A QUEST MUST END

THEODORE GOODRIDGE ROBERTS

The Forge in the Wilderness

Quests ridden on, and sweated and bled for, and peradventure perished in, are as multitudinous as the stars. They have been of dreams, vanities, love, ambition, hate, whiffs of temper and idle whimsy; for the Fountain of Youth, the Phoenix’ nest, unicorns with golden horns, dryads and nymphs and yet more elusive beauties, the Questing Beast which ran with a noise in its belly as of a pack of baying hounds, and was chased by King Pellinore and others of renown; and latterly the Holy Grail, which was sought by many and achieved – quite obviously with the assistance of the celestial hierarchy – by exemplary Sir Galahad.

Almost all questers rode singly, and won their places in song and story as solitary champions, but a few shared their quests and went in couples, and of these were old King Torrice of Har and his young Irish grandson Sir Lorn Geraldine. Once met, only death could break that fellowship or divide its mad adventures.

For more than a sennight they had followed tracks which had come to nothing, day after day, save narrower and rougher tracks. It was fifteen days since their last dealings with a farrier or any other kind of smith; and now, what with broken shoes or no hoof-iron at all, every horse was lame; and every man, whatever his degree, was on his own two feet. King Torrice was in a fretful humor, for pedestrianism was as foreign to his spirit as it was to his feet, and irked his soul equally with his corns. But young Sir Lorn maintained his habitual air and appearance of baffled thought and pensive abstraction, walking equably and unconcernedly. In truth, it was only when violently employed with spear or sword that he seemed to know or care how many legs were under him and at his service. Ah, but he knew then, never fear, and made the most of whatever number it happened to be!

“We’ll be carrying them on our backs before we can win clear of this cursed wilderness,” complained the King.

Next moment, one of the squires cried out and pointed a hand.

“A smithy! Look there under the great oak. Forge and anvil complete, by Judas!”

All came to a dead stop and looked, like one man and one horse: and there it was, sure enough – a rustic hut with an open front disclosing forge and bellows and anvil.

“But no smith, of course,” said the King. “He’s gone off in despair – and small blame to him! A fool he must be to look for trade where there’s no population – unless he counted on the patronage of unicorns and wild cattle.”

“Nay, sire, look again!” cried the same squire. “At the forge. Stirring the fire. But I’ll swear there was no blink of fire a moment ago!”

All except Sir Lorn gasped and gaped in astonishment, and even he looked interested; for there, for all to see, was a human figure where naught but wood and iron and the leather bellows had been visible a moment before. A lively figure, at that, with the right hand busy at the red glow in the blackness of the forge, and the left raised high to the upper beam of the bellows: and while the travelers still stared as if at a warlock, the bellows creaked and exhaled gustily, and the fiery heart amid the black coals pulsed and expanded. A piece of white-hot metal was withdrawn in the grip of long pincers and laid on the anvil and smitten with a hammer, and sparks spurted and flew.

*    *    *

Then King Torrice bestirred himself; with a mutter in which irritability was somewhat tempered by awe, he turned left into the ferns and brambles, and advanced upon the smithy stiffly but resolutely, with his hoof-sore charger stumbling after, and did not halt until his whiskers were threatened by the sparks. Then he spoke in a loud voice, but the tone was constrainedly affable.

“Greetings, good Master Smith! Well met, my fine fellow!”

After six more hammer-clangs of cold iron on hot, the din and sparks ceased and the smith looked up from the anvil. He too was of venerable appearance and whiskery, but most of his snowy beard was tucked out of view and danger into the top of his leather apron, whereas Torrice’s luxuriant appendage flowed broadly down his breastplate even to his belt.

“So here you are!” said the smith. “Well and good! One score and three completed, and this one will fill the tally.” He nodded toward clusters of horseshoes of various sizes dangling from spikes in a wall, then thrust the cooling iron in his pincers back into the heart of fire.

“What d’ye say?” the old King-errant gasped. “Irons ready for six horses? Even so – and I don’t believe it! – they’ll not fit my six!”

“I’ll attend to you in a minute,” mumbled the smith.

The bellows creaked and snored, and the fire glowed; and soon that piece of iron, again white as noonday sun, was back on the ringing anvil, and the sparks were flying again like golden bees. King Torrice stood silent, gawking like a boy, until the iron was beaten exactly to the smith’s fancy, and pierced for nails, and finally plunged into a tub of water with a hiss and jet of steam. Now the smith was at his horse, and old nails and fragments of old shoes and hoof-parings fell simultaneously.

“He must have six hands!” muttered the King.

Now a little hammer went tapping as fast as the sedate charger could lift and lower his feet.

“Next!” cried the smith

Sir Lorn’s great white horse came next, then the squires’ hackneys, and last the two packhorses led by grooms, but all so fast – for every ready shoe fitted – that the King and the squires began a suspicious inspection. The smith straightened his back, tossed his apron aside and uttered a cackle of laughter.

“You are wasting your time,” he said, and fell to combing his whiskers with a golden comb that appeared in his hand as if by magic. “All is as it seems, if not more so,” he added, and cackled again.

“In all my life I never saw anything like it,” said the King.

“You could forget a few things in that length of time,” said the smith.

Torrice stiffened and asked loftily: “What do I owe you, my good fellow?”

“I’ll name you a special fee, a mere token price, having taken a fancy to Your Worship,” replied the smith. “What d’ye say to paying for the nails only, and never mind the shoes and the labor? One farthing for the first nail, a ha’penny for the second, a penny for the third, and so on?”

“I can afford to pay what I owe,” said Torrice, with a royal air, “and am accustomed to paying more, so you will oblige me by stating your charge and having done with it.”

“Not so fast!” cried the squire who had spotted the forge. “What d’ye mean by ‘and so on,’ old man? Tuppence for the fourth nail and fourpence for the fifth, is that it?”

The King exclaimed fretfully: “Enough of this vulgar talk of farthings and pennies! Pay him what he asks, good Peter.”

“Nay, sir, mauger my head!” cried the squire. “I learned that manner of computation from a farrier at St Audrey’s Fair, in my youth, an’ would still be in his debt – and I had but one beast, mark ye! – if I hadn’t settled the score with my stout cudgel, there an’ then.”

The smith laughed heartily, patted Squire Peter’s shoulder and chuckled: “Spare the cudgel, friend, and I’ll be content with a horn of ale.”

“I don’t get it,” muttered Torrice. “All this jabber about nails. But let it pass.” His voice and brow cleared. “But ale you shall have, worthy smith, and a share of our supper, and three silver crowns for your pouch.”

“Gramercy,” said the smith.

The horses, all firm of foot now, were soon unsaddled, unloaded and hobbled in a nearby glade of sweet grasses to which the smith had led the way. But now the sun was behind the westward tree-tops. A small pavilion was pitched; a small keg was broached; and a fire was made of deadwood from thickets of underbrush. By the time the black pots were boiling, the smith’s horn had been replenished twice, and a white star was glinting in the east.

It was a simple supper of boiled corned beef and bacon and wheaten dumplings, barley scones and cheese and honey; and for drink there was malt ale for all, and mead and usquebaugh too for the knights and squires and thirsty guest. The smith ate and drank more than anyone else, and at the same time, did most of the talking. The King, who had been taught never to drink with food in his mouth, and never to speak with his mouth full, was horrified at the simultaneous flouting of both rules of behavior: and at last he cried out a protest:

“There’s plenty of time, friend! Have a care, or you’ll choke!”

The smith laughed, and said: “I apologize for offending your quality, of which I cannot pretend ignorance, for this is not our first meeting. I would know you anywhere and at any time for what you are, no matter how small your retinue and how restricted your commissariat at the moment. But don’t misunderstand me. Your present company makes up in character and promise what it lacks in strength. This young knight is suffering from a misadventure, but the fact that he survived it with nothing more serious than a gap in his memory and a grievous void in his heart is proof that he is destined for great things.”

“What do you know of that?” Torrice interrupted, loudly and with a violent gesture.

“What I see,” replied the smith coolly.

“And what’s that? There’s nothing to see!”

“Nothing for dull eyes, you mean. But as I was saying, this is the first time I have known the munificent Torrice of Har to lack a few flasks, at least, of French or Spanish wine.”

“So you know me?” the King cried, “But I was never in this forest before!”

“Nor was I,” the smith chuckled; and while all save Sir Lorn gaped in wonder, he added: “Are you so old, my friend, that you no longer recognize the master-touch?”

The King clapped a hand to his head, and sighed and muttered:

“Merlin! I should have known it at the forge! But you were not so helpful at our last meeting – on the contrary! But that was long ago.” He stood up and did the correct thing, though still dazedly. “Duke Merlin, this is my grandson Lorn Geraldine – an Irish grandson. And these two gentlemen are our squires Peter and Gervis.”

Sir Lorn stood up and louted low, cap in hand, but no slightest flicker of eye or twitch of lip paid the tribute of recognition to that potent name. But the squires’ reaction was entirely flattering. Standing bare-headed and bowed double, Peter and Gervis regarded with awestruck eyes and blanched faces the person who had so lately shod their horses; and the uncouth fellows at the far side of the fire sat with podding eyes and hanging jaws, powerless to stir a muscle. The great magician looked around with a gratified smirk.

“Gramercy, friends,” he said. “You have heard of me, it seems – and only good, I’m sure. But sit down, gentlemen, I pray you. Let us be at ease together again.”

King Torrice said to his squire: “Peter, be so good as to fetch that flask of green glass you wot of.”

“Good Master Peter, by fetching all four flasks you wot of, two green and two brown, you will spare yourself a deal of footing to and fro,” said Merlin dryly.

“Quite,” said the King resignedly; whereupon Peter moved off hastily toward the stacked baggage.

Those treasured flasks contained potent foreign cordials, and not wine at all. The squires took their shares of the first one, then slept where they lay. The young knight went on to his share of the second flask, then retired to the pavilion on wavering legs but with unabated dignity. This left the two ancients tête-à-tête; and the talk, which had been anecdotal, changed in its character.

“A fine young man, your grandson, despite what happened to him,” said Merlin. “Bewitched, of course! His case suggests the fine and merciless art of – but why name her? She goes by more names than Satan, and has done so since before Stonehenge was set up, like as not: Lilith, Circe, Queen Mab, la Belle Dame sans Merci, the Maid of Tintagel, the Lost Lady of Caer Loyw, Fair Fiona, Dark Essylit, Weeping Rosamund, the Damosel of the Tower and as many more as I have fingers and toes, but all one and the same perilous and indestructible witch, in my opinion. There are other and lesser enchantresses abroad; and as one can never be quite sure of one’s ground in such matters, a man is well advised – aye, even such a man as myself – to avoid them all. I have taken chances, naturally – but as you see, without serious consequences.

“But my case is beside the point, considering the fact that my power of wisdom – call it magic, if you like – is greater than that of any known or recorded wizard or witch, and I doubt that I would have suffered more than a slight and temporary emotional disturbance even if I had ever fallen into the clutches of Lilith herself, under whatever guise or name. But your case, friend Torrice, is different; and I must confess that your respectable mentality – I say respectable for want of a more precise term – surprises me somewhat, after all your years of errantry. I am sure it has been by good fortune rather than by good management that you have escaped the attentions of one or more of those mischievous ladies.”

“I am not so sure of that,” said the King, unstoppering the third flask and replenishing both cups. “In my quest of Beauty, which I have followed devotedly, save for occasional domestic interludes, ever since winning my spurs, I have had many contacts with ladies, many of whom were mischievous; and I am not at all sure that some of them were not witches. I have never consciously avoided that sort of thing, but in the interests of my high quest have sought it, and even now I would not avoid the most disastrous of them all.”

“Stout fellow!” exclaimed Merlin merrily, but on a note of derision.

He laughed, but briefly. He leaned toward his companion in sudden gravity and wagged a finger at him.

“Have a care, my friend,” he cautioned. “Don’t be too cock-a-hoop about your powers of resistance and survival. You’ve been lucky, that’s all. I admit that your luck has held a long time, but I warn you that it will not last forever. That you have encountered many enchantresses in your long and comprehensive quest I’ll not deny, but I tell you – and I’ll stake my reputation on it – that every one of them has been entirely human. There wasn’t a witch in the lot. Just daughters of Eve, all of them; and even they have caused numerous deviations from your quest, and not a few considerable delays.

“Don’t think I don’t know what I am talking about, old friend, for I have followed your extraordinary course with interest ever since chance first brought you to my attention, though you have been blissfully ignorant of my surveillance most of the time. And I’ll tell you now when that was. It was a great day with you, poor Torrice – young Torrice, then – the day an old woman in a red cloak gave you a little crystal vial containing two ounces of what she claimed to be the Elixir of Life. You have not forgotten it, I see.”

“Certainly not!” cried the King. “Why should I forget it?” he demanded, with a defiant gesture in the course of which he drained and refilled his cup. “I drank it, didn’t I? And it was a long, long time ago, wasn’t it? And here I am!”

“True, my friend, here you are, and a marvel of spirit and physical fitness for a man of your age. Aye, or for one of a quarter your age. But what you swallowed that day was not the real thing – not the magical liquor you believed it to be. It was but an experimental step in the development of the true, the pure, the perfected elixir. But even so, it was not without merit, as you have proved. It has served you well so far, my friend: but it is my duty to warn you that the virtue of the stuff you drank on that May morning of the first year of your – ah, if you’ll forgive the expression, your delightfully latitudinous quest – cannot be depended upon indefinitely.”

“It was the Elixir of Life! And I am as good as I ever was!”

“Nay, not quite.”

“Not quite? What do you mean by that?”

