It well might be, however, she suggested, with a side glance toward Holmendis, that some other peculiarly holy person, even though not a warrior—At the same instant Coth said, with a startling and astringent decisiveness—“Bosh!”
His confreres felt the gross incivility of this interruption, but felt, too, that they agreed with Coth.
And so the fellowship was proclaimed to be disbanded.
Then Anavalt of Fomor made a lament for the passing of that noble order whose ranks were broken at last, and for Dom Manuel also Anavalt raised a lament, praising Manuel for his hardihood and his cunning and his terribleness in battle. The heroes nodded their assent to this more intelligible sort of talking.
“Manuel,” said Anavalt, “was hardy. It was not wise for any enemy to provoke him. When that indiscretion was committed, Manuel made himself as a serpent about the city of that enemy, girdling his prey all round: he seized the purlieus of that city, and its cattle, and its boats upon the rivers. He beleaguered that city everywhere, he put fire to the orchards, he silenced the mill-races, he prevented the plowers from plowing the land; and the people of that city starved, and they ate up one another, until the survivors chose to surrender to Dom Manuel. Then Manuel raised his gallows, he whistled in his headsmen, and there were no more survivors of that people.”
And Anavalt said also: “Manuel was cunning. With a feather he put a deception upon three kings, but the queens that he played his tricks on were more than three, nor was it any feather that he diddled them with. Nobody could outwit Manuel. What he wanted he took, if he could get it that way, with his strong hand: but, if not, he used his artful head and his lazy, wheedling tongue, and his other members too, so that the person whom he was deluding would give Manuel whatever he required. It was like eating honey, to be deluded by Manuel. I think it is no credit for a private man to be a great rogue; but the leader of a people must know how to deceive all peoples.”
Then Anavalt said: “Manuel was terrible. There was no softness in him, no hesitancy, and no pity. That, too, is not a virtue in a private person, but in the leader of a people it may well be a blessing for that people. Manuel so ordered matters that no adversary ever troubled Poictesme the second time. He lived as a tyrant over us; but it is better to have one master that you know the ways of than to be always changing masters in a world where none but madmen run about at their own will. I do not weep for Manuel, because he would never have wept for me nor for anybody else; but I regret that man of iron and the protection he was to us who are not ruthless iron but flesh.”
There was a silence afterward. Yet still the heroes nodded gravely. This was, in the main, a Manuel whom they all recognized.
Dame Niafer, however, had risen up a little way from her seat, when the pious gaunt man Holy Holmendis, who sat next to her, put out his hand to her hand. After this she said nothing: yet it was perfectly clear the Countess thought that Anavalt had been praising Manuel for the wrong sort of virtues.
A fire was kindled with that ceremony which was requisite. The banner of the great fellowship was burned, and the lords of the Silver Stallion now broke their swords, and they cast these fragments also into this fire, so that these swords might never defend any other standard. It was the youth of these nine men and the first vigor and faith of their youth which perished with the extinction of that fire: and they knew it.
Thereafter the heroes left Storisende. Each rode for his own home, and they made ready, each in his own fashion, for that new order of governance which with the passing of Dom Manuel had come upon Poictesme.
Chapter IV. Fog Rises
Now Guivric and Donander and Gonfal rode westward with their attendants, all in one company, as far as Guivric’s home at Asch. And as these three lords rode among the wreckage and the gathering fogs of November, the three talked together.
“It is a pity,” said Gonfal of Naimes, “that, while our little Count Emmerick is growing up, this land must now be ruled by a lame and sallow person, who had never much wit and who tends already to stringiness. Otherwise, in a land ruled over by a widow, who is used to certain recreations, one might be finding amusement, and profit too.”
“Come now,” said loyal Donander of Evre, “but Madame Niafer is a chaste and good woman who means well!”
“She has yet another quality which is even more disastrous in the ruler of any country,” returned Guivric the Sage.
“And what hook have you found now to hang a cynicism on?”
“I fear more from her inordinate piety than from her indifferent looks and her stupid well-meaningness. That woman will be reforming things everywhere into one gray ruin.”
“Indeed,” said Gonfal, smiling, “these rising fogs have to me very much the appearance of church incense.”
Guivric nodded. “Yes. Had it been possible, I believe that Madame Niafer would have preserved and desecrated the fellowship by setting in Dom Manuel’s place that Holy Holmendis who is nowadays her guide in all spiritual matters; and who will presently, do you mark my prophesying, be making a sanctimonious hash of her statecraft.”
“He composed for her, it is well known,” said Gonfal, “the plaint which she made for Dom Manuel.”
“That was a cataloguing of ecclesiastic virtues,” Guivric said, dryly, “which to my mind did not very immediately suggest the tall adulterer and parricide whom we remember. This Holmendis has, thus, already brought hypocrisy into fashion.”
“He will be Niafer’s main counselor,” Gonfal speculated. “He is a pushing, vigorous fellow. I wonder now—?”
Guivric nodded again. “Women prefer to take counsel in a bedchamber,” he stated.
“Come, Guivric,” put in pious young Donander of Evre. “Come now, whatever his over-charitable opinion of our dead master, this Holmendis is a saint: and we true believers should speak no ill of the saints.”
“I have nothing against belief, nor hypocrisy either, within reason, nor have I anything against saints, in their proper place. It is only that should a saint—and more particularly, a saint conceived and nurtured and made holy in Philistia,—ever come to rule over Poictesme, and over the bedchamber of Dom Manuel,” said Guivric, moodily, “that saint would not be in his proper place. And our day, my friends, would be ended.”
“It is already ended,” Gonfal said, “so far as Poictesme is concerned: these fogs smell over-strongly of church incense. But these fogs which rise about Poictesme do not envelop the earth. For one, I shall fare south, as that Horvendile directed me, and as I had already planned to do. In the South I shall find nobody so amusing as that fine great squinting quiet scoundrel of a Manuel. Yet in the South there is a quest cried for the hand of Morvyth, the dark Queen of Inis Dahut; and, now that my wife is dead, it may be that I would find it amusing to sleep with this young queen.”
The others laughed, and thought no more of the light boastfulness of this Gonfal who was the world’s playfellow. But within the month it was known that Gonfal of Naimes, the Margrave of Aradol, had in truth quitted his demesnes, and had traveled southward. And he was the first of this famous fellowship, after Dom Manuel, to go out of Poictesme, not ever to return.
BOOK TWO
THE MATHEMATICS OF GONFAL
“He multiplieth words without knowledge”
Chapter V. Champion at Misadventure
Now the tale is of how Gonfal fared in the South, where the people were Fundamentalists. It is told how the quest was cried; and how, in the day’s fashion, the hand of Morvyth, the dark Queen of Inis Dahut and of the four other Isles of Wonder, was promised to the champion who should fetch back the treasure that was worthiest to be her bridal gift. Eight swords, they say, were borne to the altar of Pyge-Upsizugos, to be suitably consecrated, after a brief and earnest address, by the Imaun of Bulotu. Eight appropriately ardent lovers raised high these swords, to swear fealty to Queen Morvyth and to the quest of which her loveliness was the reward. Thus all was as it should be, until they went to sheathe these swords. Then, one champion among the company, striking his elbow against his neighbor, had, rather unaccountably, the ill luck to drop his sword so that it pierced his own left foot.