She took his meaning. Freydis cried out, angrily: “Then all the foolishness you have been talking about my looks and your love for me was prearranged! And you have cheated me out of the old Tuyla mystery by putting on the appearance of loving me, and by pestering me with such nonsense as a plowman trades against the heart of a milkmaid! Now, certainly, I shall reward your candor in a fashion that will be whispered about for a long while.”
With that, Queen Freydis set about a devastating magic.
“All, all was prearranged save one thing,” said Manuel, with a yapping laugh, and not even looking at the commencing terrors. He thrust into the fire the parchment which Freydis had given him. “Yes, all was prearranged except that Helmas did not purge me of that which will not accept the hire of any lying to you. So the Deep-Minded’s wisdom comes, at the last pinch, to naught.”
Now Freydis for an instant waved back two-thirds of an appalling monster, which was as yet incompletely evoked for Dom Manuel’s destruction, and Freydis cried impatiently, “But have you no sense whatever! for you are burning your hand.”
And indeed the boy had already withdrawn his hand with a grimace, for in the ardor of executing his noble gesture, as Queen Freydis saw, he had not estimated how hot her fires were.
“It is but a little hurt to me who have taken a great hurt,” says Manuel, sullenly. “For I had thought to lie, and in my mouth the lie turned to a truth. At least, I do not profit by my false-dealing, and I wave you farewell with empty hands burned clean of theft.”
Then she who was a human woman said, “But you have burned your hand!”
“It does not matter: I have ointments yonder. Make haste, Queen Freydis, for the hour passes wherein the moon is void and powerless.”
“There is time.” She brought out water from the enclosure, and swiftly bathed Dom Manuel’s hand.
From the fire now came a whispering, “Make haste, Queen Freydis! make haste, dear Fairy mistress!”
“There is time,” said Freydis, “and do you stop flurrying me!” She brought from the enclosure a pot of ointment, and she dressed Manuel’s hand.
“Borram, borram, Leanhaun shee!” the fire crackled. “Now the hour ends.”
Then Freydis sprang from Manuel, toward the flames beyond which she was queen of ancient mysteries, and beyond which her will was neither to loose nor to bind. And she cried hastily, “A penny, a penny, twopence—”
But just for a moment she looked back at Morven, and at the man who waited upon Morven alone and hurt. In his firelit eyes she saw love out of measure and without hope. And in the breast of Freydis moved the heart of a human woman.
“I cannot help it,” she said, as the hour passed. “Somebody has to bandage it, and men have no sense in these matters.”
Whereon the fire roared angrily, and leaped, and fell dead, for the Moon-Children Bil and Hjuki had returned from the well which is called Byrgir, and the moon was no longer void and powerless.
“So, does that feel more comfortable?” said Freydis. She knew that within this moment age and sorrow and death had somewhere laid inevitable ambuscades, from which to assail her by and by, for she was mortal after the sacred fire’s extinction, and she meant to make the best of it.
For a while Count Manuel did not speak. Then he said, in a shaking voice: “O woman dear and lovely and credulous and compassionate, it is you and you alone that I must be loving eternally with such tenderness as is denied to proud and lonely queens on their tall thrones! And it is you that I must be serving always with such a love as may not be given to the figure that any man makes in this world! And though all life may be a dusty waste of endless striving, and though the ways of men may always be the ways of folly, yet are these ways our ways henceforward, and not hopeless ways, for you and I will tread them together.”
“Now certainly there is in Audela no such moonstruck nonsense to be hearing, nor any such quick-footed hour of foolishness to be living through,” Freydis replied, “as here tonight has robbed me of my kingdom.”
“Love will repay,” said Manuel, as is the easy fashion of men.
And Freydis, a human woman now in all things, laughed low and softly in the darkness. “Repay me thus, my dearest: no matter how much I may coax you in the doubtful time to come, do you not ever tell me how you happened to have the bandages and the pot of ointment set ready by the mirror. For it is bad for a human woman ever to be seeing through the devices of wise kings, and far worse for her to be seeing through the heroic antics of her husband.”
Meanwhile in Arles young Alianora had arranged her own match with more circumspection. The English, who at first demanded twenty thousand marks as her jointure, had after interminable bargaining agreed to accept her with three thousand: and she was to be dowered with Plymouth and Exeter and Tiverton and Torquay and Brixham, and with the tin mines of Devonshire and Cornwall. In everything except the husband involved, she was marrying excellently, and so all Arles that night was ornamented with flags and banners and chaplets and bright hangings and flaring lamps and torches, and throughout Provence there was festivity of every sort, and the Princess had great honor and applause.
But in the darkness of Upper Morven they had happiness, no matter for how brief a while.
Part III
The Book of Cast Accounts
To
H. L. Mencken.
“Consider, faire Miserie, (quoth Manuel) that it lyes not in mans power to place
