Domnei: A Comedy of Woman-Worship by James Branch Cabell (top 100 books to read txt) 📕

sailors, who were unlading the ship of various bales and chests. Demetrios, now in the costume of his native country, stood among them giving orders. And it seemed, too, to Perion, in the moment of waking, that Dame Mélusine, whom Perion had loved so long ago, also stood among them; yet, now that Perion rose and faced Demetrios, she was not visible anywhere, and Perion wondered dimly over his wild dream that she had been there at all. But more importunate matters were in hand.

The proconsul grinned malevolently.

"This is a ship that once was mine," he said. "Do you not find it droll that Euthyclos here should have loved me sufficiently to hazard his life in order to come in search of me? Personally, I consider it preposterous. For the rest, you slept so soundly, Messire de la Forêt, that I was unwilling to waken you. Then, too, such was the advice of a person who has some influence with the waterfolk, people say, and who was perhaps the means of bringing this ship hither so opportunely. I do not know. She is gone now, you see, intent as always on her own ends. Well, well! her ways are not our ways, and it is wiser not to meddle with them."

But Perion, unarmed and thus surrounded, understood only that he was lost.

"Messire Demetrios," said Perion, "I never thought to ask a favour of you. I ask it now. For the ring's sake, give me at least a knife, Messire Demetrios. Let me die fighting."

"Why, but who spoke of fighting? For the ring's sake, I have caused the ship to be rifled of what valuables they had aboard. It is not much, but it is all I have. And you are to accept my apologies for the somewhat miscellaneous nature of the cargo, Messire de la Forêt—consisting, as it does, of armours and gems, camphor and ambergris, carpets of raw silk, teakwood and precious metals, rugs of Yemen leather, enamels, and I hardly know what else besides. For Euthyclos, as you will readily understand, was compelled to masquerade as a merchant-trader."

Perion shook his head, and declared: "You offer enough to make me a wealthy man. But I would prefer a sword."

At that Demetrios grimaced, saying, "I had hoped to get off more cheaply." He unbuckled the crosshandled sword which he now wore and handed it to Perion. "This is Flamberge," Demetrios continued—"that magic blade which Galas made, in the old time's heyday, for Charlemaigne. It was with this sword that I slew my father, and this sword is as dear to me as your ring was to you. The man who wields it is reputed to be unconquerable. I do not know about that, but in any event I yield Flamberge to you as a free gift. I might have known it was the only gift you would accept." His swart face lighted. "Come presently and fight with me for Melicent. Perhaps it will amuse me to ride out to battle and know I shall not live to see the sunset. Already it seems laughable that you will probably kill me with this very sword which I am touching now."

The champions faced each other, Demetrios in a half-wistful mirth, and
Perion in half-grudging pity. Long and long they looked.

Demetrios shrugged. Demetrios said:

"For such as I am, to love is dangerous. For such as I am, nor fire nor meteor hurls a mightier bolt than Aphrodite's shaft, or marks its passage by more direful ruin. But you do not know Euripides?—a fidgety-footed liar, Messire the Comte, who occasionally blunders into the clumsiest truths. Yes, he is perfectly right; all things this goddess laughingly demolishes while she essays haphazard flights about the world as unforeseeably as travels a bee. And, like the bee, she wilfully dispenses honey, and at other times a wound."

Said Perion, who was no scholar:

"I glory in our difference. For such as I am, love is sufficient proof that man was fashioned in God's image."

"Ey, there is no accounting for a taste in aphorisms," Demetrios replied. He said, "Now I embark." Yet he delayed, and spoke with unaccustomed awkwardness. "Come, you who have been generous till this! will you compel me to desert you here—quite penniless?"

Said Perion:

"I may accept a sword from you. I do accept it gladly. But I may not accept anything else."

"That would have been my answer. I am a lucky man," Demetrios said, "to have provoked an enemy so worthy of my opposition. We two have fought an honest and notable duel, wherein our weapons were not made of steel. I pray you harry me as quickly as you may; and then we will fight with swords till I am rid of you or you of me."

"Assuredly, I shall not fail you," answered Perion.

These two embraced and kissed each other. Afterward Demetrios went into his own country, and Perion remained, girt with the magic sword Flamberge. It was not all at once Perion recollected that the wearer of Flamberge is unconquerable, if ancient histories are to be believed, for in deduction Perion was leisurely.

Now on a sudden he perceived that Demetrios had flung control of the future to Perion, as one gives money to a sot, entirely prescient of how it will be used. Perion had his moment of bleak rage.

"I will not cog the dice to my advantage any more than you!" said
Perion. He drew the sword of Charlemaigne and brandished it and cast it
as far as even strong Perion could cast, and the sea swallowed it. "Now
God alone is arbiter!" cried Perion, "and I am not afraid."

He stood a pauper and a friendless man. Beside his thigh hung a sorcerer's scabbard of blue leather, curiously ornamented, but it was emptied of power. Yet Perion laughed exultingly, because he was elate with dreams of the future. And for the rest, he was aware it is less grateful to remember plaudits than to recall the exercise of that in us which is not merely human.

20.

