deride him enviously. All the world is fretted by his folly, knowing that his faith in the world's might is no longer firm-set, and that he aspires to what is beyond the world's giving. In his heart he belittles the strong stupid lords of earth; and they, being strong, plan vengeance, the while that in a corner he makes images to commemorate what is lost: and so for him who has beheld the loveliness of Freydis there is no hope at all.
'He that has willed to look upon Queen Freydis does not dread to consort with serpents nor with swine; he faces the mirror wherein a man beholds himself without self-deceiving; he views the blood that drips from his soiled hands, and knows that this, too, was needed: yet these endurings purchase but one hour. The hour passes, and therewith passes also Freydis, the high Queen. Only the memory of her hour remains, like a cruel gadfly, for which the crazed beholder of Queen Freydis must build a lodging in his images, madly endeavoring to commingle memories with wet mud: and so for him who has beheld the loveliness of Freydis there is no hope at all.'
Freydis heard him through, considerately. 'But I wonder to how many other women you have talked such nonsense about beauty and despair and eternity,' said Freydis, 'and they very probably liking to hear it, the poor fools! And I wonder how you can expect me to believe you, when you pretend to think me all these fine things, and still keep me penned in this enclosure like an old vicious cow.'
'No, that is not the way it is any longer. For now the figure that I have made in the world, and all else that is in the world, and all that is anywhere without this enclosure of buttered willow wands, mean nothing to me, and there is no meaning in anything save in the loveliness of Freydis.'
Dom Manuel went to the door of the enclosure then to the windows, sweeping away the gilded tonthecs and the shining spaks, and removing from the copper nails the horseshoes that had been cast by Mohammed's mare and Hrimfaxi and Balaam's ass and Pegasus. 'You were within my power. Now I destroy that power, and therewith myself. Now is the place unguarded, and all your servitors are free to enter, and all your terrors are untrammeled, to be loosed against me, who have no longer anything to dread. For I love you with such mortal love as values nothing else beside its desire, and you care nothing for me.'
After a little while of looking she sighed, and said uneasily: 'It is the foolish deed of a true lover. And, really, I do like you, rather. But, Manuel, I do not know what to do next! Never at any time has this thing happened before, so that all my garnered wisdom is of no use whatever. Nobody anywhere has ever dared to snap his fingers at the fell power of Freydis as you are doing, far less has anybody ever dared to be making eyes at her. Besides, I do not wish to consume you with lightnings, and to smite you with insanity appears so unnecessary.'
'I love you,' Manuel said, 'and your heart is hard, and your beauty is beyond the thinking of man, and your will is neither to loose nor to bind. In a predicament so unexampled, how can it at all matter to me whatever you may elect to do?'
'Then certainly I shall not waste any of my fine terrors on you!' said Freydis, with a vexed tossing of her head. 'Nor have I any more time to waste upon you either, for presently the Moon-Children will be coming back to their places: and before the hour is out wherein the moon stays void and powerless I must return to my own kingdom, whither you may not follow, to provoke me with any more of your nonsense. And then you will be properly sorry, I dare say, for you will De remembering me always, and there will be only human women to divert you, and they are poor creatures.'
Freydis went again to the mirror, and she meditated there. 'Yes, you will be remembering me with my hair in these awful plaits, and that is a pity, but still you will remember me always. And when you make images they will be images of me. No, but I cannot have you making any more outrageous parodies like astonished corpses, and people everywhere laughing at Queen Freydis!'
She took up the magical pen, laid ready as Helmas had directed, and she wrote with this gryphon's feather. 'So here is the recipe for the Tuyla incantation with which to give life to your images. It may comfort you a little to perform that silly magic. It, anyhow, will prevent such good-for-nothing minxes as may have no more intelligence than to take you seriously, from putting on too many airs and graces around the images which you will make of me with my hair done so very unbecomingly.'
'Nothing can ever comfort me, fair enemy, when you have gone away,' said Manuel.
But he took the parchment.
XV
They came out of the enclosure, to the old altar of Vel-Tyno, while the moon was still void and powerless. The servitors of Freydis were thronging swiftly toward Upper Morven, after a pleasant hour of ravening and ramping about Poictesme. As spoorns and trows and calcars and as other long forgotten shapes they came, without any noise, so that Upper Morven was like the disordered mind of a wretch that is dying in fever: and to this side and to that side the witches of Amneran sat nodding in approval of what they saw.
Thus, one by one, the forgotten shapes came to the fire, and cried, 'A penny, a penny, twopence, a penny and a half, and a halfpenny!' as each entered into the fire which was the gateway to their home.
'Farewell!' said Freydis: and as she spoke she sighed.
'Not thus must be our parting,' Manuel says. 'For do you listen now, Queen Freydis! it was Helmas the Deep-Minded who told me what was requisite. '
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 pre-arranged! 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 pre-arranged 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 pre-arranged 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
