Mists of Everness Page 17

  On the grass floor of the pavilion, near where her white fingers gently drooped, burned a miniature lantern like a star. Her face was without blemish, her features finely chiseled, small of chin, high of cheek, and her darling nose was tip-tilted like the petal of a flower.

  So young and fair was she, that to look at her white hands, delicate shoulders, round bosom, slim waist, and well-shaped legs, one would have thought her a maiden of less than seventeen summers; if she had raised her lidded, dreaming gaze, and if one had the misfortune to be caught within the gaze of her clear, gray eyes, one would have thought her older than a thousand winter times. And if one saw the faint shadow of a smile that which curved her perfect rosered lips, one would have been curious, and, if one were not of heroic character, curiosity would have grown to fear. For the smiles of immortals always should give pause to mortals, to whom death is not a stranger.

  It was clear she was dreaming of her lover, for her smile was sweet, and her one hand drifted lightly across the scented fabric of her gown, wistfully, and ever and anon her lips would part.

  The smile sharpened, and the dreaminess turned to coldness in her eye when a voice came from the forest.

  “Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania!”

  She swayed to her feet as lightly as a flower, but with the silken suppleness of a bent épée returning to true. She reached out with her hand to where streaks of moonlight rayed through the trellis-work; she broke off a section of moonbeam in her hand to be her scepter. The blossoms of pale roses behind her fluttered in the air, like white butterflies, and circled her head, to poise atop her coiffure, a delicate crown.

  The tall trees now bowed and moved aside with a whispering rustle of roots. Within the newborn corridor of trunks stood a king crowned in the plumages of black swans, two wings of midnight rising to either side from his floating hair of storm-cloud hue. His face was youthful and beardless, but pale as polished horn. Beneath the straight strokes of his eyebrows, his left eye was a deep, unfathomable pool of archaic wisdom. His right eye, if eye he had, was hidden behind a patch, and perhaps he kept it in another world, or to see things others could not view.

  He had a philosopher’s brow and a long, straight nose; serious lines embraced a wide, thin-lipped mouth, pursed in a kingly gravity; and yet a foxy cleverness curved at the corners of the mouth, promising dimples; as if this soul held a vast and wild mirth, a trickster’s mania, held, for now, in check.

  A gorget of silver links protected his shoulders and throat. A web of black tissue floated from his shoulder-boards. His breastplate and kilt and greaves were of vertical strips of silver and jet, alternately polished as mirrors and dark as night, so that, in the striping of the Moon-shadows through the trees, no right judgment could be made of him; so that he may have been man-sized and standing close at hand, or yet he may have been gigantic, and standing far off, or both at once.

  Behind him came his train of courtiers and paladins, which, unlike her own, were visible.

  “What, jealous Oberon! Fairies, skip hence; I have forsworn his bed and company.” Her voice rang cold with pride, soft, but clear. She turned. A murmuring rustle in the grass, a chime of silver voices in the air, made as if to follow in her wake.

  Oberon raised a regal hand: “Tarry, rash wanton! Am I not thy lord?”

  She looked across her shoulder, her face made more beautiful with amusement and hauteur. “Then I must be thy lady. But I know my daughter thou hast stolen out of my keeping, and swept on secret wing to thy close-faced citadel of high Mommur, there to prison her with toys and idle figments.”

  “Stolen to her safety, ill-spoken Queen. For your Neverdale is now the rout of monsters; and dragons sent by Morningstar gulf those happy meadows with Vulcan’s spews, while lordly elfs of darkness stride the ruins, ensigns proud on high, and kick through embers with sullen boot to seek thy bastard get, and what she bears. Now both she and it be safely clasped within Mommur’s orichalcum doors. Nor does she weep, but plays at simple small delights; she hath forgotten earthly things, herself … and thee.”

  She said, “Oh, webbed in thy own weft, thou spider! Hopest thou to swallow down the plum of victory she carries lightly in her palm? And within thine own court as well, ever in thy shadow, ever in thy one-eyed sight? What torment dost thou pike thyself upon, to scent the savor of that plum, yet ne’er to taste!”

  Oberon held up the scepter he carried; it was the horn of a unicorn.

  “Behold the Silver Key of Everness, once more clasped in destined gauntlet.”

  “Vaunt not, Oberon, for it avails thee not. Freely given, ‘twould yield thee sovereignty o’er all men’s world as thou hast now of fairyland; stolen, ’tis but trinket dross.”

  Now he laughed in light self-mockery, and a moment of firefly-light came and went in his one eye. “Freely given, and by her hand, it was, and a dozen times it was, yestere’en and yestere’en before that, and so a dozen eventides: once as a jest, once at my pretty asking, once more staked in a game of chess, and again, this she gave to see me whistle a pond-frog to hop high, and again, to see me charm a wren to build a nest within the tangles of mine hair, while I stood stock-still from moon’s noon to moonset, and thus, while she ever tickled me. I could love her, were she not the egg of thy unlawful love.”

  He tucked the unicorn horn in his belt, and crossed his arms across his chest, while the wind played with his filmy cape, which rose like fogs about him. Now he said, “Fairy-knights and courtiers of my great house, depart! What secret things to pass ’twixt lord and wife are too fine for your ears!”

  But she said, “Nuada Silverhand, and thou, Taliesin, I charge thee stay; and Hermod, who braved the silences of hell; Donohue and Diancecht, fly not hence; nor stir thy foot, Tam Lin; for here is matter for a song! Wise Gwydion, your wisdom will grow greater if you tarry; and I promise you, sweet Puck, favorite of my lord, you will know his mind the better if you quell your winged shoe, and lean on thy caduceus, to hear great Oberon admit his fault, and crawl to his wronged queen for favor!”

