Figures of Earth: A Comedy of Appearances

by James Branch Cabell

  XXVII

  They Come to Sargyll

  Then Manuel and Niafer put out to sea, and after two days' voyaging theycame to Sargyll and to the hospitality of Queen Freydis. Freydis wasmuch talked about at that time on account of the way in which KingThibaut had come to his ruin through her, and on account of her equallyfatal dealings with the Duke of Istria and the Prince of Camwy and threeor four other lords. So the ship-captains whom Dom Manuel firstapproached preferred not to venture among the Red Islands. Then theJewish master of a trading vessel--a lean man called Ahasuerus--said,"Who forbids it?" and carried them uneventfully from Novogath toSargyll. They narrate how Oriander the Swimmer followed after the yellowship, but he attempted no hurt against Manuel, at least not for thatturn.

  Thus Manuel came again to Freydis. He had his first private talk withher in a room that was hung with black and gold brocade. White mats layupon the ground, and placed irregularly about the room were large brassvases filled with lotus blossoms. Here Freydis sat on a three-leggedstool, in conference with a panther. From the ceiling hung rigid blueand orange and reddish-brown serpents, all dead and embalmed; and in themiddle of the ceiling was painted a face which was not quite human,looking downward, with evil eyes half closed, and with its mouth halfopen in discomfortable laughter.

  Freydis was clad in scarlet completely, and, as has been said, a goldenpanther was talking to her when Dom Manuel came in. She at oncedismissed the beast, which smiled amicably at Dom Manuel, and thenarched high its back in the manner of all the cat tribe, and soflattened out into a thin transparent goldness, and, flickering,vanished upward as a flame leaves a lampwick.

  "Well, well, you bade me come to you, dear friend, when I had need ofyou," says Manuel, very cordially shaking hands, "and nobody's needcould be more great than mine."

  "Different people have different needs," Freydis replied, rathergravely, "but all passes in this world."

  "Friendship, however, does not pass, I hope."

  She answered slowly: "It is we who pass, so that the young Manuel whom Iloved in a summer that is gone, is nowadays as perished as that summer'sgay leaves. What, grizzled fighting-man, have you to do with that youngManuel who had comeliness and youth and courage, but no human pity andno constant love? and why should I be harboring his lightheartedmischiefs against you? Ah, no, gray Manuel, you are quite certain nowoman would do that; and people say you are shrewd. So I bid you verywelcome to Sargyll, where my will is the only law."

  "You at least have not changed," Dom Manuel replied, with utter truth,"for you appear today, if anything, more fair and young than you werethat first night upon Morven when I evoked you from tall flames to lendlife to the image I had made. Well, that seems now a lengthy while ago,and I make no more images."

  "Your wife would be considering it a waste of time," Queen Freydisestimated.

  "No, that is not quite the way it is. For Niafer is the dearest and mostdutiful of women, and she never crosses my wishes in anything."

  Freydis now smiled a little, for she saw that Manuel believed he wasspeaking veraciously. "At all events," said Freydis, "it is a queerthing surely that in the month which is to come the stork will befetching your second child to a woman resting under my roof and in mygolden bed. Yes, Thurinel has just been telling me of your plan, and itis a queer thing. Yet it is a far queerer thing that your first child,whom no stork fetched nor had any say in shaping, but whom you made ofclay to the will of your proud youth and in your proud youth's likeness,should be limping about the world somewhere in the appearance of astrapping tall young fellow, and that you should know nothing about hisdoings."

  "Ah! what have you heard? and what do you know about him, Freydis?"

  "I suspicion many things, gray Manuel, by virtue of my dabblings in thatgray art which makes neither for good nor evil."

  "Yes," said Manuel, practically, "but what do you know?"

  She took his hand again. "I know that in Sargyll, where my will is theonly law, you are welcome, false friend and very faithless lover."

  He could get no more out of her, as they stood there under the paintedface which looked down upon them with discomfortable laughter.

  So Manuel and Niafer remained at Sargyll until the baby should bedelivered. King Ferdinand, then in the midst of another campaign againstthe Moors, could do nothing for his vassal just now. But glitteringmessengers came from Raymond Berenger, and from King Helmas, and fromQueen Stultitia, each to discuss this and that possible alliance and aidby and by. Everybody was very friendly if rather vague. But Manuel forthe present considered only Niafer and the baby that was to come, and helet statecraft bide.

  Then two other ships, that were laden with Duke Asmund's men, came also,in an attempt to capture Manuel: so Freydis despatched a sending whichcaused these soldiers to run about the decks howling like wolves, and tofling away their swords and winged helmets, and to fight one against theother with hands and teeth until all were slain.

  The month passed thus uneventfully. And Niafer and Freydis became thebest and most intimate of friends, and their cordiality to each othercould not but have appeared to the discerning rather ominous.

  "She seems to be a very good-hearted sort of a person," Niafer conceded,in matrimonial privacy, "though certainly she is rather queer. Why,Manuel, she showed me this afternoon ten of the drollest figures towhich--but, no, you would never guess it in the world,--to which she isgoing to give life some day, just as you did to me when you got my looksand legs and pretty much everything else all wrong."

  "When does she mean to quicken them?" Dom Manuel asked: and he added,"Not that I did, dear snip, but I shall not argue about it."

  "Why, that is the droll part of it, and I can quite understand yourunwillingness to admit how little you had remembered about me. When theman who made them has been properly rewarded, she said, with, Manuel,the most appalling expression you ever saw."

  "What were these images like?" asked Dom Manuel.

  Niafer described them: she described them unsympathetically, but therewas no doubt they were the images which Manuel had left unquickened uponUpper Morven.

  Manuel nodded, smiled, and said: "So the man who made these images is tobe properly rewarded! Well, that is encouraging, for true merit shouldalways be rewarded."

  "But, Manuel, if you had seen her look! and seen what horrible misshapencreatures they were--!"

  "Nonsense!" said Manuel, stoutly: "you are a dear snip, but that doesnot make you a competent critic of either physiognomy or sculpture."

  So he laughed the matter aside; and this, as it happened, was the lastthat Dom Manuel heard of the ten images which he had made upon UpperMorven. But they of Poictesme declared that Queen Freydis did give lifeto these figures, each at a certain hour, and that her wizardry set themto live as men among mankind, with no very happy results, because theseimages differed from naturally begotten persons by having inside them aspark of the life of Audela.

  Thus Manuel and his wife came uneventfully to August; all the whilethere was never a more decorous or more thoughtful hostess than QueenFreydis; and nobody would have suspected that sorcery underlay therunning of her household. It was only through Dom Manuel's happening toarise very early one morning, at the call of nature, that he chanced tobe passing through the hall when, at the moment of sunrise, thenight-porter turned into an orange-colored rat, and crept into thewainscoting: and Manuel of course said nothing about this to anybody,because it was none of his affair.