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

Now Dom Manuel takes ship and goes into England: and for what happened there we have no authority save the account which Dom Manuel rendered on his return to his wife.

Thus said Dom Manuel:

He went straight to Woodstock, where the King and Queen then were. At Woodstock Dom Manuel was handsomely received, and there he passed the month of September—

("Why need you stay so long, though?" Dame Niafer inquired.

"Well," Manuel explained, "one thing led to another, as it were."

"H'm!" Niafer remarked.)

He had presently a private talk with the Queen. How was she dressed? As near as Manuel recalled, she wore a green mantle fastened in front with a square fermoir of gems and wrought gold; under it, a close fitting gown of gold-diapered brocade, with tight sleeves so long that they half covered her hands, something like mitts. Her crown was of floriated trefoils surmounting a band of rubies. Of course, though, they might have been only garnets—

("And where was it that she dressed up in all this finery to talk with you in private?"

"Why, at Woodstock, naturally."

"I know it was at Woodstock, but whereabouts at Woodstock?"

"It was by a window, my dear, by a window with panes of white glass and wooden lattices and a pent covered with lead."

"Your account is very circumstantial, but where was the window?"

"Oh, now I understand you! It was in a room."

"What sort of room?"

"Well, the walls were covered with gay frescoes from Saxon history; the fireplace was covered with very handsomely carved stone dragons; and the floor was covered with new rushes. Indeed, the Queen has one of the neatest bedrooms I have ever seen."

"Ah, yes," said Niafer: "and what did you talk about during the time that you spent in your dear friend's bedroom?")

Well, he found all going well with Queen Alianora (Dom Manuel continued) except that she had not yet provided an heir for the English throne, and it was this alone which was troubling her. It was on account of this that she had sent for Count Manuel.

"It is considered not to look at all well, after three years of marriage," the Queen told him, "and people are beginning to say a number of unkind things."

"It is the common fate of queens," Dom Manuel replies, "to be exposed to the criticism of envious persons."

"No, do not be brilliant and aphoristic, Manuel, for I want you to help me more practically in this matter."

"Very willingly will I help you if I can. But how can I?"

"Why, you must assist me in getting a baby,—a boy baby, of course."

"I am willing to do all that I can, because certainly it does not look well for you to have no son to be King of England. But how can I, of all persons, help you in this affair?"

"Now, Manuel, after getting three children you surely ought to know what is necessary!"

Dom Manuel shook a gray head. "My children came from a source which is exhausted."

"That would be deplorable news if I believed it, but I am sure that if you will let me take matters in hand I can convince you to the contrary—"

"Well, I am open to conviction."

"—Although I scarcely know how to begin, because I know that you will think this hard on you—"

He took her hand. Dom Manuel admitted to Niafer without reserve that here he took the Queen's hand, saying: "Do not play with me any longer, Alianora, for you must see plainly that I am now eager to serve you. So do not be embarrassed, but come to the point, and I will do what I can."

"Why, Manuel, both you and I know perfectly well that, even with your Dorothy ordered, you still hold the stork's note for another girl and another boy, to be supplied upon demand, after the manner of the Philistines."

"No, not upon demand, for the first note has nine months to run, and the other falls due even later. But what has that to do with it?"

"Now, Manuel, truly I hate to ask this of you, but my need is desperate, with all this criticizing and gossip. So for old time's sake, and for the sake of the life I gave you as a Christmas present, through telling my dear father an out-and-out story, you must let me have that first promissory note, and you must direct the stork to bring the boy baby to me in England, and not to your wife in Poictesme."

So that was what Dame Alianora had wanted.

("I knew that all along" observed Dame Niafer,—untruthfully, but adhering to her general theory that it was better to appear omniscient in dealing with one's husband.)

Well, Dom Manuel was grieved by the notion of being parted from his child prior to its birth, but he was moved alike by his former fondness for Alianora, and by his indebtedness to her, and by the obligation that was on him to provide as handsomely as possible for his son. Nobody could dispute that as King of England, the boy's station in life would be immeasurably above the rank of the Count of Poictesme's younger brother. So Manuel made a complaint as to his grief and as to Niafer's grief at thus prematurely losing their loved son—

("Shall I repeat what I said, my dear?"

"No, Manuel, I never understand you when you are trying to be highflown and impressive.")

Well, then, Dom Manuel made a very beautiful complaint, but in the outcome Dom Manuel consented to this sacrifice.

He would not consent, though, to remain in England, as Alianora wanted him to do.

"No," he said, nobly, "it would not look at all well for you to be taking me as your lover, and breaking your marriage-vows to love nobody but the King. No, Alianora, I will help you to get the baby you need, inasmuch as I am indebted to you for my life and have two babies to spare, but I am not willing to have anything to do with the breaking of your marriage-vows, because it is a crime which is forbidden by the Holy Scriptures, and of which Niafer would certainly hear sooner or later."

("Oh, Manuel, you did not say that!"

"My dear, those were my exact words. And why not?"

"That was putting it sensibly of course, but it would have sounded much better if you had expressed yourself entirely upon moral grounds. It is most important, Manuel, as I am sure I have told you over and over again, for people in our position to show a proper respect for morality and religion and things of that sort whenever they come up in the conversation; but there is no teaching you anything except by bitter experience, which I sincerely hope may be spared you, and one might as well be arguing with a brick wall, and so you may go on")

Well, the Queen wept and coaxed, but Manuel was firm. So Manuel spent that night in the Queen's room, performing the needful incantations, and arranging matters with the stork, and then Dom Manuel returned home. And that—well, really that was all.

Such was the account which Dom Manuel rendered his wife. "And upon the whole, Niafer, I consider it a very creditable stroke of business, for as King of England the child will enjoy advantages which we could never have afforded him."

"Yes," said Niafer, "and what does that dear friend of yours look like nowadays?"

"—Besides, should the boy turn out badly our grief will be considerably lessened by the circumstance that, through never seeing this son of ours, our affection for him will never be inconveniently great."

"There is something in that, for already I can see that Emmerick inherits his father's obstinacy, and it naturally worries me, but what does the woman look like nowadays?"

"—Then, even more important than these considerations—."

"Nothing is more important, Manuel, in this very curious sounding affair, than the way that woman looks nowadays."

"Ah, my dear," says Manuel, diplomatically, "I did not like to speak of that, I confess, for you know these blondes go off in their appearance so quickly—"

"Of course they do, but still—"

"—And it not being her fault, after all, I did not like to tell you about Dame Alianora's looking so many years older than you do, since your being a brunette gives you an unfair advantage to begin with."

"Ah, it is not that," said Niafer, still rather grim-visaged, but obviously mollified. "It is the life she is leading, with her witchcraft and her familiar spirits and that continual entertaining and excitement, and everybody tells me she has already taken to dyeing her hair."

"Oh, it had plainly had something done to it," says Manuel, lightly. "But it is a queen's duty to preserve such remnants of good looks as she possesses."

"So there, you see!" said Niafer, quite comfortable again in her mind when she noted the careless way in which Dom Manuel spoke of the Queen.

A year or two earlier Dame Niafer would perhaps have been moved to jealousy: now her only concern was that Manuel might possibly be led to make a fool of himself and to upset their manner of living. With every contented wife her