“Calm yourself, old friend. I speak for your own comfort and guidance. I mean that the old woman in the red cloak gave you a liquor that was not the perfected article, and that you are showing signs of—”

“Not so! I’ll prove it on your person with spear or sword, horsed or afoot, if you promise to keep your unholy magic out of it! And what the devil do you know of my traffic with that old hag?”

“I abstain from all armed encounters, for the very reason that I could not keep my advantage of magic out of them even if I would: and my answer to your question is: I was that old woman.”

Sobered as if by a bucketful of cold water, Torrice hung his head in silence. Merlin also was in no mood for further speech at the moment, but refilled his cup and sipped with a contemplative and compassionate air.

The King was the first to resume the conversation.

“But what of you? You have drunk of it.”

“Yes, when I had perfected it, I drank it,” said Merlin.

“Then I may still drink of it,” said Torrice hopefully.

“Nay, old friend, or you would live forever,” Merlin replied gently.

“Why not? You will live forever. Then why not both of us?”

“I have my wisdom to support me – magic, to you, but the greatest in the world, by any name – to strengthen and console me. You have none of it.”

“I could learn it.”

“Nay, good Torrice of Har, not in a century. Nor in a millennium, for that matter. You lack the necessary – ah! – you are not the type for that sort of thing, dear old friend.”

“Never mind the magic, then, but give me the elixir.”

“No. I don’t want to be the object of your curses throughout the ages. You have discovered a grandson and companion-at-arms. Do you want to outlive him? Consider that prospect, my friend.”

The King considered it, sighed deeply and shook his head. He stared and sat blinking at the red embers of the fire.

“How long have I left to go?” he whispered.

“Long enough,” said Merlin cheerfully. “I can’t be more exact than that,” he added: and the lie was cheerful too.

“And the end?” whispered the King anxiously.

Before replying to that, the magician pressed a hand to his brow as if in an extraordinary effort of foresight.

“I see it. Hah! Well done! Nobly done! . . . Ah, old friend, I envy you.”

“Gramercy! And the lad? What of his – How fares he – at the last?”

“Nay, I cannot see so far.”

The Smith is Gone but They Hear of a Pilgrim

The squire named Peter was the first of that company to awake to the new day. The sun was still behind the eastward wall of the forest when he opened his eyes. Having lain out all night, he was damp with dew from head to foot. He sat up and blinked at slumbering Gervis, at four overturned flasks of rare outlandish glass on the dew-gemmed sward, and at the black and gray of the fallen fire. The events of the previous evening flashed on his mind, confusedly yet vividly, and painfully, for his brain felt tender and his eyes too big and hot for their sockets.

“Honest ale will be good enough for me from now on,” he muttered.

He made his stumbling way to a brook which skirted the glade, knelt there and immersed arms and head in the cool water. Vastly refreshed, he went back and stirred Gervis and the grooms to action; and all four, without a word but as if by spoken agreement, began rounding up the horses and examining their hooves.

“So it wasn’t a dream!” cried Gervis; and he called all the saints whose names he could remember to bear witness that the episode of the forge had been sober fact. “I never thought to have that old warlock shoe a horse for me,” he added.

“When you have served good old Torrice as long as I have, nothing will surprise you,” Peter answered with a superior air.

“A search of the smithy now might be worth our while,” suggested Gervis. “The secret of that trick would be useful, and it might even win a battle under certain circumstances.”

So the two squires left the glade by the way they had come into it less than twelve hours before, in the hope of wresting a hint at least of Merlin’s formula for horseshoeing from the deserted smithy while the magician continued to sleep off his potations in the pavilion. They had not far to go; and the back-tracking of the passage of six horses and seven men over fat moss and through lush fern was a simple matter. And there they were. There was the great oak, anyway – the identical old forest patriarch bearing scars of thunderbolts, a herons’ nest and three bushes of mistletoe, and doubtless, a hamadryad in its wide and soaring world of greenery. The squires stood and stared. They moved their lips, but no sound came forth. Gervis’ tongue was the first to thaw.

“Not here,” he whispered. “Not the same tree. This isn’t the place.”

But he knew better. This was a unique tree. And here were the two ancient thorns, that had crowded one end of the smithy, and the hollies that had crowded the other end of it. This was the place, certainly. A fool would recognize it. Everything was here, just as it had been – except the smithy.

Peter shivered and found his tongue and said: “We’ll go back and take another look at the horses’ feet.”

They returned to the glade and inspected all twenty-four hooves again. The new shoes were still in their places.

“I feared they had flown away after the smithy, forge, anvil and bellows,” muttered Gervis.

“They may yet,” said Peter grimly.

“But he seems to be a merry old gentleman and a true friend to King Torrice,” said Gervis.

“There’s more to that old warlock than meets the eye,” Peter answered. “As for his friendship – well, from all I’ve heard, I’d liefer have him with me than against me, but it would suit me best to be entirely free of his attentions. He has a queer sense of humor, and a devilish odd idea of a joke, by old wives’ tales I’ve heard here and there. Take King Arthur Pendragon’s birth, for instance: You know about that, of course! Well, was that a decent trick to play on a lady? For all his high blood – he was born a duke, no doubt of that – the mighty wizard Merlin is no gentleman. He doesn’t think like one – not like our Torrice, nor like our Lorn, nor like you who can boast an honorable knight for a father, nor even like me, stable-born and stable-bred. Aye, though my gentility be scarce a year old, I’m a better gentleman than Duke Merlin, by my halidom!”

“I agree with you, Peter – but not so loud, for here they come from the pavilion,” warned Gervis.

King Torrice, in a kingly long robe of red silk, issued from the pavilion and looked to his front and right and left with an inquiring air. Sir Lorn, in an equally fine robe, appeared and stood beside his grandfather, yawning and blinking. And that was all. The guest, the great Merlin, did not come forth. The squires ran and halted and uncapped before their knights.

“How are the horses’ feet?” asked the King.

“We have inspected them twice this morning, sir, and found all in order and every shoe in its place,” Peter replied, and after a moment’s hesitation, added: “But the smithy is gone, sir.”

King Torrice nodded. He looked thoughtful, but not surprised.

“So is the smith,” he said. “Let us hope and pray that his handiwork does not follow him.”

“Every iron is tight and true, sir,” Gervis assured him.

Peter spoke hesitantly.

“Sir, may I suggest that it might happen? His handiwork might follow him – the twenty-four iron shoes – even on the hooves of Your Honor’s horses – if all I’ve heard of that old warlock’s magic be true.”

The venerable quester blinked and asked: “How so, lad? D’ye suggest that their potency could, and might, pull the hooves off the horses? And why not, come to think of it? It smacks of the Merlin touch, by Judas!”

“Yes sir – but I did not mean it just in that way. I meant to suggest that he might, if in a tricky mood, bid the twenty-four shoes to follow him – horses and all.”

“Hah!” the King exclaimed; and he swore by half a dozen saints. “That’s his game, depend upon it! And I was simple enough to think he had done us a good turn out of pure good will! The master touch, indeed! But what does he want of us? What devilment is he up to now? ‘A horn of ale will settle my score,’ said he. And he leaves an empty cask, empty bottles and four empty flasks of Araby. But he is welcome to all that, and would be welcome to a hundred silver crowns besides if I knew that the score was settled. But forewarned is forearmed; and we’ll see to it that our horses go our way, not Wizard Merlin’s, even if we have to unshoe them and lead them afoot again.”

Breakfast was eaten; packhorses were loaded; the squires harnessed the knights and then each the other; and all four mounted into their high saddles. It was in all their minds that the march would be resumed in the same direction from which it had been diverted by the discovery of the smithy; so when all the horses wheeled to the right and plunged from the track as if by a common and irresistible impulse, King Torrice cried “Halt!” and pulled mightily on his reins. The squires pulled too, and the grooms pushed manfully against the thrusting heads of the packhorses; but Sir Lorn, up on mighty Bahram and with his thoughts elsewhere – probably in Faeryland – neither drew rein nor cried halt, but crashed onward through fern and underbrush. The pulling and pushing and protesting of the others was of no avail. Where Lorn’s great white warhorse led, the King’s old charger, the squires’ hackneys and the stubborn beasts of burden would follow.

“Sir, this is what I meant!” cried Peter, coming up on the King’s left.

“Gramercy!” gasped Torrice, who seldom forgot his manners, especially to his inferiors in rank.

Now they were beneath great oaks, with fallow deer bounding before them through netted sunshine and shadow, and tawny wild swine scattering right and left. Now charger and hackneys and ponies took their own heads for it, and ran as if possessed by devils. At the same moment Lorn drew rein and turned his head and waved a hand. The King and squires were soon up with him. He pointed through a screen of saplings.

“A good track,” he said. “A wide and beaten track.”

They all looked. There below them lay a better track than they had seen in a sennight, sure enough.

“It must go to some fine town, sir!” Gervis cried.

“I don’t like it,” said the King. “’Tis not of our own choosing.”

“’Twill lead us out of the wilderness, sir, wherever to,” Peter said: and in his eagerness to see a market and a tavern again, and houses with ladies and damosels looking down from windows, his distrust of Merlin was almost forgotten.

“Still I don’t like it!” Torrice muttered. “Nor what brought us to it against our wills. I have gone my own way since first donning gold spurs. I’m a knight-errant, and baron and king. I acknowledge no human overlord save Arthur Pendragon – and I might defy even him at a pinch, as I have defied his father King Uther upon occasion. And now am I to jink this way and that at the whim of a tricky old magic-monger and the itch of bedeviled horseshoes? Nay, by my halidom!”

Just then the white stallion and Sir Lorn went through the saplings and down the short bank, turned left on the track and trotted purposefully; and the King’s charger and the King followed, willy-nilly; and the hackneys and the squires; and the grooms and their charges, clanking and running and eating dust.

“Hold! Hold!” King Torrice bawled, worked up by now to a fury of defiance that was foreign to his naturally placid though restless spirit – but all he got for it was a bitten tongue.

But that flurry of advance took the little cavalcade no farther than around the next curve in the track. There Lorn pulled up, and all the others at his stirrups and his tail. Then all saw that which he had seen first. It was a dwarf standing fairly in the middle of the way and louting low.

“What now, my good manikin?” asked Torrice suspiciously: and he stared searchingly at the little fellow, looking for Merlin in yet another disguise.

Clearly and briefly the dwarf revealed his business. His mistress, Dame Clara, a defenceless widow, begged their lordships’ protection from a cruel oppressor who had confined her within her manor house, beaten her stewards, driven off a full half of her flocks and herds, and was even now collecting her rents into his own pouch and demanding her hand in marriage.

“A widow,” said the King reflectively, stroking his beard and wagging his head. “A beautiful widow, I presume – and as virtuous as beautiful, of course.”

“The most beautiful lady in the land, Sir King!” cried the dwarf.

“Sir King?” queried Torrice. “Hah! So you know me, my friend! We have met before, is that it?”

“Nay, Your Kingship, but a poor old palmer home from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem visited us but a few hours since, and informed my mistress of the approach of the great King Torrice of Har and his noble Irish grandson Sir Lorn, and assured her that now her troubles were ended,” replied the manikin.

Torrice looked at Lorn in consternation. He placed a shaking hand on the other’s mailed thigh.

“You hear that, dear lad? Merlin – just as I expected! But he’ll not make monkeys of us – to pluck his chestnuts out of fires. I’ll wrench off those cursed shoes with my bare hands first! We’ll turn now, and ride hard the other way.”

The young knight said, “Yes sir,” but immediately acted contrarily. Instead of wheeling Bahram, he stooped from his saddle and extended a hand downward to the dwarf, who seized it and was up behind him quick as a wink; and next moment all six horses were trotting forward again, with the great white stallion leading, but the King’s tall gray – despite the King’s protests – pressing him close.

The forest fell back on either hand, and they rode between ditches and hedges, green meadows and fields of young wheat and barley.

“Not so fast, young lord,” cautioned the messenger. “Your great horse may need all his wind in a little while.”

Lorn slowed the stallion’s pace to a walk, and the rest slowed as well.

“I fear we’ll pay dearly yet for our new shoes,” said the King.

“But this is in the true spirit of our quest, sir – to succor distressed ladies and damosels,” Lorn answered, with unusual animation in voice and eye. “How better can we discover what we are questing for, dear sir – whatever that is?”

“The soul of Beauty,” said his grandfather. “In her true and imperishable shape! But at that time I believed myself to be imperishable too. But never mind that now. You are right, dear lad – the quest is the thing; and the higher and harder it is, the more honor to the quester, win or lose. But I’d feel happier about this if Merlin hadn’t a finger in it.”

They came to the brow of a hill and looked down upon a wide and verdant vale. There was a little river with a red mill, a great water-wheel and a pond lively with fat ducks. There were cornlands and grasslands; orchards of apple, pear and plum; hopgardens which foretold brown ale, and little gardens of sage and thyme and savory foretelling well-stuffed ducks and capons and Michaelmas geese spitted and roasting to a turn; thatched roofs of farmsteads, and in the midst of all, the slated roofs, timber walls and stone tower of a great manor house. They drew rein and gazed at the fair prospect.

“What is it called?” asked King Torrice.

“Joyous Vale,” the dwarf replied in a pathetic voice. “It was named in a happier time than now. Your Kingship,” he added with a sigh.

“And where is your grievous tyrant?” asked the King.

“His pavilion is behind that screen of willows beyond the ford there; but he will show himself at the sound of a horn,” said the dwarf.

Torrice stroked his beard and said: “As we have come thus far at Merlin’s whim, we may as well see this thing through of our own will and in our own way. Peter, you have a horn. But just a moment, if you please. Lorn, the fellow is yours. If there is another, I’ll attend to him. If there are more” – he smiled kindly at each of the squires in turn – “we’ll have a proper ding-dong set-to, all for one and one for all. And now the horn, friend Peter.”

It was already at Peter’s lips; and he blew as if he would split it and his cheeks too. The echoes were still flying when a tall and wide figure in a blue robe appeared from behind the willows, stared, shook a fist and retreated from view.

“This is Sir Drecker, the false knight,” said the dwarf. “He has a comrade as knavish as himself, but not so large, called Sir Barl, and four stout fellows who are readier with knives than swords. If they are all in camp now, Sir Drecker will soon reappear in full force; but if his rogues are tax-collecting and looting cupboards around-about, Your Kingship will not have to do with him yet awhile, for he will avoid contact until he has a sure advantage.”

“D’ye say so, Master Manikin!” cried the King, snapping his eyes and bristling his whiskers. “Then you don’t know me and my grandson, nor these two gentlemen our squires, nor, for that matter, these two grooms neither! We’ll hunt him like a red pig! We’ll exterminate him and his dirty marauders like rats in a granary!”

The dwarf smiled slyly, well pleased with the old King’s temper. Sir Lorn, gazing fixedly at the willows beyond the little river, did not speak, but his nostrils quivered and his lips were parted expectantly. The horses stood with tossing heads and pricking ears.

“Here they come!” cried the dwarf.

Two knights on great black horses came slowly into view from the screen of willows. Their visors were closed and their shields dressed before them, but their spears were still at the carry, cocked straight up. They wheeled and drew rein above the ford.

“They have chosen their ground,” said the dwarf.

“And very prettily – if they think we are fools enough to go charging down and through and up at them like mad bulls,” jeered the King. “But where are the others?” he asked.

“Hiding under the bank, sir, among the osiers, depend upon it, Sir King – just in case their knives are needed,” said the little man in green.

Torrice jeered again.

“In silk and fur-lined slippers I am one of the world’s most artless fools, but in leather and iron I am quite another person,” he told them. “Just as I have acquired all the skills of knightly combat, even so have I learned all the answers to the cowardly tricks of such scoundrels as these: by the hard way. Now give me your attention.”

Five Die, but One Rides Away

Torrice and Lorn rode down to the ford at a hand-gallop, with closed visors, dressed shields and leveled spears; and the oppressors of the lady of the manor laughed derisively within their helmets, for now they would have nothing to do but push the witless intruders back into the river, men and horses together, as they scrambled, blown and off balance, to the top of the bank. But it did not happen just so. The false knights moved forward easily to the sounds of splashing and the clanging of iron on stones down there below their line of vision; but when nothing appeared at the top of the bank – no head of horse, no plume-topped casque, no wobbling spear-point – they drew rein. Now all was silent down there. And now the two squires of the intrusive knights came on at a hand-gallop, and clattered down to the ford and so from view; and silence reigned again.

Sir Drecker felt a chill of misgiving. He cursed, but uncertainly, and ordered his companion to advance until he could see what was going on under the bank. Instead of obeying, Sir Barl uttered a warning cry and pointed a hand. Drecker looked and saw a dismounted knight straightening himself at the top of the bank some ten spear-lengths to his left. Drecker laughed, for the advantage of horse and spear and shield was all his. He wheeled his great charger; but not even a good horse can be jumped to full gallop from a standing start, however deep the spurring. In this case, the spurring was too deep. The horse came on crookedly, with rebellious plunges. Sir Lorn moved suddenly in every muscle, and his sword whirled and bit the shaft of the spear clean through. Lorn dropped his sword then, and laid hold of the tyrant with both hands and dragged him from the lurching saddle. He knelt to unlatch the tyrant’s helmet.

“Mercy!” screamed Drecker; and he straightway made a prayer pitiful enough to soften a heart of stone.

Lorn stayed his hand, but the weakening of his purpose was due to disgust, not pity.

“Faugh!” he cried; and he rose from his knees and booted Drecker’s iron-clad ribs with an iron toe.

He stood straight and looked around him. He saw King Torrice come up from the ford on his venerable gray, moving slowly but with leveled lance, and ride at Sir Barl, who was ready and riding hard. Lorn’s heart misgave him for a moment, but recovered as quickly when Barl’s horse went clean out from under its master and galloped away, leaving that unhandy rogue grassed beneath a split shield and a punctured breastplate. Now he remembered the rogue Drecker, but only to see him up and running and already ten yards off. And now his white stallion Bahram topped the bank within a few paces of him, swung his great head and glowing eyes to survey the field, snorted like a dragon and went in thunderous pursuit of Sir Drecker.

After one backward glance, the tyrant went faster than any knight in full harness had ever before gone on his own unaided legs. He fled toward his own horse, which stood at no great distance. He would make it, even though the white stallion should continue to gain a yard on him at every earth-jarring bound. He would just make it, with nothing to spare – but once in his saddle, he would beat the devil off with his mace. He saw the mace, short-hafted and spike-headed, where it awaited his hand on the saddlebow; and it held his agonized gaze, and spurred him to the utmost cruel fury of effort, like a bright star of salvation. Now! One more wrench of muscles, nerves and heart, and he would be safe! He flung himself at the saddle, touched it with outflung hands – and the black horse swerved. Screaming like a snared rabbit, he fell flat on his vizored face.

Sir Lorn, who had stood staring like one entranced, shook off a mailed glove, thrust two fingers into his mouth and whistled like a kelpie. The great stallion clamped all four hooves to earth, tearing and uprolling the sod before him, and stayed his course a hand’s-breadth short of his quarry. He stood uncertain, tossing and swinging his head and clashing bared teeth; but at a second shrill blast, he wheeled and trotted back to his master. Lorn patted his neck and was about to mount, but was checked by King Torrice.

“Too late,” said Torrice, pointing.

Sir Lorn looked and saw the scoundrel whom he had spared twice up on his strong horse and in full flight, across meadow and cornland, toward the nearest edge of forest.

“Why did you let him go, dear lad?”

Lorn looked apologetically at his grandfather, who was afoot only a pace away, with the old gray’s reins in his hand.

“A false knight,” continued Torrice mildly. “Murderer, torturer, infanticide, seducer, traducer and common thief, according to the manikin Joseph. He would be better dead.”

“I’m sorry,” Lorn muttered with a red face. “Had he cursed me, or had he turned on Bahram – but no, he squealed for mercy. Mice have more manhood. I stayed my hand, and Bahram’s hooves, for very shame – shame of all creatures made by Almighty God in His own image.”

The old man was startled, distressed and confused. For all his ding-dong years of unconventional, even crazy questing, and his competence in the making of romaunts and rondels, he was still, at heart and head, a gentleman of the old school rather than a philosopher.

“Never mind it, dear lad!” he cried hurriedly. “There’s no great harm done, I dare say. But your squire could have used that big horse very well. We have five remounts, however; and the least of them is bigger than a hackney. All proper warhorses. I shall shift my saddle to the late Sir Barl’s big courser, and so let faithful old Clarence here travel light from now on. We have done very well. Five dead rogues and five quick horses, and not a scratch taken.”

“And the blackest rogue and the biggest horse gone clean away!” moaned Sir Lorn. “But never again – no matter how so he may squeal and pray like a soul in torment!” he cried.

They crossed the little river and went behind the willows and took possession of the pavilions and everything else that they found there. The false knight who had fallen to King Torrice’s spear, and the four knaves who had fallen to the swords and knives of squires Peter and Gervis and grooms Goggin and Billikin, were buried deep, and without benefit of clergy, by a party of rejoicing yokels.

The dwarf, whose name was Joseph, ran forth and back between manor house and camp, whistling in high spirits. He was a lively little man of uncertain age, flickering eyes and a sly smile. He fetched wine and cakes, with the Lady Clara’s compliments and thanks, and took back King Torrice’s poetical expressions of devotion. He fetched jellies and sweetmeats, and a pretty message from the lady to the import that she had made them with her own hands of the very last of her store of honey and other such ingredients: whereupon the King sent back to her, by the two squires in their best suits of velvet and Turky leather, his last crock of brandied peaches, a cup of silver gilt and a necklace of French workmanship.

The squires went side by side, with Joseph strutting importantly before. Master Peter carried the crock, which was considered by King Torrice as the senior gift, and Master Gervis carried the cup and necklace. Peter did not like the mission.

“Much more of this tomfoolery, and by Sir Michael and Sir George, I cast my new gentility like a snake his old skin and go back to my currycombs!” he muttered to his companion, as they marched along the most direct path to the great house.

Gervis laughed at him. Gervis had been born and bred to this sort of thing, and liked it.

“Then the more fool you, my Peterkin!” replied Gervis. “There would be no gentility but for the thing this mission of ours is a token of. Without it, chivalry would be naught but dust and sweat and spilled blood and broken teeth; and if bruises and empty bellies and foundered horses were the only rewards for questing, how long would knights-errant continue to mount and ride? Our royal old Torrice prates of the Spirit of Beauty, but it’s the soft eyes and red lips which beset his ways that have withheld him all these years from the softest armchair in the biggest castle of Har. As for young Lorn – do you think he rides only for love of weary marches and hard knocks? Nay, nay, my Peterkin! He seeks that which he can neither remember nor forget. The Spirit of Beauty? Not so! The eyes and lips and hands and tender breast of a damosel he knew are his quest: and that she happened to be a heartless witch as well as an enchanting companion is his sad misfortune.”

“I’ve had neither time nor opportunity for such plays, and no more acquaintance with elegant damosels than with luring witches,” said Peter gruffly.

“But you have bussed goosegirls behind haycocks,” said Gervis, and as Peter ignored this, he added: “Goosegirl or damosel or Queen Mab herself, the only differences between them are rosewater and moonshine. They all ply the same arts: otherwise, there would be no more chivalry in the courts of Camelot and Carleon than in forests of red swine.”

“A pox on it!” muttered Peter.

People of all ages and several conditions gathered about their path from every direction. There were wobbly gaffers and gammers, and able-bodied men and women, and youths and wenches and toddlers and babes in arms. Only a few wore the bronze collars of serfs, but all appeared to be of the humblest sorts of peasantry – plowmen and herdsmen and ditchers, without a yeoman or steward among them, nor even a smith. All stared curiously and hopefully, yet fearfully, at the two squires, though these bore gifts in their hands and had only short ornamental daggers at their belts.

“Bah!” exclaimed Peter; whereat the nearer members of the crowd cringed backward as if from a whip.

“Are they sheep?” he continued, but less emphatically. “The tyrants were but six – and right here I see enough brawn to overcome a dozen such.”

Joseph turned his head and replied, with a rueful grimace:

“You say truth, fair sir: but lacking a master, muscly brawn has no more fight in it than clods of earth. Sir Gayling and his squire were long past their physical prime; nor had they ever been notable cavaliers, but bookmen and stargazers and alchemists. They were murdered in my lady’s rose-garden by the base knight Drecker – spitted like larks, and as easily; and the high steward and Tom Bowman the head forester – old gentlemen both – were waylaid and done to death in the North Wood; and the miller, a masterful man, was slain trickily in his mill by the other dastard knight; and their six knaves set upon Ned Smith working late at his anvil, and slew him; and after that, the four that had come alive out of the smithy, murdered three farmers and a master cheesewright in their beds.”

“Weren’t there any men about the house – butlers and the like?” asked Peter. “Scullions? Grooms and gardeners?”

“All too old,” said Joseph. “Boyhood companions of poor Sir Gayling, most of them.”

“A dozen old men hobbling on sticks, or old women even, would have served to chase off Drecker and his rogues,” said Gervis. “Better still, a mixed force. I can see it in my mind’s eye: the old lady herself, up on her palfrey, leading a host armed with crutches and distaffs against the invaders. That would have confounded them, and saved us the trouble of killing them.”

He chuckled at the conceit, then sighed. Being young and romantic, he had hoped for something more amusing than the relict and household of a doddering old philosopher. The dwarf’s only answer was a slow, peculiar smile. And so they passed through the wide gate and were met in the courtyard by an ancient major-domo and two old lackeys. After having names and style and mission shouted into his left ear by Joseph, the major-domo, leaning on his staff of office, led the squires into the great hall.

Dame Clara Entertains her Champions

The squires were gone a long time on that errand: fully two hours, by King Torrice’s impatient reckoning.

“So here you are at last!” the King exclaimed with a poor effort at severity. “I began to fear that Merlin had waylaid you in the guise of a distressed damosel. Now what of your visit, lads? Were my poor gifts well received? And what is your opinion of the poor lady, and of the situation generally? The late Sir Gayling, I gather, devoted his time to stargazing and kindred impractical pursuits, with the result that his affairs were in a sad way even before his foul murder. The manikin has hinted as much, at least, in his own elusive manner. But even so, we have no time to administer the estate of every distressed person who receives our chivalrous services. We are knights-errant, not lawyers or magistrates. Have I neglected my own earthy interests all my life – the one score baronies and five score manors of my Kingdom of Har – to concern myself, at this late day, with a stranger’s petty problems of lost rents and ravished cheeselofts? Not so, by my halidom!

“I am sorry for the poor old dame, of course; but we have already done our knightly duty by her. If she will accept a few hundred crowns, she is welcome to them. But we must be on our way again by noon tomorrow, without fail. Now tell me your opinion of this Lady Clara, my lads. Her messages have been prettily worded – but her manikin Joseph is a clever fellow, I suspect.”

Gervis slanted a glance at Peter, but the senior squire continued to look straight to his front.

“Yes sir,” said Gervis. “Very clever. I mean very pretty. That’s to say, the lady was very polite. And she sent another message to Your Highness – and Sir Lorn – and it includes Peter and me too. It is an invitation to supper this evening.”

Torrice sighed.

