—This, too, under some duress. The tale is so brief that in recording it the temptation was ever present to pad here and there, and to enlarge upon one or another detail, with the wholly pardonable design of rewarding each possible purchaser with the average amount of reading-matter to be found in the average novel of commerce. ... But in the outcome I have resisted that ever-present temptation. For Gamier knew his business; the thing as it stands is properly proportioned: and symmetry is, after all, one of the seven great auctorial virtues.
Richmond-in-Virginia
April, 1929
PART ONE: Of Alfgar in His kingdom
“What the King Wishes, the Law Wills.”
Chapter I. The Warring for Ettaine
IT IS an old tale which tells of the fighting between Alfgar, the King of Ecben, and Ulf, the King of Rorn. Their enmity took hold of them because they both desired that daughter of Thordis who was called Ettaine.
Two kings desired her because of all the women of this world Ettaine was the most beautiful. It was the blue of her eyes, that had the brightness of the spring sky when there is no cloud anywhere between heaven and the heads of men, which caused the armies of Rorn and of Ecben to meet like thunder clouds. Blood was spilled everywhere because of that red which was in the lips of Ettaine. The golden flaming of her hair burned down into black cinders the towns of Rorn and of Ecben.
Ulf’s fort at Meivod, it is true, withstood all besiegers: but Druim fell, then Tarba. Achren also was taken: its fields were plowed up and planted with salt. Then Ulf captured Sorram, through undermining its walls. But Alfgar took Garian by storm, and he burned this city likewise, after carrying from it a quantity of crossbows and tents and two wagon loads of silver.
There was thus no quietness anywhere in that part of the world, because of the comeliness of Ettaine. For two kings desired her: and her color and her shaping thus became a lofty moral issue, with a rich flowering of tumult and of increased taxes, and of corruption and of swift death everywhere, and of many very fine patriotic orations.
Then, in the fourth year of the fighting, the unexampled heroism and the superb ideals of the men of Ecben, which one half of these orations had talked about, were handsomely rewarded by the deafness of Cormac. This Cormac of the Twin Hills led a third of the armies of Rorn. He was paid the price of his deafness: for three maidens without any blemish in their bodies, and for four bags of blue turquoises, and for the silver which King Alfgar had captured at Garian, this Cormac became deaf to the other half of these orations, now that he betrayed the unexampled heroism and the superb ideals of the men of Rorn.
There was never a more gallant butchering than the patriots of Ecben then gave to the trapped patriots of Rorn under the elm-trees of the ravine at Strathgor. King Ulf alone was spared out of that ruined army where every other fighting-man lay in two halves, like the orations which had delighted them.
So was it that the victory fell to Alfgar. None now withstood him. All that his heart desired he had, and he furthermore had all the forests and the cities and the sleek pastures of Rorn. Ulf, who was not any longer a king, prayed to his gods from out of a well guarded dungeon. And everywhere in Ecben, from green Pen Loegyr to the gaunt hills of Tagd, the barons and their attendants rode toward the King’s house in Sorram, and all made ready for the marriage feast of Alfgar the high king and Ettaine the most fair of the women of this world.
Chapter II. Of Their Love-talk
AT THE King’s house in Sorram was a hedged garden, with flagstones in the middle of it, about a little fountain: and there King Alfgar and Ettaine would sit and talk in the clear April weather.
“Ettaine of the blue eyes,” King Alfgar used to say, “it is not right that your two eyes should be my mirrors. In each of them I find myself. A tiny image of me is set up in their brightness.”
“Delight of both my eyes,” Ettaine would reply to him,” in my heart also is that image set up.”
King Alfgar said: “Ettaine of the red lips, it is not right that your lips should be making for me any music so dear. Some god will be peering out of heaven at my happiness, and a jealousy of me will be troubling that lonely god who has not any such fine music in his heaven.”
“For no god and for no heaven whatever,” the fair girl answered, “would I be leaving the Alfgar that has the pre-eminent name and is the darling of the women of Ecben. For in his strong arms is my only heaven.”
Then Alfgar said: “Ettaine of the bright hair, it is not right that at to-morrow’s noon an archbishop will be putting the crown of a queen of Ecben upon your shining head. Ecben is but a little land: and if the brightness of the crowns of Rome and of Byzantium, and of every other kingdom which retains a famousness, had all been shaped into one crown for my Ettaine to be wearing, the brightness of this hair would shame it.”
Ettaine answered him, “It is not the crown which is dear to me, O heart of all my happiness, but the king alone.”
“Why, but,” said Alfgar, “two kings have loved Ettaine.”
Whereupon the fond and radiant daughter of Thordis Bent-Neck laughed contentedly, and replied: “Yet to my judgment and to my desires no person is kingly except Alfgar. And, as for that Ulf—” A shrug rounded off her exact opinion.
Such was the sort of nonsense which these youthful lovers talked upon the eve of their marriage feast, as they sat together in the hedged garden at Sorram, where the pale new grass grew raggedly between the brown flagstones, and the silver jetting of the little fountain wavered everywhither under the irresolute, frail winds of April. And around and above these lovers who were young the young leaves whispered in their merry prophesying of more than a century of summers might by any chance fulfil.
Chapter III. A Dream Smites Him
NOW it was in the night season of his marriage eve that a dream came upon King Alfgar. Through his dreaming a music went wandering. It was a far-off music not very clearly heard, and a music which, he knew, was not of this world. But that there was a sorcery in this bitter music he knew also, for it held him motionless.
The champion that had slain many warriors lay upon his couch, beneath a coverlet of lamb’s wool dyed with blue stripings, as still as a slain warrior. Upon him who had all his desires came doubtfulness and discontent. He desired that which this music desired, and which this music quested after, skirlingly, and could not find in any quarter of earth. For it was to the sound of this music, as Alfgar knew, with a troubled heart, that Horvendile and his Ettarre passed down the years together, and led men out of the set ways of life.
So now a woman came to Alfgar where the King lay upon his couch beneath the coverlet of lamb’s wool, and with this woman came a red-haired boy. The woman smiled. The boy smiled also, but his face became white and drawn when he had laid the hand of this woman upon the hand of Alfgar, and when the woman bent downward so that her face was near to Alfgar’s face.
She spoke then, putting her command upon Alfgar in the while that he saw her face and the bright glitter of her eyes and the slow moving of her lips. It was in this way that Ettarre the witch-woman, whom a poet fetched out of the gray Waste Beyond the Moon, to live upon our earth in many bodies, now put a memory and a desire and a summoning upon King Alfgar in the hour of his triumph.