At the banquet table I commanded that the damsel sit next to me and said that there were very necessary reasons why this should be done. Then came the feasting and the talking, the Welsh being very brave at both of such indoor sports. The King of Wales told how proud they were to have the Overlord of Cornwall take part in such a glorious adventure the; father of the girl told of his joy and thanksgiving for her safe return; the aged Jew handed me a silk bag with the fifty gold crowns in it as the reward he had offered, and then he begged the monarch that the wedding go on while all the world was there and that he would give fine presents to every one of the guests. But I rose in my place and said:
“I can not let this Jew die!”
“What do you mean?” asked the king.
“To explain,” I replied, “will be a pleasure to me, though I can not do so without telling of my overcoming of this great Welsh monster in the mountain cave. If, in the telling, I seem at times to be boastful, you will pardon my pride for, really, the deed; was a great deed and well done. I do not want to tell all the details, but it will be necessary for me to do so in order to show why it is impossible for the Jew to marry her. Because he is a good Jew and I do not want him to die.
“When I came to the woods I heard a horrific hissing and knew by the sound that the monster was trying to frighten me. So, leaving my horse, I advanced carefully, and as the wood grew darker I saw the flashing of lightning and these flashes came from the eyes of the dragon. Finally, I came near enough to see the creature, and you may judge of my surprize when I tell you that it was a worm, many feet long, but, instead of feet like a millipede, it had arms and hands, and each hand grasped a weapon, sharp as a dagger and poisoned with deadly dragon’s doom. There were three heads, and I might remark here that a three-headed monster is not new to me, I having killed several of them in Gorkiland, but in this case only one had a face on it; the other two being smooth of features, save a mouth that dripped blood and spittle. It had no sign of fear and rushed on me, and for over an hour I had need of all my skill defending myself from its weapons. I used, as is my wont in such cases, my two-handed sword and finally succeeded in cutting off one of the heads. It howled mournfully and ran into its cave.
“I rushed after it and was not surprized to find a large cavern well-lighted with the baleful light from the monster’s eyes. Also the headless stump bled a white blood that shone on the floor of the cave.
“The fighting now was hard, because I was constantly stumbling over the bones of maidens he had previously ravished and devoured. At last I snipped off another head, and now the monster retreated into a still smaller cave. Chained to the wall of this cavern was the little girl who had been stolen from her parents and who would have been destroyed, body and soul, at the next full moon, had I not come when I was called for.
“The dragon now assumed the shape of an old magician and, breathing harshly, asked me to leave him at peace, offering to share the beauty of the maiden with me if I did so. Of course, I scorned such a dastardly offer and, calling on him to defend himself, I rushed on him with my dagger. Seeing that he was doomed, by the power of his magic he metamorphosed himself into a bubble of air and vanished down the maiden’s throat.
“I have brought her back. The monster is still within her, waiting for a chance to come forth and destroy all of you good people of Wales. If this poor maiden married the Jew, the monster would sally forth on the bridal night and tear him to pieces. If she remains here, the whole village is in danger. Only is the world safe so long as he realizes that I am close at hand to strangle him to death at his first appearance.”
The audience shivered and seemed stunned by my tale.
Finally the king asked, “What are your plans? And why should you undergo such a risk to save the life at a Jew or of the simple folks of this village?”
“I propose to take the unfortunate girl with me to Cornwall. I shall watch her closely on the trip. If the monster comes from out her, I will at once kill him and return her to the parents and the Jew. If he still sulks in her midgut by the time I reach Cornwall, I shall give her rare medicines I know of and thus, gradually, the monster will die within her. I am a lone man, without wife or children, and it is better for me to take this great risk, even if I die for it, than to have all these good people die in one night of slaughter. Besides, I know a lot about devils and their manner of action, and thus it is best for me to keep the maiden near me till this fiend is thoroughly destroyed.”
“Oh, kind sir,” cried the mother, “how can we thank you? You are too good to us. No other man would have done all the wondrous things just for strangers; I will feel so safe with my daughter in your care.”
And the Jew came up to me on his knees and humbly handed me a gold chain and thanked me for saving his life from a horrible tearing at the hands of this monster.
Now it was late in the afternoon, yet, as the day was warm, I insisted that I depart for Cornwall; so up I got me on my charger, and I put the maiden up in front of me, and in back was a bundle of presents of jewels and fine silken stuffs from the king and his knights, and I wore all my armor, save my helmet, which I had tied to my saddle and wore instead a little velvet cap.
So we said a kindly farewell to all those people.
The king rode down the road with me.
“Art sure, dear sibling,” he asked, as he prepared to leave me, “art sure the damsel hath the devil in her?”
“Certainly,” I replied, very seriously.
“Then she be a true woman,” he answered, “for all women I have ever met are thus inhabited.”
With this he winked at me, and, turning, trotted his horse back to the town where his company waited on him.
Ruth and I fared on through the summer afternoon. More and more as the sun lowered in the kindly sky, she leaned heavily against me, and now and then she sighed, as she looked up at me with those blue eyes and asked: “Dost see aught of the monster peering from my mouth?”
“Nay,” I replied, holding her closer so that she need not be frightened.
“Yet I fear me that it cometh out. Drive it back, my heart!”
And so I did with kisses.
How stubborn that devil was! How hard to drive back!…So, the maiden was satisfied.
Finally, she gasped.
“No other man,” she whispered, “would have done it as you did.”
“No other man,” I echoed.
And once again I drove the devil back from her mouth.
The Bride Well
[Weird Tales 1930-10]
As Paul Spencer pointed out in our last issue, David H. Keller was a staunch admirer of the works of James Branch Cabell, and while there is a touch of Cabell in all of the Tales From Cornwall, it comes out most clearly in the Cecil, Overlord sequences, of which this is the fourth.
It was not till we came well within the boundaries of my beloved Cornwall that I realized the fact that my appearing before my subjects with a Welsh lady might not be either understood or acceptable to those sturdy knights who had been so faithful to me during the early days of my reign. It was all well enough to rescue the lovely Ruth and even spend long minutes driving the Devil back into her body with long, lingering kisses, but to boldly bring the same lady back to my domains might cause political disturbances of the direst nature. At the same time there was Ruth, on the horse, in front of me; and from certain clinging habits she had spontaneously developed, I had every reason to believe that she intended to remain within the curve of my left arm, waist-bound, for the rest of her life.