“Supper with a mourning widow.” he muttered. “Do you know, dear lads,” he went on in a better voice, “I fear I took a strain in the spitting of that rogue Barl. It looked easy – but the fact is, I’m a shade past my physical prime. A wrench when the full weight of man and horse was arrested by my point, you understand. A wrench of the back, which has already extended upward to the neck – a thing not to be disregarded, especially at my age. I have seen young knights incapacitated for days by just such wrenches. I shall stop here and rub my neck with tallow. See – I can hardly turn my head. And I am sure that my company would be of no more comfort to the bereaved chatelaine than her tears and moans would be to me. With a grandson and two squires to represent me at the supper table, I shall rest here on my cot with an easy conscience, no matter how uneasy a neck.”

Again Gervis slanted a glance at Peter; and this time it was returned.

“Then we may go, sir?” cried Gervis, joyously.

Torrice regarded him with raised brows.

“It is the wine, sir,” said Peter. “Gervis enjoys his cup. Dame Clara is very hospitable. We have tasted her wine already, sir. Wines, I should say – various but all rare. The despoilers did not get into the cellar. Old Sir Gayling’s father was a collector of vintages from many lands, but Sir Gayling drank only milk and whey, it seems. And the lady said that she would produce even rarer vintages at supper than those already tasted by Gervis and me. And the butler told me there will be a lark-and-pigeon pie for supper.”

“And strawberries and a sillabub,” said Gervis.

“Say you so?” murmured the King; and he bent his brows and stroked his whiskers consideringly. “Poor lady! She might take it to heart, as an affront – my refusal of her hospitality. I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but neither do I want her or any woman to think me discourteous, which she might if I excused myself on the plea of a crick in the neck. So, on second thoughts and for our common credit in the poor dame’s eyes, I shall go, and grin and bear it.”

Sir Lorn, who had lain flat and motionless and silent on a cot throughout the conversation, now swung his feet to the ground and sat up and spoke in a dull voice.

“I’ll stay here. The poor lady owes me nothing at all – neither supper nor thanks.”

“Nonsense!” his grandfather protested. “You pulled down the biggest of them all – and you afoot! No champion in Arthur Pendragon’s train could have done it better, my dear boy.”

“And to what end, sir?” Lorn muttered. “I pulled down the biggest rogue from the biggest horse – and they are gone unscathed, man and horse! But your rogue, and all the rest of them, are buried deep, and their good horses are ours. Peter and Gervis bloodied their swords, and the grooms their knives. Only I failed in duty. I’ll stop right here, sir, by your leave.”

But after half an hour of argument – in which Gervis was almost as voluble as the King, and even Peter grumbled and swore in support of the majority argument – Sir Lorn gave in.

Joseph reappeared at the pavilion to escort the guests to the manor house. The dwarf was still in green, but now of silk and velvet instead of wool. The knights and squires were sumptuously garbed. Having arrayed himself as if for a royal feast at Westminster or the court of Camelot, the King had insisted that Lorn and the squires should help themselves to what remained of his extensive wardrobe. Sir Lorn and Peter had accepted no more of this additional finery than could be politely avoided, but young Gervis had taken full advantage of the opportunity. They made the short passage from pavilion to great house on foot, with Joseph strutting before. People came running.

“Mark His Kingship’s mortal great whiskers with more hair in them than three horses’ tails!” cackled a toothless gaffer.

“I vum they be all kings an’ princes,” shrilled a woman.

A young man cried: “It was him – the old gentleman – as run a spear through Sir Barl – through shield an’ mail an’ breastbone – like skewer through duckling.”

Another cried: “And I see the big young prince there pull Sir Drecker to earth like a sack of corn an’ set dagger to gullet – an’ Sir Drecker get up an’ run an’ ride away with his head half cut off.”

“Not so!” cried the first. “I see that too, but not like that, Dickon Cowherd. I was up in the pollard willow. I see the prince spare his gullet, an’ kick his ribs, an’—”

“Mind your manners, you louts!” screamed the dwarf, with a baleful glare around and a hand at his belt.

*    *    *

It was still daylight without, but the torches flared and smoked in the great hall. The tottering major-domo met King Torrice and his companions at the threshold and led them within. Joseph ran ahead and disappeared. The guests advanced slowly on the heels of the house-steward. The King looked about him alertly, narrowing his eyes against the wavering reds and blacks of flames and shadows. He observed trophies of arms and the chase on the walls – weapons of chivalry and venery of an earlier time, and moth-eaten boars’ heads with upthrust tusks, and pale skulls and horns of stags and wild bulls, and one even of a unicorn; and toothy masks of wolves, badgers, wildcats, otters and a dragon; but though he gave the green fangs and leathery forked tongue of the dragon a second glance – an inferior specimen, in his opinion, obviously – his concern was for the weapons.

He stepped twice from his place in the slow procession to jiggle antique swords in their sheaths, and nodded at finding that they would come clear easily, despite the dust of idle years. He glanced and smiled meaningly at his grandson and over a shoulder at the squires. Peter and Gervis grinned and nodded back at him. Good old Torrice! Always the gentleman! He would as lief and as likely be seen consorting with murderers as wearing arms and armor – little begemmed daggers are but table-gear – when supping with ladies; but to ascertain the whereabouts of the nearest weapons, just in case of accident, was no breach of etiquette.

The major-domo drew aside a curtain of arras and stood aside with it, bowed low. The King and Sir Lorn halted and blinked, and the squires halted at their heels and blinked past their shoulders. For a moment, all their eyes were dazed by the shimmer and shine of tapers. For a moment it seemed to them that the place was full of slender, pointed yellow flames, and gleams and sparkles of fire from metal and crystal.

“Welcome, King Torrice,” said a lilting voice. “Welcome, Sir Lorn. Welcome again, friends Peter and Gervis.”

And now they saw her, but vaguely and glimmeringly at first, like a face and form materializing from the sheen and soft radiance about her, but more clearly as she approached, and definitely when she stood within a small step of the King and extended a hand.

“This – forgive me, my dear! Your Ladyship must try to excuse me – forgive me – my confusion – surprise,” he stammered.

“You are forgiven,” she murmured, and laughed softly.

He sank on one knee, took the proffered hand lightly and pressed his lips gallantly to the bejeweled fingers, while his twirling wits cried a warning between his ears:

“This isn’t real – nor right! More devilment of Merlin’s, this – or worse! Have a care, old fool!”

But he was smiling blandly when he straightened his knees and released her hand, though he staggered slightly and blinked again.

Now the lady gazed at Lorn, and he stared back at her. She smiled a little with her bright, soft mouth; and her eyes – whatever their color in honest sunlight – were black and warm and limpid. But his eyes were clouded strangely, and his lips unsmiling. She put out her hand shyly and uttered a shy, tender whisper of soft laughter. Then he knelt lightly, took and kissed her fingers and rose lightly to his feet again – but to sway and stagger for a moment, and steady himself with a fumbling hand on the King’s shoulder. Squire Peter saluted the lady’s hand without kneeling to it, but his face and the back of his leathery neck were red as fire. Squire Gervis put even the King’s courtly gesture to shame, and kept his lips on the jeweled and scented fingers so long that he might well have been testing the pearls in the rings.

The guests found themselves at table: but how this came about, not one of the four could have told you. It was a round table, and not large. It was spread with damask as white and bright as snow, and illuminated by scores of beeswax tapers in tall, branched sticks of silver; and there were other clusters of tapers in sconces on the walls. Stemmed cups of foreign crystal as fragile as bubbles to the eye, and vessels of gold and silver, some of them studded with gems, glowed and glinted like flowers and stars. Behind one chair stood the major-domo in his robes of office, with the manikin beside him, and behind each of the others stood an ancient footman in a livery of murrey and pea-green laced with tarnished silver. There were only five chairs. There was but the one lady present. The King and Peter were on her right, and Sir Lorn and Gervis on her left – but thanks to the smallness and shape of the table, none was far removed from her. In fact, the squires could gaze at their ease, whereas their masters had to turn their heads slightly to look at her.

“My companion, the damosel Mary, is indisposed, but hopes to join us later, with her harp,” the lady informed them all, but with her gaze and smile on the King.

Torrice acknowledged the information with a feeble smirk. He was still mazed. He had braced himself to meet the lachrymose gratitude of a bereaved dame of advanced age, and heartbreaking pleas for further relief. And what had he met? Could this be the widow of a doddering old stargazer? He had seen, and had to do with, beauties in every court in Christendom, and dames and damosels of devastating charms in many sylvan bowers and remote castles, and – or was this but vain thinking? – ladies whose enchantments were more than human, without losing his freedom for long at a time. And to lose it now! His very soul, at last! Nay, it could not be! Not his free and questing soul! He would not believe it. He glanced past her, at his grandson. Lorn was staring fixedly to his front, with a pale face. Torrice glanced farther, at young Gervis, who was regarding their hostess with bright-eyed, pink-faced and rapturous ardor. He looked at Peter, hoping that his practical, unvisionary, tough ex-groom at least would be unaffected by this thing which had already enmeshed his gentler companions. But not so! That matter-of-fact young man was gaping even more ardently than Gervis.

Yellow wine was poured. It made giant topazes of the cups of crystal. The lark-and-pigeon pie was served. The King had set out with a fine appetite, but where was it now? He had only a thirst now. He drained his cup. It was refilled, and so he emptied it again. The squires also had lost their appetites and retained their thirsts. But the young knight, it seemed, had lost both. Of the five, only the lady comported herself without sign of mental or emotional disturbance. She sipped the yellow wine occasionally and composedly, but not – so Torrice observed excitedly – from a bubble of rare glass, but from the little silver-gilt cup of his giving.

And when he saw, at that incomparable white throat, the modest necklace which he had sent to her, a confusion of shame and exultation all but suffocated him. Why had he not sent his finest remaining string of emeralds, or of diamonds or rubies, or brought it in his pouch? Why had he ever distributed such things – priceless treasures all from the secret and immemorial treasure-chest of Har – to the right and the left up and down the world and over the years? He moaned at the thought of the wasted expenditures of his lifelong quest. No exception could be taken to the quest itself, as he had proved on the bodies of hundreds with spear and sword: but it graveled him now to recall, however mistily in most instances, the innumerable necks and bosoms of beauties – aye, and the wrists and fingers – adorned by him on his long and crooked road to Beauty herself.

For he could not doubt he had found her – Beauty herself, soul and body in one – though this astounding realization was tinged with a fearful reluctance and a sense of weariness that was almost of despair. His crystal cup was shining like a topaz again. He drained it once more and sighed profoundly. So this was the end of the high quest! And the achievement was as dust and ashes in his heart and mouth – in the heart and mouth of an old man. For Merlin had destroyed his dream of immortal manhood. Now he mourned the fact that his quest had not lasted out his mortal life. Now he knew that, however far he might ride in the months or years remaining to him, the marvel he had sought would lie behind him, found by him, but not for him to grasp.

His crystal cup glowed again, but now redly like a great ruby. He drained it. He turned his head and met her questioning gaze. Or was it questioning? Or telling? Whichever – whatever – it held his own gaze fast.

“Who are you?” he asked; and his voice sounded strange to him, and from far away.

She whispered, leaning a little to him and smiling: “I am the lady of the manor.”

He said: “You are very young, and Sir Gayling was old – but not so old as I.”

She veiled her eyes and unveiled them instantly, even brighter, and deeper, and kinder than before.

“You are not old like poor Gayling. He was so old that only the stars were old enough for him to love. But I know about you, King Torrice of Har, who have kept a young heart without the help of sorcery, on a high quest. Oh, a mad quest – of pleasure and excitement and change: but you called it noble, and by a noble name – the Quest of the Soul of Beauty.”

“It is noble,” he protested, but weakly. He tried to avoid her gaze, but in vain.

“I am a poet too – not only a knight-at-arms, not only a lord of lands,” he went on confusedly. “Beauty! I have sought her at peril of limb and life, at cost of blood and treasure. The Soul of Beauty. I have made songs to her: the best in all Christendom. They have been stolen and sung by generations of jinking troubadours. But I am not the Lord God, nor Archangel Michael, nor even a sneaking wizard, to know soul from body at a glance. There was Lorn’s grandmother. There was nothing of beauty there deeper than her skin. And the Princess of Castile, with – but what matter now? It was long ago.”

“And now you have given up,” she sighed, and withdrew her gaze.

He saw that the cup of crystal had become a glowing ruby again; and again he turned it back to a bubble of air.

“No, I have found you,” he muttered. “Beauty! Soul and body in one. And mortal. And I am mortal – but old – as old as Merlin; but not ageless, like that warlock. There is nothing now – the quest ended – only the hope for a quick end left – and God’s mercy!”

She looked at him. His head drooped, and he stared down at his trencher with unseeing, desolated eyes. She glanced to her left. The young knight, staring fixedly at a candle-flame, paid no heed. She smiled at the squires, both of whom were regarding her ardently. She turned back to the old King.

“I know all about you and your quest, and the Irish grandson and the trick Merlin played you, long ago, in the guise of a hag in a red cloak,” she said.

“The old palmer told you,” he muttered. “He was Merlin.”

She laughed softly.

“Yes, he was that warlock, that poor palmer. Do you think I did not know? Or that I did not know about you without any help from him? Look at me.”

He looked at her. She smiled and touched his nearer wrist with light finger-tips.

“Do you see that for which you have quested and bled, and kissed and ridden away from, all your long, mad life?”

He nodded and moaned.

“Nay, do not grieve, dear Torrice. You are old, ’tis true – but the beauty you quested for is old too. And I am old too.”

“Are you? What are you?” he gasped.

“Are you afraid of me – even if I am a sorceress?” she sighed.

Was It Sorcery or Inspiration?

“It was the wines – yellow and red and green,” moaned the King.

“And pink,” moaned Gervis.

“Pink? Nay, I saw no pink. What did you see, Lorn? Did you see a pink wine?”

“No sir, only yellow – and I drank but two cups,” mumbled the young knight, who stood steadily enough, but with a hand to his brow and his eyes burning in his pallid face.

“There were wines of every color,” said Peter thickly, “and I drank them all – like one bewitched.”

“And you’re drunk!” Torrice cried fretfully. “You too, Gervis! Me too! But you, dear lad? You must be sober – on two cups.”

“I don’t know,” muttered Lorn.

“You can’t be otherwise, dear lad. Two cups. Tell me what you saw. Tell me of this Dame Clara. She looked very young to me. How did she look to you?”

“Yes sir. Very young.”

“And – ah! – comely?”

“Beautiful!” cried Gervis, springing to his feet, only to reseat himself as suddenly and clasp his head again.

Lorn nodded.

“And you found her beautiful, dear lad?”

Lorn nodded again. Squire Peter uttered a short, harsh note of despairing laughter.

“Why don’t you say it?” he cried. “Drunk or sober, you could see she’s beautiful! I could see she’s beautiful, and I’m not afraid to say so – tell the world – mauger my head! Me, stable-born! That lady’s beautiful, I say! Rose of the world! Who says she isn’t?”

“You are drunk, good Peter,” said the King. “Calm yourself. My poor brains are jangled enough without your unmannerly howls. Nobody says she’s not beautiful. I asked for a sober man’s opinion, that’s all.”

Peter muttered an apology and hung his head.

“Sir, I’m not sober, but I want to say that I think as you do, Your Highness – Your Majesty,” said young Gervis, speaking with care and a look of profound deliberation. “I think – my studied opinion, sir – she is everything you named her in your wonderful song.”

“What’s that?” cried King Torrice. “What song?”

“Your latest, sir – and most wonderful, in my humble opinion. The one you sang tonight.”

“You’re mad! I did not sing tonight. But hold! Or did I? Now that you mention it, I seem to – but no, I’d remember it – unless I was bewitched!”

“Gervis speaks truth,” said Sir Lorn, gravely and sadly. “You sang tonight, sir; and it was a song I had never heard before, and the best I have ever heard. It was after the Damosel Mary played her harp and sang a few ditties.”

The King protested that he knew nothing of it.

“Then you were bewitched in very truth,” said his grandson. “For she made a great to-do with the biggest harp I ever saw.”

“And a voice to match it,” said Peter.

Torrice protested ignorance again, but uncertainly.

“And yet you left your seat and went to her and took the harp from her,” said Gervis. “You must remember that, sir! Your eyes were wide open. And Lady Clara said to the damosel, who tried to push you away – and she was old enough to be Lady Clara’s grandmother: ‘Let him have it, Mary.’ So she let Your Majesty have it, but with a scowl on her face. Then you made a song to Lady Clara. You sang like a flute, sir, and now and again like a trumpet, but mostly like a flute; all the while the harp sobbed and sighed and hummed like little breezes in a forest of pines. You called her Beauty and Desire, sunshine and moonlight and star-shine, saint and enchantress, Love and Life and Immortality, goddess and witch, a rose and a dew-drop and a star, and by some heathenish names I had not heard before. And Lady Clara wept but did not hide her face, and smiled through her tears. And the ancient damosel covered her face with her hands, and so did Sir Lorn, and even Peter had to wipe his eyes.”

The King turned a troubled, inquiring face to his grandson.

“It is the truth,” said Sir Lorn grimly.

The King looked at Peter.

“It is Christ’s truth,” honest Peter told him, gruffly. “Nay, Satan’s, more likely! You were bewitched and bedeviled, sir. No mortal man – not the best poet in the world – could make such a song else – nor any drink from this side heaven or hell!”

“Inspiration!” cried Torrice fretfully. “Must you bawl witchcraft and deviltry just because I make a good song? I’m a poet. Pure inspiration. But as I cannot recall it – song nor incident – not clearly . . . . The wine may have something to do with it. But enough of this! Let me sleep now. We all need sleep.”

“May I suggest, sir, that Duke Merlin bedeviled the wine?” ventured Gervis.

“Hah – that old trickster!” the King exclaimed. “What more likely – since he brought us here on his bedeviled horseshoes? He doesn’t love me, that warlock! He first tricked me long ago, in the matter of an elixir. And today he stayed Lorn’s dagger from Drecker’s throat. And tonight those wines! We must be on our guard every moment, at every step. But now let me sleep!”

After a little while of grumbling and uneasy tossing, the dark pavilion was silent save for the old King’s fitful and uneven snores, and the occasional sighs and moans of his companions. Every one of them suffered strange dreams. Torrice fought with a knight in black armor, both of them afoot in dry sand, until arms and legs ached with weariness; and his sword broke on the black helmet, but that same stroke brought the sable knight groveling in the sand; and when Torrice tore away the helmet – behold, the thing disclosed was a fleshless, eyeless skull! He had done battle with a dead man.

And Sir Lorn wandered about the margins of autumnal tarns and in desolate mountain gorges with red sunsets flaring at their far ends. And the squires pursued damosels who turned into hags in red cloaks, and creatures of mist and moonshine, and hedge-goblins and young dragons, between their hands. All were dreams of ill omen, according to the best authorities; so it was fortunate that only illusive and elusive fragments remained with the dreamers when they woke . . .

It was another fine summer morning. Sir Lorn, who had taken only two cups of the Lady Clara’s yellow wine, was the first of the four cavaliers to wake. He went out from the pavilion softly and into a new world of level sunshine and dew-washed greenery. His eyes were clear, but his mind and heart were darkened by dream-shadows. As he looked about him, the shadows withdrew. He saw Goggin and Billikin busy among the horses; and he heard them too, for the lively fellows were whistling to match the birds in the willows and orchards. Observing the increase of the herd by the five big black chargers, yesterday flashed on his mind like pictures:

Five strange horses? Five instead of six! He alone had failed to contribute a good beast to the herd and a dead rogue to the common grave! Again he saw Drecker galloping off unscathed; and he blushed with shame. To blame the warlock Merlin did not occur to his honest mind. He blamed his own faint heart. To slay a man horsed and spear in hand, or afoot and sword in hand on even terms, had never distressed him greatly, for he had never – unless in that time of which he had no clear memory? – engaged to the death with any save tyrants and murderers and false knights of sorts; but to kill one beaten and disarmed and squealing for mercy, he lacked the required hardihood. He knew this, and felt guilt and shame. And then he thought of that old questing king-errant his grandfather, asleep there in the pavilion behind him. He had seen that champion in six mortal combats, but never had he seen him put a disarmed and beaten foe to death.

So he thought less shamefully now of having spared that false knight.

Young Gervis issued from the pavilion and greeted his master with a merry face. Sir Lorn regarded him with surprise, having expected to see pallid cheeks and bleary eyes.

“It was faery wine of a certainty, sir, for even if I had drunk as little last night as you did, I swear I’d feel no brighter than I do,” babbled the squire. “And I pray the same for the King and Peter. I suffered some horrid dreams – but they have fled already, glory be to the holy saints! And now to bathe and shave, sir.”

“Shave what?” Lorn asked gravely.

“I have numerous sprouts, sir,” Gervis informed him proudly; “and ’tis a full sennight since I last laid steel to them. And may I venture to suggest that a touch of the razor might become you as well, sir; for I seem to remember having noticed something last night – and that by the dazzle of tapers. We may meet her again – the lady of the manor, that is to say! – at any moment; and in broad daylight, I hope. That’s to say, I hope the King doesn’t intend to ride away without seeing her again.”

Lorn fingered his chin and cheeks thoughtfully, and puckered his brow, before he replied:

“I hope not. He can’t do that. She – these defenceless people – are still in peril. It is my fault, for letting Drecker escape. So it is my duty to remain till all danger from Drecker is past. He will see that, at a word from me – my grandfather will. And I think you are right about my face. But my razor is duller than a hedger’s hook.”

“You may use mine. It is of Damascus steel and honed to a whisper. Come down to the river, sir, and we’ll both use it.”

So they went down to a screened pool in the river and bathed and shaved. They were joined there by Peter, who raised his eyebrows for a moment in acknowledgement of their smooth faces, but reported matter-of-factly that he had inspected the horse-lines and found all correct.

“The shoes?” murmured Lorn.

“Every shoe still firm in its place,” Peter assured him.

“Is the King awake yet?” asked Lorn.

“He was combing essence of lavender into his beard when I saw him last,” said Peter.

Gervis laughed and said: “A dash of the same, and a touch of the razor, would not be amiss with you, my Peterkin.”

Peter nodded, stepped close to his fellow squire, took the razor of Damascus from unresisting fingers, and a little vial of crystal from Gervis’ wallet with his other hand, and knelt and stooped to the mirror of the pool – all without a word or a smile. Merry young Gervis laughed again.

“But that’s not lavender, my Peterkin! ’Tis essence of laylock.”

“Anything will serve but essence of horse,” muttered Peter.

Gervis winked at Sir Lorn.

“There’s sorcery in it, by my halidom!” he cried, and laughed again. “And sorcery more potent than any of old Duke Merlin’s hocus-pocus. When did our Peterkin ever before prefer lavender or laylock to honest horse?”

“I don’t agree with you,” Lorn said gravely. “I think all this babbling of witchcraft is childish – in this case. It is all quite human and natural – especially for Peter to become more particular about his toilet, no matter how suddenly. As for your faery wine – it was good wine, pure and old, that’s all. There’s no sorcery here.”

“I but joked, sir,” Gervis replied. “But you cannot deny enchantment. There was enchantment last night of more than the juice of earthy grapes, else how did the King come to make that song, and sing it like an angel, without knowing anything about it?”

“Inspiration – as he told us himself,” said the knight; but his tone was more troubled than assured. “He is, in truth, a great poet. I admit that the wine he drank made him forget the performance when we told him of it last night – but I think we shall find that he can recall it now, and even the words and air of the song.”

They returned to the pavilion, leaving Peter still splashing and scraping.

“Look there!” gasped Gervis, gripping his master’s arm.

They stood and looked. The curtains of the pavilion’s doorway were drawn back to right and left, and King Torrice sat smiling out at them across a table bright with napery and silver dishes and polished horns and flagons. Behind him stood the manikin Jospeh and one of the ancient footmen.

“Fried trout and hot scones!” he cried. “Strawberries and clotted cream. Brown ale and dandelion wine. Lady Clara sent it over. Come and eat, dear lads. No time to spare. Where’s Peter?”

“No time to spare?” Lorn echoed. “What d’ye mean, sir? You cannot possibly intend to take the road today, dear sir – and that parlous rogue I spared, foul Drecker, still at large?”

“Certainly not!” retorted the King, fretfully, with a quick change of countenance for the worse. “We recognize our responsibilities, I hope. I said nothing of taking to the road again.” His merry smile flashed again. “We are to attend Lady Clara on a tour of inspection of her demesne, to see what damage it has suffered. She sent word of it with our breakfasts. Half-armor and swords. All six of us mounted.”

Both Sir Lorn and Gervis looked their relief. They took their places at the table and ate and drank as if for a wager. Peter arrived, smelling like a spring garden, and with his face shining like a summer apple; and upon hearing the King’s news, he sat down and fairly gobbled and guzzled.

They paraded in the forecourt of the great house within the hour. Sir Lorn was up on his white stallion, but the King rode the black charger from which he had so recently hurled the late Sir Barl. The squires were on black warhorses too, and the grooms Goggin and Billikin forked the squires’ lively hackneys. All six wore breastplates and long swords, but there was not a helmet among them. The King’s, Lorn’s, Peter’s and Gervis’ caps were of crimson velvet, and the grooms’ were of leather. The gentlemen sported long feathers in theirs, the knights’ fastened with gold brooches and the squires’ with silver. The Lady Clara appeared from the gloom within and paused under the arch of the doorway, with the Damosel Mary, seemingly old enough to be her grandmother, blinking over her shoulder. The King and Sir Lorn and the squires came to earth and louted low, caps in hand, like one man. The lady blushed like a rose and curtseyed like a blowing daffodil. She was encased in samite of white and gold, and from the white wimple which framed her face soared a pointed hat like a steeple with veils of golden gauze floating about it like morning clouds.

“Our jennets were stabled beyond the wall – and carried off to the forest, saddles and all; so Mary and I must go afoot,” she cried in pretty distress.

“Nay, our horses are at your service,” the King told her. “Choose any two that take your fancy, my dear.”

“Gramercy!” she laughed. “But the saddles?”

“Hah!” Torrice exclaimed; and he regarded the great war saddles with baffled looks.

Then Gervis spoke up, in dulcet tones.

“If I may venture a suggestion, Your Majesty and Your Ladyship, I suggest pillions. And may I add that this newly acquired steed of mine is as gentle and easy-gaited as a jennet for all his size and strength, and is therefore peculiarly suited to the task of carrying double.”

Torrice eyed him dubiously, then turned a glance of doting inquiry upon Dame Clara.

“The very thing!” she cried, with a swift widening and half-veiling of her multi-colored eyes; and she turned her head and called for two pillions.

(Lorn thought: “I can’t make out their color, even by daylight; and they are not always black by candlelight.” Something with a sharp, hot edge stirred in his brain. Memory? A thin splinter of it from that lost time by which he was haunted night and day, and yet of which nothing remained to him save the sense of loss? He tried, fearfully yet hopefully, to remember. He racked brain and heart cruelly but in vain. He sighed.)

Two of the ancient footmen brought two pillions and followed their mistress and the Damosel Mary down the steps. Dame Clara, moving very slowly because of the attentions of King Torrice and the squires, inspected and seemed to consider each of the four chargers, and spared gentle glances even for the hackneys upon which Goggin and Billikin sat like seasoned men-at-arms.

“May I sit behind you?” she asked the King.

