Figures of Earth by James Branch Cabell (i read book .TXT) 📕

They went upstairs together, into the room with scarlet hangings, and to the golden bed where, with seven sorts of fruit properly arranged at the bedside, Dom Manuel's wife Niafer lay asleep. Manuel drew his dagger. Niafer turned in her sleep, so that she seemed to offer her round small throat to the raised knife. You saw now that on the other side of the golden bed sat Queen Freydis, making a rich glow of color there, and in her lap was the newborn naked child.

Freydis rose, holding the child to her breast, and smiling. A devil might smile thus upon contriving some new torment for lost souls, but a fair woman's face should not be so cruel. Then this evil joy passed from the face of Freydis. She dipped her fingers into the bowl of water with which she had been bathing the child, and with her finger-tips she made upon the child's forehead the sign of a cross.

Said Freydis, "Melicent, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

Sesphra passed wildly toward the fireplace, crying, "A penny, a penny, twopence, a penny and a half, and a halfpenny!" At his call the fire shot forth tall flames, and Sesphra entered these flames as a man goes between parted curtains, and instantly the fire collapsed and was as it had been. Already the hands of Freydis were moving deftly in the Sleep Charm, so that Niafer did not move. Freydis to-day was resplendently robed in flame-colored silk, and about her dark hair was a circlet of burnished copper.

Manuel had dropped his dagger so that the point of it pierced the floor, and the weapon stood erect and quivering. But Manuel was shaken for a moment more horribly than shook the dagger: you would have said he was convulsed with horror and self-loathing. So for an instant he waited, looking at Dame Niafer, who slept untroubled, and at fiery-colored Freydis, who was smiling rather queerly: and then the old composure came back to Manuel.

"Breaker of all oaths," says Freydis, "I must tell you that this Sesphra is pagan, and cannot thrive except among those whose love is given to the unchristened. Thus he might not come to Sargyll until the arrival of this little heathen whom I have just made Christian. Now we have only Christian terrors here; and again your fate is in my hands."

Dom Manuel looked grave. "Freydis," he said, "you have rescued me from very unbecoming conduct. A moment more and I would have slain my wife and child because of this Sesphra's resistless magic."

Says Freydis, still smiling a queer secret smile: "Indeed, there is no telling into what folly and misery Sesphra would not have led you. For you fashioned his legs unevenly, and he has not ever pardoned you his lameness."

"The thing is a devil," Manuel said. "And this is the figure I desired to make, this is the child of my long dreams and labors! This is the creature I designed to be more admirable and significant than the drab men I found in streets and lanes and palaces! Certainly, I have loosed among mankind a blighting misery which I cannot control at all."

"The thing is you as you were once, gray Manuel. You had comeliness and wit and youth and courage, and these you gave the image, shaping it boldly to your proud youth's will and in your proud youth's likeness. But human pity and any constant love you did not then have to give, either to your fellows or to the fine figure you made, nor, very certainly, to me. So you amused yourself by making Sesphra and by making me that which we are to-day."

Now again showed subtly evil thoughts in the face of this shrewd flaming woman who had so recently brought about the destruction of King Thibaut, and of the Duke of Istria, and of those other enamored lords. And Dom Manuel began to regard her more intently.

In Manuel's sandals the average person would have reflected, long before this, that Manuel and his wife and child were in this sorcerous place at the mercy of the whims and the unwholesome servitors of this not very dependable looking witch-woman. The average person would have recollected distastefully that unusual panther and that discomfortable night-porter and the madness which had smitten Duke Asmund's men, and the clattering vicious little hoofs of the shrill dwarfs; and to the average person this room would have seemed a desirable place to be many leagues away from.

But candid blunt Dom Manuel said, with jovial laughter: "You speak as if you had not grown more adorable every day, dear Freydis, and as though I would not be vastly flattered to think I had any part in the improvement. You should not fish thus unblushingly for compliments."

The sombre glitterings that were her eyes had narrowed, and she was looking at his hands. Then Freydis said: "There are pin-points of sweat upon the back of your hands, gray Manuel, and so alone do I know that you are badly frightened. Yes, you are rather wonderful, even now."

"I am not unduly frightened, but I am naturally upset by what has just happened. Anybody would be. For I do not know what I must anticipate in the future, and I wish that I had never meddled in this mischancy business of creating things I cannot manage."

Queen Freydis moved in shimmering splendor toward the fireplace. She paused there, considerately looking down at the small contention of flames. "Did you not, though, again create much misery when for your pleasure you gave life to this girl child? Certainly you must know that there will be in her life—if life indeed be long spared to her," said Freydis, reflectively,—"far less of joy than of sorrow, for that is the way it is with the life of everybody. But all this likewise is out of your hands. In Sesphra and in the child and in me you have lightly created that which you cannot control. No, it is I who control the outcome."

Now a golden panther came quite noiselessly into the room, and sat to the right of Freydis, and looked at Dom Manuel.

"Why, to be sure," says Manuel, heartily, "and I am sure, too, that nobody is better qualified to handle it. Come now, Freydis, just as you say, this is a serious situation, and something really ought to be done about this situation. Come now, dear friend, in what way can we take back the life we gave this lovely fiend?"

"And would I be wanting to kill my husband?" Queen Freydis asked, and she smiled wonderfully. "Why, but yes, this fair lame child of yours is my husband to-day,—poor, frightened, fidgeting gray Manuel,—and I love him, for Sesphra is all that you were when I loved you, Manuel, and when you condescended to take your pleasure of me."

Now an orange-colored rat came into the room, and sat down upon the hearth to the left hand of Freydis, and looked at Dom Manuel. And the rat was is large as the panther.

Then Freydis said: