Figures of Earth Part 31

So Manuel stayed as silent as that brace of monstrous allies while Miramon did yet another curious thing with a flute and a palm-branch.

Thereafter came an amber-colored champion clad in dark green, and carrying a club and a noose for the souls of the dead. He rode upon a buffalo, and with him came an owl and a pigeon.

"I think--" said Manuel.

"You do not!" said Miramon. "You only talk and fidget, because you are upset by the appearance of your allies; and such talking and fidgeting is very disturbing to an artist who is striving to reanimate the past."

Thus speaking, Miramon turned indignantly to another evocation. It summoned a champion in a luminous chariot drawn by scarlet mares. He was golden-haired, with ruddy limbs, and was armed with a bow and arrows: he too was silent, but he laughed, and you saw that he had several tongues.

After him came a young shining man who rode on a boar with golden bristles and bloodied hoofs: this warrior carried a naked sword, and on his back, folded up like a cloth, was a ship to contain the G.o.ds and all living creatures. And the sixth Redeemer was a tall shadow-colored person with two long gray plumes affixed to his shaven head: he carried a sceptre and a thing which, Miramon said, was called an ankh, and the beast he rode on was surprising to observe, for it had the body of a beetle, with human arms, and the head of a ram, and the four feet of a lion.

"Come," Manuel said, "but I have never seen just such a steed as that."

"No," Miramon replied, "nor has anybody else, for this is the Hidden One. But do you stop your eternal talking, and pa.s.s me the salt and that young crocodile."

With these two articles Miramon dealt so as to evoke a seventh ally.

Serpents were about the throat and arms of this champion, and he wore a necklace of human skulls: his long black hair was plaited remarkably; his throat was blue, his body all a livid white except where it was smeared with ashes. He rode upon the back of a beautiful white bull.

Next, riding on a dappled stag, came one appareled in vivid stripes of yellow and red and blue and green: his face was dark as a raincloud, he had one large round eye, white tusks protruded from his lips, and he carried a gaily painted urn. His unspeakable attendants leaped like frogs. The jolliest looking of all the warriors came thereafter, with a dwarfish body and very short legs; he had a huge black-bearded head, a flat nose, and his tongue hung from his mouth and waggled as he moved.

He wore a belt and a necklace, and nothing else whatever except the plumes of the hawk arranged as a head-dress: and he rode upon a great sleek tortoise-sh.e.l.l cat.

Now when these unusual appearing allies stood silently aligned before them on the seash.o.r.e, Dom Manuel said, with a polite bow toward this appalling host, that he hardly thought Duke Asmund would be able to withstand such Redeemers. But Miramon repeated that there was nothing like the decimal system.

"That half-brother of mine, who is lord of the tenth kind of sleeping, would nicely round off this dizain," says Miramon, scratching his chin, "if only he had not such a commonplace, black-and-white appearance, apart from being one of those dreadful Realists, without a sc.r.a.p of aesthetic feeling--No, I like color, and we will levy now upon the West!"

So Miramon dealt next with a little ball of bright feathers. Then a last helper came to them, riding on a jaguar, and carrying a large drum and a flute from which his music issued in the shape of flames. This champion was quite black, but he was striped with blue paint, and golden feathers grew all over his left leg. He wore a red coronet in the shape of a rose, a short skirt of green paper, and white sandals; and he carried a red shield that had in its centre a white flower with the four petals placed crosswise. Such was he who made up the tenth.

Now when this terrible dizain was completed the lord of the seven madnesses laid fire to a wisp of straw, and he cast it to the winds, saying that thus should the anger of Miramon Lluagor pa.s.s over the land.

Then he turned to these dreadful ten whom he had revivified from the dustheaps and garrets of Vraidex, and it became apparent that Miramon was deeply moved.

Said Miramon:

"You, whom I made for man's worship when earth was younger and fairer, hearken, and learn why I breathe new life into husks from my sc.r.a.p-heaps! G.o.ds of old days, discrowned, disjected, and treated as rubbish, hark to the latest way of the folk whose fathers you succored!

They have discarded you utterly. Such as remember deride you, saying:

"'The brawling old lords that our grandfathers honored have perished, if they indeed were ever more than some curious notions bred of our grandfathers' questing, that looked to find G.o.d in each rainstorm coming to nourish their barley, and G.o.d in the heat-bringing sun, and G.o.d in the earth which gave life. Even so was each hour of their living touched with odd notions of G.o.d and with lunacies as to G.o.d's kindness. We are more sensible people, for we understand all about the freaks of the wind and the weather, and find them in no way astounding. As for whatever G.o.ds may exist, they are civil, in that they let us alone in our lifetime; and so we return their politeness, knowing that what we are doing on earth is important enough to need undivided attention.'

"Such are the folk that deride you, such are the folk that ignore the G.o.ds whom Miramon fashioned, such are the folk whom to-day I permit you freely to deal with after the manner of G.o.ds. Do you now make the most of your chance, and devastate all Poictesme in time for an earlyish supper!"

The faces of these ten became angry, and they shouted, "Blaerde Shay Alphenio Kasbue Gorfons Albuifrio!"

All ten went up together from the sea, traveling more swiftly than men travel, and what afterward happened in Poictesme was for a long while a story very fearful to hear and heard everywhere.

Manuel did not witness any of the tale's making as he waited alone on the seash.o.r.e. But the land was sick, and its nausea heaved under Manuel's wounded feet, and he saw that the pale, gurgling, glistening sea appeared to crawl away from Poictesme slimily. And at Bellegarde and Naimes and Storisende and Lisuarte, and in all the strongly fortified inland places, Asmund's tall fighting-men beheld one or another of the angry faces which came up from the sea, and many died swiftly, as must always happen when anybody revives discarded dreams, nor did any of the Northmen die in a shape recognizable as human.

When the news was brought to Dom Manuel that his redemption of Poictesme was completed, then Dom Manuel unarmed, and made himself presentable in a tunic of white damask and a girdle adorned with garnets and sapphires.

He slipped over his left shoulder a baldric set with diamonds and emeralds, to sustain the unbloodied sword with which he had conquered here as upon Vraidex. Over all he put on a crimson mantle. Then the former swineherd concealed his hands, not yet quite healed, with white gloves, of which the one was adorned with a ruby, and the other was a sapphire; and, sighing, Manuel the Redeemer (as he was called thereafter) entered into his kingdom, and they of Poictesme received him far more gladly than he them.

Thus did Dom Manuel enter into the imprisonment of his own castle and into the bonds of high estate, from which he might not easily get free to go a-traveling everywhither, and see the ends of this world and judge them. And they say that in her low red-pillared palace Suskind smiled contentedly and made ready for the future.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

PART FIVE.

THE BOOK OF SETTLEMENT

TO

JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER

Thus _Manuel reigned in vertue and honoure with that n.o.ble Ladye his wyfe: and he was beloued and dradde of high and lowe degree, for he dyde ryghte and iustice_ according to the auncient Manner, _kepynge hys land in dignitie and goode Appearance, and hauynge the highest place in hys tyme._

x.x.xIII

Now Manuel Prospers

They of Poictesme narrate fine tales as to the deeds that Manuel the Redeemer performed and incited in the days of his reign. They tell also many things that seem improbable, and therefore are not included in this book: for the old songs and tales incline to make of Count Manuel's heydey a rare golden age.

So many glorious exploits are, indeed, accredited to Manuel and to the warriors whom he gathered round him in his famous Fellowship of the Silver Stallion,--and among whom, Holden and courteous Anavalt and Coth the Alderman and Gonfal and Donander had the pre-eminence, where all were hardy,--that it is very difficult to understand how so brief a while could have continued so many doings. But the tale-tellers of Poictesme have been long used to say of a fine action,--not falsely, but misleadingly,--"Thus it was in Count Manuel's time," and the tribute by and by has been accepted as a dating. So has chronology been hacked to make loftier his fame, and the glory of Dom Manuel has been a magnet that has drawn to itself the magnanimities of other days and years.

But there is no need here to speak of these legends, about the deeds which were performed by the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion, because these stories are recorded elsewhere. Some may be true, the others are certainly not true; but it is indisputable that Count Manuel grew steadily in power and wealth and proud repute. Miramon Lluagor still served him, half-amusedly, as Dom Manuel's seneschal; kings now were Manuel's co-partners; and the former swineherd had somehow become the fair and trusty cousin of emperors. And Madame Niafer, the great Count's wife, was everywhere stated, without any contradiction from her, to be daughter to the late Soldan of Barbary.

Guivric the Sage illuminated the tree which showed the glorious descent of Dame Niafer from Kaiumarth, the first of all kings, and the first to teach men to build houses: and this tree hung in the main hall of Storisende. "For even if some errors may have crept in here and there,"

said Dame Niafer, "it looks very well."

"But, my dear," said Manuel, "your father was not the Soldan of Barbary: instead, he was the second groom at Arnaye, and all this lineage is a preposterous fabrication."

"I said just now that some errors may have crept in here and there,"

a.s.sented Dame Niafer, composedly, "but the point is, that the thing really looks very well, and I do not suppose that even you deny that."

"No, I do not deny that this glowing mendacity adds to the hall's appearance."

"So now, you see for yourself!" said Niafer, triumphantly. And after that her new ancestry was never questioned.

And in the meanwhile Dom Manuel had sent messengers over land and sea to his half-sister Math at Rathgor, bidding her sell the mill for what it would fetch. She obeyed, and brought to Manuel's court her husband and their two boys, the younger of whom rose later to be Pope of Rome.

Manuel gave the miller the vacant fief of Montors; and thereafter you could nowhere have found a statelier fine lady than the Countess Matthiette de Montors. She was still used to speak continually of what was becoming to people of our station in life, but it was with a large difference; and she got on with Niafer as well as could be expected, but no better.

And early in the summer of the first year of Manuel's reign (just after Dom Manuel fetched to Storisende the Sigel of Scoteia, as the spoils of his famous fight with Oriander the Swimmer), the stork brought to Niafer the first of the promised boys. For the looks of the thing, this child was named, not after the father whom Manuel had just killed, but after the Emmerick who was Manuel's nominal father: and it was this Emmerick that afterward reigned long and notably in Poictesme.

So matters went prosperously with Dom Manuel, and there was nothing to trouble his peace of mind, unless it were some feeling of responsibility for the cult of Sesphra, whose worship was now increasing everywhere among the nations. In Philistia, in particular, Sesphra was now worshipped openly in the legislative halls and churches, and all other religion, and all decency, was smothered under the rituals of Sesphra.

Everywhere to the west and north his followers were delivering windy discourses and performing mad antics, and great hurt came of it all by and by. But if this secretly troubled Dom Manuel; the Count, here as elsewhere, exercised to good effect his invaluable gift for holding his tongue.