His eyes shone, and his lavender-scented whiskers rippled. He strapped a pillion to the back of his saddle with his own hands, mounted with but little apparent effort, leaned and held down his right hand. A hand touched his, a foot touched his stirruped foot, and she came up to the pillion like a white bird. From that soft perch she pointed at Sir Lorn’s saddle with her left hand, while holding fast to the King’s belt with her right. And so it was that the Damosel Mary had a higher seat than the lady of the manor, by half a hand. Lorn’s face wore a polite smile which was entirely muscular. His eyes were blank. Gervis looked dismally dashed, and Peter grinned derisively. As the little cavalcade moved off, the manikin Joseph leaped up behind Peter.

“What else would happen to me?” Peter grumbled.

“Worse might have happened to you, my friend,” said the dwarf. “Would you liefer it was the big damosel gripping you about the middle, as she even now grips the young knight? You might do far worse than ride double with poor Joseph.”

“I am glad to hear it, since I seem to have no choice in the matter,” said the squire. “But will you be so kind as to tell me why?” he added.

“There are many reasons why,” the dwarf replied. “One is, I was born with seven wits, whereas you and your grand friends have only five – and those somewhat deranged in the cases of your old King and your young knight. But I was born with seven, but at a sad cost to flesh and bone. If I had your stature, King Arthur Pendragon would be taking his orders from me.”

“I believe it,” said Peter, with mock solemnity. “I feel your power and see it in your eye, but I don’t quite understand it. I never before met a person possessed with seven wits. Is it the power of knowledge or wisdom or cunning?”

“Of all three,” the dwarf answered, complacently. “I know everything; I understand everything; and I can think as quick and crooked as any witch or wizard.”

“In that case, you would know Duke Merlin if you saw him.”

“Yes, it was that old warlock brought you here, though he pretended to be a holy palmer. But he didn’t fool me. He drank two quarts of wine and took the road to Camelot. He said he was going to Tintagel, but I knew better.’

“You are wonderful, Master Joseph. Now tell me why you and Merlin brought us to this place?”

“To rid the lady of her oppressors.”

“So they are friends – your mistress and Merlin?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Joseph said: “No, it was old Sir Gayling, the stargazer, who was Merlin’s friend.”

“And yet Sir Gayling was stabbed to death in a rose-garden, while his friend the powerful magician played his hocus-pocus elsewhere,” sneered Peter.

“As to that, my friend, I could enlighten you if I would, but I know without trying that it would be too much for your five poor wits,” the dwarf replied, in a voice so insufferably supercilious that Peter was hard put to it to control an impulse to reach a hand behind him and brush the little man to the ground. “However,” Joseph resumed, “I shall satisfy your curiosity concerning the Dame Clara.”

But, at that very moment, King Torrice drew rein at a word from his passenger; whereupon Sir Lord drew rein, and Peter drew rein, and the dwarf slid to the ground, and every rider drew rein. Peter and Gervis fairly flung themselves from their saddles in desperate competition for the honor of dismounting Dame Clara from the King’s pillion. Gervis won. The lady descended to earth like a feather, and the King followed her down smartly.

All were down now save Sir Lorn and his passenger from the back of the mighty Bahram. The knight could not dismount in the orthodox manner while Damosel Mary remained up behind him; and he was not in the mood to sacrifice his own dignity, not to mention proud Bahram’s, by quitting the saddle with a forward, instead of a backward, swing of the right leg. His grandfather and the squires were too intent upon Lady Clara to perceive his difficulty; and it was not until the dwarf had pinched both the squires, and Peter had come – however ungraciously – to his rescue, that he dismounted.

Afoot, they inspected a farmstead in which the farmer had been murdered and from which five beeves had been driven into the forest by the Drecker gang and there handed over to confederate but less daring outlaws, and a bag of silver pieces taken and pouched by that rogue knight himself; a second farm from which a dairymaid and cheeses and barrels of ale had been carried off after the murder of a stubborn cowherd; and a third in which the master had been tickled with knives – he was still in bandages – until he had handed over all his life’s hoardings of ducats and crowns. And all this was no more than a representative fraction of the villainies perpetrated by the scoundrel Drecker.

“I don’t understand this,” said King Torrice, who had suffered more footwork and more emotional strain than he could endure with manly resignation. “Are your people mice? Nay, for mice will fight. Then why didn’t the rogues make a job of it, instead of only killing and thieving a little every here and there? Why didn’t he put your own house and household to the torch and sword? Hah! – now I recall what the manikin told me – that the foul Drecker aspired to your hand!”

He leaned against his horse and clapped a hand to his brow. The lady hung her head and touched a very small handkerchief to her eyes. Sir Lorn moved close to her; and if he thought, it was sub-consciously. Without a word, and with a dazed, far-away look in his eyes, he laid a hand on her nearer arm and propelled and guided her, gently but firmly a few paces aside to where his great white stallion stood watching them. King Torrice lowered his hand from his fretful brow and blinked after them, but before he could utter a word of inquiry or protest, his squire Peter spoke at his shoulder.

“Sir, I’ve but now heard it all from her dwarf. Let us mount and ride into the fields, and I’ll tell you the whole story.’

There was no argument. The King mounted with alacrity, though a trifle stiffly. He was eager to hear what trusty Peter had heard from the lady’s dwarf, and even more eager to get his weight off his poor feet.

The Dwarf Told Peter and Peter Told the King

The Dame Clara (so Peter told King Torrice) was one of four daughters of a gentleman of remote kinship with the late rich and star-struck old philosopher of Joyous Vale. The father, when young and single, had cut a dash in the train of old King Uther Pendragon for a few years, but had been cheated out of all his patrimony by certain fashionable companions; and too hot of head to retire from court gracefully, he had brawled with, and mortally wounded, one of the cheaters in the King’s own hall; and so he had fled for his very life and not stayed his flight save to sleep, and to eat when he could find food, until he was across the Marches of Wales.

A Welsh chieftain of the lesser and wilder sort – not one of the nine princes – had befriended and practically adopted him; and so, in due course, he had married a beautiful daughter of the chieftain. Married, as single, they had continued to live with her family in her parental home, which was a confusion of stone and timber towers and halls, and bowers and byres, overlooking a glen of crofts and huts, and itself overhung by a great forest of oaks. Strange to say, the life had suited him better than it had his mountain-bred wife. This had not been so in the first year, but with the arrival of the first daughter, and increasingly so with the arrival of each of the following three, the mother had bemoaned the lack of social opportunities for young ladies in those parts. But the exiled courtier had laughed at her – for he preferred his present to his past and looked to the future with gusto. In hunting wolves and bears and wild boars, in occasional armed clashes with encroaching neighbors or invading savages, and in less frequent but even more exciting raids into the Marches under the banneret of his father-in-law and the banner of Prince Powys, he had found life very much to his taste and nothing to worry about. But he had died in the course of one of those battles of the disputed Marches, leaving hundreds of mourners, chief of whom were his widow and four daughters.

Now for a jump of time and space to Sir Gayling of Joyous Vale. Hearing from a wandering soothsayer that the most knowledgeable of all living stargazers, and the one possessed of the finest astrolabe and cross-staff in the world, inhabited a high tower atop the highest mountain of Wales, Sir Gayling had set out to find him, accompanied by his squire and lifelong friend Master John of Yarrow (who was as old and almost as stargazy as himself) and a few servants. It was a most other-worldly and untraveled company, for the gentlemen had never before been farther afield than Salisbury, where both of them, as youths, had studied astrology and kindred sciences under the famous Friar Gammish; and the servants had never been out of the Vale.

But they went unmolested, day and night, league after league. Some took them for holy men, others for mental cases (and so equally under divine protection), and yet others for magicians or worse. Their innocence was their armor. Jinking thieves and all manner of roving, masterless knaves, shared the best of their stolen meats and drinks with them, and honest farmers and lords of castles alike entertained them honorably. They came into Wales in due course, unscathed and in good health, and Sir Gayling and Master John still keen in their pursuit of knowledge.

There they asked the way to the highest mountain in the world of everyone they met, and at every door, but the answers were mostly conflicting. One point which all their informants agreed upon, however, was that it was somewhere in Wales. In most cases, the person questioned simply pointed to the highest summit within his range of vision. Up and down, up and down and around, toiled the questers after stellar wisdom. They found the people hospitable but inconveniently scattered. They were glad when they came at last, after weeks of fruitless mountaineering, upon a narrow valley full of crofts. The crofters regaled them with strange and potent liquors and collops of venison, but it was not long before a little man in green came to them and requested them to follow him to his master.

It was the manikin Joseph himself; and his master was the father of the widow with four beautiful daughters. The chieftain was an old man by then, and the widowed daughter had silver in her black hair, and only one of the beautiful girls remained unmarried and at home. She was the youngest and the most beautiful – and, as you may have guessed, her name was Clara. The travelers were so well treated that they almost lost sight of their reason for being so far from home; and when the mountain lord himself had assured them, after mental searchings, that he had never heard of an outstanding Welsh stargazer in all his life, nor of an astrolabe, whatever that might be, but could name the world’s twenty greatest bards and harpers and ten greatest warriors, and all of them Welshmen, Sir Gayling decided to let the matter rest – and himself with it – for a few days. The cushion of the chair he sat in was softer than his saddle, and the bearskins underfoot did not cut and bruise like rocky mountain tracks.

Lapped in comfort, he drowsed while the widow told her romantic story, which was always in her heart and never far from her tongue. She began by telling him that her husband had been an English fugitive like himself, only larger and much younger. He protested sleepily that he was not a fugitive. She continued with a glowing description of her lamented partner, and a dramatic account of his career at King Uther’s court, his justifiable slaying of a false friend in the royal presence, and his subsequent flight. Sir Gayling, who had heard rumors of an affair of the kind a long time ago, bestirred himself sufficiently to inquire as to the gentleman’s name and style.

“Roland of Fenchurch, the Earl of Fenland’s third son,” the lady informed him proudly.

“I heard something of it at the time,” he replied; and he went on, though reluctantly, for he was still drowsy, to say that the Fenland family was distantly related to him on the spindle side.

As the lady accepted this information in silence (a very busy silence, but he didn’t know that), he thought no more of it till the following morning, when Master John told him that the widow had questioned him, John, exhaustively concerning Sir Gayling’s life, condition, affairs and establishment; and he confessed that he had answered her fully, though against his better judgment. The old squire was suspicious and uneasy, but the old knight laughed at him, saying that the lady’s curiosity was perfectly natural. Even when his anxious friend suggested that she was contemplating a second English marriage, he refused to be alarmed. Days and nights passed and ran into weeks – days of ease and good cheer, and nights in feather beds – so peacefully that Master John forgot his suspicions of the dame’s intentions and both old stargazers forgot their mission. Nothing in the place was too good for them, and their servants and horses grew fat and frisky with idleness and high living.

But this idyllic time came to an end. One morning the widowed daughter of the chieftain and mother of the beautiful damosel requested an astonishing service of the knight. Addressing him as Cousin Gayling, and with a hand on his shoulder and a compelling gleam in her eyes, she advised him to set out for home within the week, so as to establish Clara comfortably before the first hard frosts. The stargazer could only gape, at that: but when she added that Clara would prove to be the ideal wife for him, he cried out in agonized protest. She laughed at him kindly, even affectionately, and made known her plans to him patiently and with the utmost good humor, as if to a dull but beloved child. His continued protests became feebler and feebler, though no less agonized. The damosel herself was of no help to him. When he protested to her that she could not possibly want him for a husband, she contradicted him, politely but firmly.

Well, they were married by the domestic chaplain of Prince Powys before many witnesses. The bride and her mother were radiant, the company was merry; but Sir Gayling and Master John were dazed beyond words. They set out for home with a formidable escort, to which the prince and neighboring chiefs had contributed generously to assure them a safe passage of the Marches. Twenty leagues south of the border, the bulk of the escort turned about and withdrew. Only the bride and her grandfather, her mother, her harpist ex-governess the Damosel Mary, the family counselor Joseph and a score of clansmen on mountain ponies remained in addition to the original English party. Forty leagues farther on, every Welsh heart save Dame Clara’s, Damosel Mary’s and Joseph’s was seized by irresistible and unreasoning nostalgia for the mountains and airs of home; and in a fit of mob panic, the old chief and the widow and their highland cavalry wheeled about and headed back on the long road to Wales.

The ladies were somewhat dashed by that, but Sir Gayling, who had feared that his mother-in-law intended to make of Joyous Vale her permanent abode, congratulated himself and Master John . . . Two days later, they were joined by two cavaliers who introduced themselves as Sir Drecker and Sir Barl, knights-errant from King Arthur’s court. Their manners were excellent, and they made themselves very entertaining; especially Sir Drecker, and he very particularly to Sir Gayling and Master John, to whom he declared a keen interest in astrology – and a lamentable ignorance of it.

From then onward all the way to Joyous Vale, the two old stargazers belabored their pupil’s ears with stellar truths and mysteries. But the dwarf noted the furtive rovings and oblique glances of Drecker’s small but lively eyes. Trust Joseph – by his own telling! He warned his mistress against the stranger, and received in return an enigmatic smile. His warning to Sir Gayling won a promise of consideration upon the proper drawing up and study of Sir Drecker’s horoscope, which would require at least ten days. But Joseph continued to watch and suspect, wore a shirt of chain-mail under his tunic, and added a short sword to his armament of daggers.

They reached Joyous Vale in safety, however, and found all as the astrologers had left it five months before, save for a few natural deaths and those mostly of old age. Dame Clara established herself and her ex-governess in the best bedroom, and Sir Gayling and Master John returned thankfully to their old quarters and neglected telescope at the top of the tower and set to work on Sir Drecker’s horoscope. What might have happened if that task had been completed is anybody’s guess, for upon the departure of the self-styled knights-errant within the week, the astrologers laid it aside and forgot it in the pursuit of more abstruse stellar secrets.