How Perion Got Aid

Then Perion turned from the Needle of Assignano, and went westward into the Forest of Columbiers. He had no plan. He wandered in the high woods that had never yet been felled or ordered, as a beast does in watchful care of hunters.

He came presently to a glade which the sunlight flooded without obstruction. There was in this place a fountain, which oozed from under an iron-coloured boulder incrusted with grey lichens and green moss. Upon the rock a woman sat, her chin propped by one hand, and she appeared to consider remote and pleasant happenings. She was clothed throughout in white, with metal bands about her neck and arms; and her loosened hair, which was coloured like straw, and was as pale as the hair of children, glittered about her, and shone frostily where it lay outspread upon the rock behind her.

She turned toward Perion without any haste or surprise, and Perion saw that this woman was Dame Mélusine, whom he had loved to his own hurt (as you have heard) when Perion served King Helmas. She did not speak for a long while, but she lazily considered Perion's honest face in a sort of whimsical regret for the adoration she no longer found there.

"Then it was really you," he said, in wonder, "whom I saw talking with
Demetrios when I awakened to-day."

"You may be sure," she answered, "that my talking was in no way injurious to you. Ah, no, had I been elsewhere, Perion, I think you would by this have been in Paradise." Then Mélusine fell again to meditation. "And so you do not any longer either love or hate me, Perion?" Here was an odd echo of the complaint Demetrios had made.

"That I once loved you is a truth which neither of us, I think, may ever quite forget," said Perion, very quiet. "I alone know how utterly I loved you—no, it was not I who loved you, but a boy that is dead now. King's daughter, all of stone, O cruel woman and hateful, O sleek, smiling traitress! to-day no man remembers how utterly I loved you, for the years are as a mist between the heart of the dead boy and me, so that I may no longer see the boy's heart clearly. Yes, I have forgotten much. …Yet even to-day there is that in me which is faithful to you, and I cannot give you the hatred which your treachery has earned."

Mélusine spoke shrewdly. She had a sweet, shrill voice.

"But I loved you, Perion—oh, yes, in part I loved you, just as one cannot help but love a large and faithful mastiff. But you were tedious, you annoyed me by your egotism. Yes, my friend, you think too much of what you owe to Perion's honour; you are perpetually squaring accounts with heaven, and you are too intent on keeping the balance in your favour to make a satisfactory lover." You saw that Mélusine was smiling in the shadow of her pale hair. "And yet you are very droll when you are unhappy," she said, as of two minds.

He replied:

"I am, as heaven made me, a being of mingled nature. So I remember without distaste old happenings which now seem scarcely credible. I cannot quite believe that it was you and I who were so happy when youth was common to us… O Mélusine, I have almost forgotten that if the world were searched between the sunrise and the sunsetting the Mélusine I loved would not be found. I only know that a woman has usurped the voice of Mélusine, and that this woman's eyes also are blue, and that this woman smiles as Mélusine was used to smile when I was young. I walk with ghosts, king's daughter, and I am none the happier."

"Ay, Periori," she wisely answered, "for the spring is at hand, intent upon an ageless magic. I am no less comely than I was, and my heart, I think, is tenderer. You are yet young, and you are very beautiful, my brave mastiff… And neither of us is moved at all! For us the spring is only a dotard sorcerer who has forgotten the spells of yesterday. I think that it is pitiable, although I would not have it otherwise." She waited, fairy-like and wanton, seeming to premeditate a delicate mischief.

He declared, sighing, "No, I would not have it otherwise."

Then presently Mélusine arose. She said:

"You are a hunted man, unarmed—oh, yes, I know. Demetrios talked freely, because the son of Miramon Lluagor has good and ancient reasons to trust me. Besides, it was not for nothing that Pressina was my mother, and I know many things, pilfering light from the past to shed it upon the future. Come now with me to Brunbelois. I am too deeply in your debt, my Perion. For the sake of that boy who is dead—as you tell me—you may honourably accept of me a horse, arms, and a purse, because I loved that boy after my fashion."

"I take your bounty gladly," he replied; and he added conscientiously: "I consider that I am not at liberty to refuse of anybody any honest means of serving my lady Melicent."

Mélusine parted her lips as if about to speak, and then seemed to think better of it. It is probable she was already informed concerning Melicent; she certainly asked no questions. Mélusine only shrugged, and laughed afterward, and the man and the woman turned toward Brunbelois. At times a shaft of sunlight would fall on her pale hair and convert it into silver, as these two went through the high woods that had never yet been felled or ordered.

PART FOUR AHASUERUS

 Of how a knave hath late compassion
On Melicent's forlorn condition;
For which he saith as ye shall after hear:
"Dame, since that game we play costeth too dear,
My truth I plight, I shall you no more grieve
By my behest, and here I take my leave
As of the fairest, truest and best wife
That ever yet I knew in all my life."

21.

How Demetrios Held His Chattel

It is a tale which they narrate in Poictesme, telling how Demetrios returned into the country of the pagans and found all matters there as he had left them. They relate how Melicent was summoned.

And the tale tells how upon the stairway by which you descended from the Women's Garden to the citadel—people called it the Queen's Stairway, because it was builded by Queen Rudabeh very long ago when the Emperor Zal held Nacumera—Demetrios waited with