. One might suspect, however, that the stonecarvers simply enjoyed creating gargoyles, just as modern moviemakers, toy designers, artists, and special-effects wizards enjoy creating monsters.
During the age of cathedral building, churchmen seriously believed that many women revered demons, who protected them. Therefore, there would have been nothing too bizarre in the idea that a woman could be under the protection of one of the church’s own demons. All women were suspect anyway, in the eyes of a church that held them responsible for the very existence of sin and death, and whose official inquisitorial handbook declared their carnality the sole source of all witchcraft.
She would bring small offerings for the gargoyle and sit and talk to him.
The gargoyle crouched on a corner pinnacle of the cathedral and gazed down over the city. His stony wings were folded over his back, his chin in his hands, his tongue sticking out between his fangs. Day after day, year in and year out, he crouched there in all weathers, watching the humans below. What the humans didn’t know was that gargoyles sometimes left their posts by night and flew about in the darkness. The few people who saw them usually supposed that they had experienced a nightmare.
The gargoyle on the corner pinnacle often flew to a certain row house in the quarter just below his taloned feet, to watch a maiden named Marie. He had watched Marie ever since she was a small gamine growing up in the streets around the cathedral. She had been a remarkably pretty child and had developed into a beautiful young woman.
The gargoyle was quite in love with her. She, however, loved the boy next door, a lad her own age named Pierre. Marie and Pierre had been schoolchildren together, had played together and protected each other from all the dangers of the streets. Now they were sweethearts, planning to be married.
The gargoyle was jealous of Pierre in a distant, stony sort of way, just as he was jealous of the more favored indoor statues in the lower parts of the cathedral, the statues that looked more like people and always had candles burning at their feet.
“Why should they get all the attention, while we sit up here cracking in the cold and breathing chimney smoke?” the gargoyles grumbled to one another. “We are statues too. We also deserve to stand indoors and receive gifts and adulation.”
But the gargoyles had noticed that the indoor statues didn’t seem to have any power of nocturnal locomotion, even though some of them had wings. So they thought themselves superior because of their wilder, freer life. They called the indoor statues cream puffs, sissies, namby-pambies, house pets, and altar potatoes.
The gargoyle on the corner pinnacle had a wider view of the cityscape than others, so he often described various happenings for those farther along the walls, out of the line of sight. The gargoyles were interested in accidents, altercations, crimes, fires, wars, and mob movements. They told one another stories about what they had witnessed during historic events, like the Great Revolution. Those had been exciting times! Ordinary, everyday life generally bored the gargoyles because they had seen so many centuries of it.
Nevertheless, the corner gargoyle did enjoy watching Marie grow up and go about her life. He was fascinated by the sweetness she maintained in her sour environment, like a flower blooming on a city dump. Pierre also seemed to appreciate her good qualities. They were a fond couple, happy in each other’s company.
One night the gargoyle flew to Marie’s bedroom window and perched on the windowsill, hoping to watch her asleep. Unfortunately, she was not asleep and saw the gargoyle looking in at her. She screamed in terror, rousing the whole household.
The gargoyle withdrew in some embarrassment. He popped up over the eaves, out of sight. He heard Marie’s parents come rushing into her room. He heard her hysterically pouring out her impression of what she saw. She called him a devil.
“Hush, it was only a bad dream,” her mother said soothingly.
“No, no, I was awake, I know I was awake,” Marie insisted.
Her father leaned out the window and announced that there was nothing there. Marie was comforted and calmed until she was able to return to the business of sleeping, but not before the window had been closed and locked, and the curtains drawn over it.
Because gargoyles never closed their eyes to sleep (indeed, they had no eyelids to close), they saw nearly everything that went on in the streets, night and day. One of the sidewall gargoyles announced to his fellows that there was a very evil person living on the street below, a solitary man who preyed on women. He had raped and murdered three and still was not caught. The gargoyles watched him with some interest, as they considered themselves aficionados of true-crime stories.
They perceived that when this man chose a victim, he would stalk her for several days or even weeks, and then devise ways of entering the victim’s house. The corner gargoyle was appalled to discover that the evil man had begun stalking Marie, who was quite unaware of him.
One day Marie’s parents came out onto the street with baggage made ready for a journey. The gargoyle realized that they were going on a trip, and Marie was not going with them. They gave her the house key and kissed her good-bye. She waved cheerfully as they set off. Only the gargoyle saw that, just around the corner, the evil man was watching them.
As night fell, the gargoyle never took his gaze from Marie’s door. Around midnight, the
evil man appeared and worked for a while at the lock. The door opened, and he went into the house. The gargoyle bounced agitatedly up and down on his pedestal as he wondered what to do.
“Go and save her,” said the next gargoyle to the left.
“How can I? She thinks I’m a devil.”
“So much the better if the man thinks so also,” said the next gargoyle to the right.
The corner gargoyle took his companions’ advice and flew down to Marie’s window. It was locked but uncurtained. Through the glass he saw the evil man kneeling on Marie’s bed, pinning her down and holding a knife to her throat. She was wide-eyed and whimpering with fear but not daring to scream because he was threatening her.
The gargoyle danced about on the windowsill in some indecision. Then the evil man began to rip off Marie’s nightgown. “Oh, God help me!” she wailed.
The gargoyle thought, “God won’t help you, but I will.” He gave a mighty lunge and crashed through the window, his hard body shattering the glass into a thousand fragments. Before the man could do more than turn his head, the gargoyle’s stone claws were around his neck, squeezing.
He dragged the man off the bed and onto the floor, still squeezing. The man’s body went limp as a rag. He threw the man’s knife out the window. Marie sat up, stunned. Holding the evil man with one hand, the gargoyle picked up Marie’s hand and passed it over his own head, soliciting a pat. In a dazed sort of way, she patted him. Then he flew happily through the broken window, carrying his victim. Just before settling down on his corner pinnacle, the gargoyle casually tossed the man down into the street.
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