Winter came and passed uneventfully. Sir Gayling and Master John were happy with their books and arguments, and since philosophically accepting the rumored Welsh astrologer and his peerless instrument as mere myths, with their telescope too. Also, they became aware of improvements in food and service, and the whole economy and atmosphere of the place; and each confessed to himself, though neither to the other, that the adventure into Wales had been nothing worse than a loss of time. April brought back Sir Drecker and Sir Barl. Drecker’s original intention was (by Joseph’s reckoning) to carry off Lady Clara and the old knight’s treasure-chests, but he changed it for the more ambitious plan of marrying the lady and settling down as a lord of lands. The first step toward his goal – the transforming of a wife to a widow – was mere child’s play for him, but then difficulties developed. The gates of the great house were closed and barred against him. Accepting that as a purely provocative gesture on the lady’s part, he subdued the tenantry, murdering and robbing and despoiling just enough to show her who was master, and bided his time.

That is the story, as told (rather more than less) by the Welsh manikin Joseph to the squire Peter and by the said Peter to King Torrice.

“It’s a queer tale, but I’ve heard queerer,” said the King. “How old did you say she is?”

“I didn’t say, but Joseph told me she will be eighteen very soon,” Peter answered.

“Eighteen or eight hundred,” the King muttered. “If but eighteen, how can she be what I believe her to be – the achievement and the end of my quest?” He looked at Peter keenly and added: “If that is the whole story, why has Merlin dragged us into the affair? He is not one to take all the trouble of conjuring up a forge and shoeing our horses just to save a distressed lady from a tyrant. But whatever and whoever she is, and whatever that old fox’s game may be, we are committed to her protection.”

He looked back at the farmyard from which he and his squire had come away and saw it empty. He turned the other way then, and looking widely over meadows and cornlands and orchards, saw the little cavalcade enter the outer court of the great house; and he sighed. Peter, who looked too and also saw that Lady Clara rode pillion with Sir Lorn, chuckled to see that Damosel Mary rode pillion with Gervis.

“This is no laughing matter,” the King reproved mildly; and he added: “Have you forgotten that the rogue Drecker is at large?”

Peter replied that he had not forgotten Drecker’s escape.

“Has it occurred to you that he will return some day, any day now, with all the cut-throats and robbers from forty leagues around at his heels?” demanded Torrice.

“It has, sir; but, knowing that you would bring the subject up in plenty of time for us to do something about it, I haven’t worried over it, sir,” replied Peter.

The King looked embarrassed and muttered: “I hope you are right, but I must confess that I had quite forgotten the peril we are in – not the rogue, but the menace of him – until now, God forgive me!”

The Lady Rides with a Hand on Sir Lorn’s Sword-Belt

The Lady Clara rode home on Sir Lorn’s pillion, up on the great white stallion Bahram.

“King Torrice told me of your quest,” she murmured.

He neither spoke in reply nor did he turn his head to glance at her. She murmured again, leaning a little closer to his apparently unresponsive back.

“But how can it be one and the same quest, if he searches for that which he has never known, and you for something you have known and lost?”

Lorn continued to gaze straight to his front in silence. The great warhorse’s advance was very slow, despite much showy action. He tossed his head and plumed his silver tail; but high though he lifted each massive hoof in turn, it was only to set it down softly on practically the same spot of ground.

“You heard his song?” she murmured. “The things he called me? Poor old man! – it must have been the wine he drank. If I am a wicked old witch, how can I be the end of his quest? And yet he truly believes me to be both, it seems – poor me! – and he is unhappy and afraid now for his quest’s end.”

“Not afraid,” he said. “Whatever he may believe, he is not afraid of it. He has never feared anything – neither its end nor its beginning.”

“Do you too take me for a witch?”

He let that pass.

She sighed: “You do not take me for the end of your quest, that is sure.”

Her right hand, which grasped his sword-belt, transmitted a slight quiver to her heart.

“He is mad, I fear, for how else could he think me beautiful? And now he is unhappy because of me, in his new madness, and you are still unhappy in your old madness. So your unhappiness is my fault too, for if I were actually as your dear grandfather sees me in his madness, you might forget your loss or mistake me for the lost one. But I am not, and you do not; and so two brave knights are unhappy because of me – one in the foolish belief that his quest is ended, and the other because he knows that he has not found what he seeks.”

Again her hand transmitted a quiver from his sword-belt to her heart. He spoke a word; but it was to Bahram, who instantly stopped his shilly-shallying and went forward at a purposeful walk. But not for long.

“I fear I’ll be shaken right off, at this pace,” the lady whispered.

At another word from Lorn, Bahram resumed his dilatory posturings.

“If I were a witch,” she said, “I would make myself appear to the king as you see me, and to you as he sees me.”

Though the only response she received was by way of the telltale belt, she smiled quite contentedly at the knowledge that, no matter how he might pretend to ignore her, she could make him tremble like a leaf . . .

Later, Dame Clara told one of the ancient servitors to find Joseph and send him to her. It took four of the old men the better part of an hour to carry out the order.

“Take my compliments to King Torrice, and remind him that I am expecting him and Sir Lorn and their gentlemen to supper,” she instructed the manikin. “And don’t take all night about it,” she admonished gently.

“They won’t come,” he said, consequentially. “Too busy. Even Sir Lorn is busy. And why shouldn’t he be busy now – that moonstruck quester! – since ’tis all the fault of his fuddling?”

Before Dame Clara could speak, for astonishment and indignation, Damosel Mary spoke.

“How now, little man? If you have forgotten my teachings of ten years ago, I shall have to take your education in hand again.”

Joseph had not forgotten. Sadly deflated, he recalled to mind the matter and the occasions referred to by the gray-haired damosel. That stalwart and learned governess had not confined her instructions to little Clara, but had given the household dwarf and mascot a course in manners that, being much needed and long overdue, had proved extremely painful to the recipient. Now he ducked and turned to slip out by the way he had swaggered in; but Lady Clara was upon him like a falcon on a partridge.

“No, you don’t!” she cried. “Oh, you saucy knave, how dare you speak so? For a pin, I’d send you back where you came from! Fuddling? What d’ye mean by that, you jackanapes? How dare you speak so of that – of your betters? For a pin – at one more word – I’ll shake you out of your boots, you wicked Joseph!”

She had him in both hands. Her face was pink; her eyes shot fire and her lofty head-dress was askew. She shook him like a clout.

“And quite rightly too,” said the old ex-governess judicially. “The silly rascal has outgrown his boots anyhow. But stay your hand, my dear, I beg you, so that he may tell us more of this business that’s afoot – unless he invented it to puff up his own importance – before he loses the power of speech, which might happen if he bit off his tongue.”

Clara complied instantly, but kept a grip on Joseph with one hand while straightening her headdress with the other.

“Now then, out with it!” she demanded, but in a softer and reasonable tone of voice. “Tell us what it is they are all so busy about.”

He hung limp and gasping in the grip of the small white hand and rolled his eyes piteously. Never before had he been treated with violence, or angry words even, by his beautiful young mistress.

“He needs wine, poor fellow!” she cried.

The damosel thought so too, and brought it quickly. He drained the cup and recovered his breath and something of his assurance.

“It’s the rogue Drecker,” he said.

“Drecker? But he’s gone,” the ladies protested.

“That’s it,” he said. “He’s gone, whole and horsed. Would they fear him now if he were dead and buried with the others? They’d not give him a thought. But now they must guard against his return.”

“But he dare not come back!” Clara cried.

The dwarf shot an oblique glance at Mary; and as she was not watching him, but gazing thoughtfully at nothing, he risked a sneer.

“Dare not?” he questioned, with curling lips. But he kept the curl out of his voice. “With all the outlaws of the forest at his heels? And this time it will be with fire and sword. This time he will take what he wants – and that will be what brought him here the first time, and everything else he can carry off – and hot torches and cold iron for the rest.”

“But our defenders?” she whispered. “They’ll not desert us!”

“Six,” Joseph said contemptuously. “They were enough against six – enough to slay five, anyway. But against sixty or eighty or a hundred? That will be another story.”

“Not so fast, little man,” the governess interrupted. “Why not a thousand, while you are about it? But tell me first, does Drecker’s army grow on trees?”

“You can say that,” the dwarf answered, with more than a hint of his old impudence. “On the ground under the trees, anyhow. Runaway serfs and all manner of masterless knaves, and Gypsies and thieving packmen and renegade warders and archers, and first of all, the band that has been receiving and marketing our beeves and cheeses all the while.”

“And just what have our defenders become so suddenly so busy about?” asked Damosel Mary.

“Bringing the people closer in, with their livestock and goods and gear, and setting them to work on walls and ditches, and making men-at-arms of clodhoppers,” Joseph told her, civilly enough.

“We must get busy too!” Clara cried. “We’re both good bowmen, Mary. We’ll teach the old men to shoot. My grandfather Cadwalledar made me a little bow when I was only four years old; and when I was six, I could pick his cap clean off his head without waking him up, at ten paces. I hit him only once, and that was only a scratch; but after that he always retired to his chamber for his naps. There must be scores of old bows and arrows somewhere about here. We’ll look high and low; and we’ll have new ones made, if need be. I know that one of the cooks used to be a bowyer. We’ll start now. Where has Joseph gone?”

“You let go of him, my dear,” said the damosel resignedly.

“Good riddance to him!” the dame cried. “He would only tell us where to look and then what to do and how. He will be much happier advising the King and Sir Lorn. Now to work!”

When Two Men Look out of One Man’s Eyes

There was little rest in Joyous Vale that night, either within or without the manor house. Lady Clara permitted only the oldest and shakiest members of the household to retire to their couches at the customary hour. As for the old ex-bowyer Tomkyn, it was long past midnight when he was allowed to creep off to bed; and as for the dame and the damosel, they heard the false dawn saluted by sleepy roosters. And so it was without, abroad over the whole manor to the edges of the forest on every side. By sunrise, every farmstead and croft had been warned and set astir by one or another of the King’s party, or by Joseph up on one of the King’s ponies: and when the chatelaine, wakened from a short sleep by the hubbub without, looked out from her high window, she rubbed her eyes and looked again. For the inner court was gay with the colored pavilions which Drecker and his rogues had pitched, and left perforce, under the willows beside the river. The chivalry had moved in. The outer courtyard was not so gay, but was far livelier. Here were tents of hide, makeshift shelters of spars and thatch, heaps of country provisions and household gear, pens of swine and poultry, excited women jabbering and gesticulating, gaffers seated on bundles of bedding, and barking dogs and shouting children dashing around.

The home orchard and paddocks also had undergone a startling change. The latter were alive with horned cattle and sheep, all in confusion and many in violent disagreement, and herds and woolly sheep-dogs trying to restore order and keep the peace with sticks and teeth. Through the orchard greenery appeared the tops of hastily constructed stacks of last year’s hay and straw, and arose the bellows, moos and bleats of more displaced livestock. Beyond all this moved wains and wheelless drags, horse-drawn and ox-drawn, the loaded approaching and the empty departing; and groups of rustics coming and going; and here and there a cavalier in half-armor riding this way or that.

Dame and damosel were back at their self-appointed tasks when King Torrice presented himself. He had been in the saddle sixteen hours, with two changes of horses, and yet looked fresh as a daisy. It was only leg and footwork, or sitting on chairs, that fatigued him.

“Lady, I crave your indulgence for the liberties I have taken with your people and property, and shall continue to take, for your own and their good – but all with due respect to your title and lordship, madam,” he pronounced.

Lady Clara dropped what she was about and jumped up and toward him, and extended both hands to him. Still regarding her gravely, he received her hands in his own, then blinked and started slightly and looked down curiously at the little hands in his big ones, at the right and at the left, then turned the right palm-upward and fairly stared at it, then the left and stared at it.

“Blisters!” he exclaimed.

“We have been making arrows, Mary and I,” she answered, gently and shyly. “And splicing old bows. And twisting and waxing bowstrings.”

He looked her in the eyes, then stooped over her hands again and touched his lips lightly to each of the blistered palms in turn, muttered “Gramercy, my dear!” and straightened and backed out by the way he had come in.

Clara returned to her work, but fumblingly. She blinked to clear her vision, and tears sparkled on her cheeks.

Mary eyed her thoughtfully.

“A grand old man,” said Mary. “Well, a grand old knight-at-arms, however – and as good a poet as any in Wales, even. But as simple and innocent as a baby, or poor Sir Gayling even, for all his questing and gallivanting; and I’d liefer have him for a battling champion, in the ding-dong of rescue and defence, than for a husband or father.”

“Is that so?” cried Clara. “I don’t believe it! We don’t know anything of him as a father, but we can see that he is a good grandfather to poor Lorn; and I have my own opinion as to what your answer would be if he asked you to marry him.”

“Fiddlesticks, my dear! And if you contemplate becoming the Queen of Har yourself – and a crook of your finger is all that’s needed – I advise you to be quick about it.”

Clara stared at her ex-governess and asked tremulously: “Why do you say that – and look so strange?”

“Because you have no time to lose; and if I look strange, who wouldn’t after glimpsing a dead man in a living man’s eyes?”

“What d’ye mean by that? Speak out, or I’ll shake you!”

“Calm yourself, child. I mean what I say. I saw him dead – that poor old King – just as surely as I foresaw your own grandmother dead while she was still walking and laughing, and just as surely as my grandsire True Thomas foresaw and foretold the death of King David at his marriage feast and was whipped for the telling. It is when you see two pairs of eyes glimmering in the eyeholes of the one head – and one pair of those eyes are cold and blind.”

Lady Clara cried out, “To the devil with your soothsaying!” and clapped her hands to her face; and her tears burned and stung the abraded palms. Mary sighed, brushed a furtive hand over her own still face and took up her work again.

*    *    *

At noon, Lady Clara told the major-domo to send Joseph to her. That important person received the command in silence, and with a weary shake of the head. He was thinking of the easy and peaceful years before poor dear Sir Gayling’s mad expedition into Wales. Those had been the times. There had been no big Welsh damosel then to drive honest men around every day with besoms and mops, in pursuit of honest dirt and dust and cobwebs; and no giddy young dame to demand gleaming crystal and shining plate, and tarts and jellies and custards for every meal till the cooks and scullions were fit to tear out their beards. And now it was worse. Now it was the very devil. Sweeping and scrubbing, and polishing and burnishing and cooking, had been hard enough on the poor fellows, but ferreting out ancient war-gear and repairing it, grinding edges onto rusty swords and axes, splicing old bows and whittling new bows and arrows, and being driven and drilled by Tomkyn the ex-bowyer, was harder.

“The whole world be turned upside-down,” grumbled the major-domo; and instead of going on the lady’s errand, he went in search of some hole or corner in which he might evade Tomkyns’ officious attentions for a little while. Imagine a major-domo hiding from a cook! Such a thing could never have been in the days of Sir Gayling. And so, quite naturally, the dwarf failed to answer his mistress’ summons; but Squire Gervis presented himself some three hours later, and quite of his own volition. He was dusty, but in high spirits. When he took Dame Clara’s proffered hand, he turned it over tenderly, gazed at it adoringly and said that he had heard about it from the King.

“How fares the dear King?” she asked softly.

“That old wonder-boy is as lively as a grig,” he replied enthusiastically. “And as merry too. And even Sir Lorn is companionable. That’s the way it always is with those two. The prospect of a fight, and never mind the odds against them, acts like mothers’ milk – if you’ll forgive the expression – on those mad questers.”

“Mad?” she whispered; and Damosel Mary looked up from her work with glue and feathers on a clothyard shaft and said, in the voice of a governess: “It’s a very wise man, or a fool, who dares cry ‘Mad!’ at his fellows.”

Unabashed, Gervis replied with unabated good humor:

“A fool, then! And in my folly I repeat that our noble friends are mad. Who but a madman would spend a hundred years and more – some say two hundred – in pursuit of the very thing from which he turns and flees whenever he catches up with it?”

“What thing is that?” murmured Clara.

“He calls it beauty,” he laughed.

“Nay, he calls it the soul of beauty,” she murmured.

He shrugged a shoulder delicately and winked politely.

“And what have you to say of Sir Lorn’s madness?” she asked gently.

“I’ll say that is different,” he answered, with a touch of gravity. “Who wouldn’t be mad, after a year in Færyland with the Maid of Tintagel, or Helen of Troy, or maybe it was Queen Mab herself? But he is mad, our poor Lorn; and it’s struck deep, else he would forget her now, whoever she was.”

He gazed adoringly into her eyes, and she smiled back very kindly, and a little sadly and with just a flicker of pity.

“It is sometimes difficult to distinguish madness from foolishness,” said Damosel Mary.

He turned to her and shook a playful finger, then turned back to Clara.

“I’ll tear myself away now, back to my duty, before one of those mad questers appears and drags me away ingloriously by the scruff of the neck – for my folly.”

And he was gone as lightly as he had come.

The Invading Horde

Dame Clara told the dwarf Joseph to take post on the tower and keep watch on the edges of the forest from dawn till dark: but he excused himself on the plea that he could not be spared from his duties as galloping aide-de-camp to King Torrice. This was on the night of the second day after the King’s and and Gervis’ visits. For two days and a night now the lady had been neglected by her champions, save for the verbal message from Torrice, by Joseph, to the effect that she had nothing graver to worry about now than the blisters on her pretty hands, and that he would compose another song to her as soon as the dastard Drecker reappeared and was finally disposed of.

“He sounds very sure,” she said to the messenger.

“And with reason,” he replied condescendingly. “We are ready and waiting for Master Drecker and his riff-raff. Every stratagem of defence and attack is planned; and we have made more than a score of men-at-arms, all horsed and harnessed and armed, out of your clodhoppers of yesterday.”

So Joseph escaped back to his active military duties; and at the first pale gleam of the next dawn, Lady Clara herself took post on the watch-tower, leaving the command and business of the household archery to Damosel Mary and the bowyer Tomkyn.

She peered down at a shadowy world, but not a sleeping one. A few dark figures moved to and fro about the inner court, and more in the outer court, and yet more in the paddocks beyond and about the edges of the home orchard; and her heart swelled wth gentle pride and sweet gratitude and perhaps with even tenderer emotions at the thought that she was the inspiration and first cause of this vigilance and devotion. She wept a little in happy sadness, but soon dried her eyes on the silken lining of one of the hanging sleeves of her green gown. As the clear light increased, rising and flooding, she saw more and more, and farther and farther. Thin feathers of smoke uncurled above the leafy roof of the orchard, the busy human figures increased in number and formless bulks and darkness took shape. Now she saw the abatis of new-felled forest trees which enforced and topped the old wall of tumbled field-stones around the home farm, and four massy clumps of leafy timber far out toward the four nearest screens of the surrounding forest, and each at a point where nothing taller than hay had grown previously.

By now she could see to the forest walls all around, beyond the farthest meadows and cornlands and deserted steadings. The forest edges to the westward, struck full by the level rays, showed leafy boughs and brown boles like a picture on tapestry, but to the eastward they were still gloomed with their own shadows . . . It was from the shadows that the first running figure appeared. It was of a tall man in leather, with a strung bow in his left hand. He checked for a backward look, then ran again. A horn brayed in the shadows and was answered from the right, and then from the left, as if by echoes. A second man in leather appeared, and three more a moment later, all running like partridges from the shadow of a stooping hawk. A leather cap lifted and fell to earth, leaving the shaggy hair of that runner streaming in the wind of his flight. The watcher on the tower could make nothing of that: but after another had stumbled and run on with bowed head and hunched shoulders and in zig-zagging jumps, and yet another had fallen flat and then crawled like a snake, she made out little glints and gleams in the sunshine, and knew them for flying arrows.

Again a horn brayed, but louder and nearer this time. Now a horseman appeared as if from nowhere, galloping toward the screen of shadow from which the men in leather were fleeing, gesticulating and screaming. Four of the runners turned and set arrows to their bowstrings and shot, hard and fast, into the green gloom.

The rider drove through them, wheeled, dismounted and laid hold on the crawler with both hands. The wounded man rose to his knees, to his feet, and sagged across the horse. It was a small horse, but hardy; and so the rescue was made, with the pony running like a dog, the wounded forester draped across like a half-filled sack and the rescuer running beside and holding him in place. He was a small rescuer. Boys of nine years have been taller.

“Joseph!” cried the lady on the tower. “’Tis none other, by my halidom! Run, Joseph, run!”

All the visible actors in that flurry of action disappeared among the hedges and walls, and under the thatched roofs, of a steading. Now, for a long minute, nothing moved in Lady Clara’s wide field of vision – though she looked in every direction – save a few feathers of smoke and wings of birds and ever-trembling leaves of tall poplars. No more arrows leaped from shadow to shine. Nothing moved on the ground. The horns were silent now, but cocks crowed in the home orchard. She gazed abroad and down in growing and fearful wonder, peering for some sign of awareness of danger, listening for a sudden commotion and shouting of armed men; but the great house below her, and the bright landscape all about her, were as still and quiet as if they lay under a spell. Was some wicked magic at work here, to her undoing? What of her champions?

But no, she had already seen little Joseph and five scouts in action; and she refused to believe that any spell save death itself could withhold the hands of that old King and the squires from her defence. Of Lorn she was not so sure. Even though she had made him tremble with a touch of her hand on his sword-belt, she did not blink the fact of his old bewitchment and sojourn in Færyland. What were her frail enchantments, though exercised with all her heart, against those of ageless sorcery? For that dear knight – for succor from those dear hands – she could but hope and pray.

Now the lightening rim of gloom from which the five vanished foresters had emerged stirred again, and the base of that green obscurity was alive suddenly with a score of men in leather and wool, with strung bows in their hands. They did not dash forward, but extended to right and left and advanced cautiously, setting arrows to strings. As many more invaders now emerged and formed a second line. A few of these were bowmen too, but most of them carried boar-spears, short axes or halberds. Close behind these came a fellow with a burning torch and two with a black kettle slung from a pole between them. The torch smoked blackly and flamed palely in the sunshine, and a thin haze of heat quivered above the kettle.

“The rogues! They mean to set us afire!” cried Clara.

Again she looked all around, and again in vain for any sign of a defender. The skirmishers continued to advance, and with more assurance. A big knight in full armor, on a black horse to match, came into view in rear of the two-score skirmishers, riding at a foot-pace. He signaled with a hand – its mail flashed in the sunlight – and shouted a command, whereupon the fellows in front drew together on the run and headed straight for the steading into which Joseph and the five foresters had disappeared. The knight followed them, but neither fast nor far, and soon drew rein and sat with uneasy shiftings and turnings, as if he too (like the watcher on the tower) was puzzled by the stillness. The two-score raiders halted and sent a flight of arrows into the farmstead, and then a second flight, and three fire-arrows flaming like comets: but no shaft came from hedge or wall in retaliation. They loosed a dozen fire-arrows, one of which struck a thatched roof, stuck there and blossomed like a great poppy. And still the spell was unbroken.

Clara, up on her tower, was as spellbound as the menaced steading and the fields spreading stilly all around from the silent house under her to the still walls of the forest. She wanted to scream, but her throat refused. It seemed to her that the forest watched and waited expectantly, and that everything within its sinister circuit, seen and unseen, would start and cry out in protest but for the same fatal hand that gripped and silenced herself . . . Once more she tried to scream – and for cause, God wot – but with no more success than before. That same span of leafy gloom stirred to life again and spewed forth running men; but this time it was a multitude. It flooded into the sunshine like a dark tide flecked with glinting spear-points and upflung blades and spotted with garments of tattered finery among the jerkins of drab leather and wool. An awesome sound rose from it like the hum and growl of sea surf. It flooded to and around the mounted knight and bore him with it toward the smoking farmstead into which the vanguard continued to shoot fire. It did not check, but in its weight of hundreds, carried the first two score forward with it against the still hedges and silent walls. And then the spell broke.

A hundred arrows darted from hedges and walls and gables; shouts and the braying of horns shook the smoke and were answered by shouts and horns from the right and the left; and more arrows darted forth and struck and stood quivering. From the ambushes of felled trees on either hand came armored men on large horses, shouting and with leveled spears, breaking from the trot to the gallop – a dozen from the right and a dozen from the left. Lorn led one party, up on the mighty Bahram, and in front of the other charged King Torrice under his plume of black-and-white ostrich feathers. The invading flood recoiled; and its front – what remained alive of it – turned upon the pressure from behind, screaming and striking for a way of escape. Now it was every knave for himself, of those murderous hundreds.

They were spitted like partridges. Lorn was among them. He threw his spear aside and hewed with his sword. They were split like fish. The white stallion tore them with his teeth and crushed them under his terrible hooves. Torrice was among them, not charging now but reining his black horse this way and that and using his great spear as a lesser craftsman might use a light sword, prodding here and there. Though a master of every chivalrous combat-tool, he held that the spear was the knight’s first weapon. Peter and Gervis were among them. Like Lorn, they too had discarded spears for swords for such infighting as this. Goggin and Billikin were among them, plying their long blades like gentlemen born. Twenty armored rustics on plow-horses were among them, hacking with axes and bashing with spiked maces. And even the big knight who had brought them here with promises of easy rich rapine now took part in the slaughtering of them, cutting them down and riding them down in his frantic efforts to win clear and away. Screaming like trapped beasts, the remnants of the horde broke in every direction – but not all of them to safety, for the dwarf Joseph and the hundred archers from the burning farmstead were on their heels.

The lady on the tower shut her eyes. She cried out, but in the din of triumphant shouts and horns from the house and courts below, her voice was no more than whisper in her own ears. After a little while, she looked again, avoding the motionless shapes on the ground. Footmen still ran in groups and pairs, pursued and pursuing, to the flashes of knives and axes. Some of the horsemen still galloped and struck, but most of them moved more slowly and with an air of aimlessness now.

But King Torrice and all his five men, and Joseph on his running pony, were still in play. And Drecker, clear of the rabble at last, was riding like a madman for the nearest edge of the forest. His spear was gone. His great shield was cast off. He dropped his sword and cast off mace and ax from his saddle-bow. Anything for speed with which to escape a red doom: for that old King and that young knight were after him, converging on him from right and left. But he hadn’t a chance. At the very edge of the forest – But the watcher on the tower had closed her eyes again.

Quest’s End

King Torrice of Har was dead. The exertions of that last mêlée and the final stroke on Drecker’s neck had stilled that long questing forever. He had lived to be carried in by Lorn, and to smile and murmur a few words at the touch of Clara’s tears on his face. Now he lay on a couch of silks and furs in the great hall, in full armor, with tall candles at his head and feet. His hands were crossed on his breast, on the cross of the long sword that lay there unsheathed. His helmet, with its proud plume, was at his left elbow. Clara and Lorn knelt on the right of the couch and the squires on the left. At the head of it, a wandering friar read from a great missal, now muttering and now chanting. All the surrounding gloom was full of kneeling people, and over all rang and sighed and sobbed a dirge from the Damosel Mary’s harp.

Clara turned her face to Lorn.

“He told me he was happy – in his quest’s end,” she sighed.

The young knight gazed at her with clear eyes.

She sighed again.

“But what of your quest?”

He moved his right hand a little toward her; he found her left hand and clasped it.

“I have forgotten what it was,” he answered.