  “What? Hence, my court! I bid thee fly!” he said.

  “I fly as well, fairy-land’s foul king, if they not stay. What boots a triumph without ovation and the bay-leaf crown?” said Titania, and a night breeze began to pulse and blow at her, and she grew weightless as a thistledown.

  Oberon raised his hand; the gentle wind stilled. And he said, “I cry defeat, good madam, if thou wilt restore thy foot to grass. But wronged? What word is that which spoils thy fair lip? Tell me which hand of mine wronged thee by slap or scratch and I’ll hold it to cold iron!”

  She descended, but her foot did not bend the tips of the grass where she placed one slipper-toe.

  “Not by thy hand, O King, but by thy cruelty, who would cage mankind in paradise.”

  “And is this wrong so wrong when measured out by hands as treason-red as thine? Who had made a cuckold of the king, adultery and treason at once? Who has sent her lover to slay the sacred beast that guarded once our realm, now shrunken, weakened, blackened in memory, and made a mock for children? Once wide empires of the daylit world trembled at my frown; now only out-of-fashion poets know me; and even they, in children’s tale, would shrink my lords and gentlemen of this fair court to thumb-sized imps, and deck them out with lepidoptera wings! Ah, grief! Not to be endured!”

  Now he took on a frown, and his voice darkened to a deeper note. “And where now is my brightest knight, peerless in war and deep in wisdom, once the glory and the terror of a thousand lands? In what dark pits is Morningstar sunk low, and whose fair hands have pushed him hence? Were I to credit woman’s cunning equal to a man’s, would I idly toy with notions that all that has occurred is at thy weaving.”

  “You forget yourself, sir. I am older than art thou, and annual kings once died at Nemi to placate me.”

  “Madam? Shall I call down the constellations?” and he raised his hand on high.

  She laughed a silver laugh. “Shatter not thy heaven’s dome to show th
ou art its architect and master. Ere we were wed, thou wast the king of sky as I was queen of earth, I well recall, and cherish still the lights and gifts sent down to woo me. Yet I recall as well the recent causes of mine royal ire; nor will my majesty be put aside for thee. Come! This gathered company awaits the word of thy defeat! Ask thou me for quarter?”

  “Quarter?” Now he pursed his lips, and his single eye, mysterious and gray, looked challengingly upon the queen. “Admit I will that the Silver Key of Everness must be given by its holder unto me, yea, full freely. And now I know as well that thy daughter’s right wits must be restored to her before such gift be gift. What is given in giddiness remains ungiven still.”

  “She is half our blood, and the sly tricks and sleights of mutable law which render mortal kind such fools and play for our cruel delight cannot bespot her.”

  “But here is matter for a wager, if the fairy-queen has gall for it. Titania would loose the bounds of sovereignty, which once immortals held to check men’s folly, and delighteth she to see the golden age forsaken, drown’d in mist of passing aeons. But how now? Are mortals indeed so worthy to rule earth? Rule, aye, and poison? When rulership is folly, even fools would abdicate. So wager I. Is Titania willing to put her light speech to heavy test?”

  “Speak thy terms, king of dreams.”

  “Just this. Restore thy daughter’s right full wits, and I will show her a vision of what the earth would be were the scepter of ivory mine once more. You shall not be there, nor any serf of thine speak any word of yours to her. If I ask, and she refuse, very well, instantly, and with no harm nor loss, no geas, nor lien, I shall place her to any boundary of my realm she choose, free as air, to go or stay, so please her. But if I ask and she grant than I am king of earth and sky once more, father both of gods and men; the same true king whom once you wed; and thy pale excuse, that you wed earth’s king and not earth’s king in exile shall be shown all false; and you shall come to my bed again and be thou mine, and foreswear quite this Anton Pendrake whose ring you wear. Have you so much trust in these foolish mortals that you will put their freedom, and your own, into the balance scales against the simple judgment of a girl?”

  “Upon such simple judgments do all free republics stand or fall. I take thy terms, but on this condition strict: utter truth must thou speak to her, and must ask her within this hour, and at her first refusal, thou art lost, and with no second asking.”

  Oberon laughed. “Within the month.”

  “To-day. It will not avail thee to rule earth if earth is not more than an ash-heap in the shadow of black Acheron.”

  “’Tis done, ’tis done. I’ll ask to-day, for ’tis all one.”

  “Then take this courtier of mine, an humble meadow mouse, who has saved your wayward servant Peter Waylock, and was sent back to sleep here before grim Death ate his earthly flesh. He carries her name, and can restore her. Muris! Rise! I name thee now Paridae! The lightest brush of my wand gives you the shape always you have craved, and cloaks you in feathered wings. Mouse no more, but Titmouse now, go to, and sing my daughter’s memory to life. But, as at my word, nor further speak to her, for Oberon must plead and fail his case ere she escapes his gilded cage.”

  “’Tis done, then, madam; and when next we meet, see thou wear thy bridal-dress again for I carry you to bridal-bed.”

  “What are your dreams? Small things stood next to glories wrought by heroes as my Pendrake is!”

  II

  Oberon was not pleased to hear the name of Pendrake.

  “He shall not be king, madam, for his blood runs untrue.”

  “Untrue, sayst thou? The child of Mordred and Gwenhwyfach was Melehan, who wed Lisanor and bore Loholt, father of Amhar, father of Borre, father of Woden, called the Terrible, from whom all the Northmen of the Conquest times and after claim their patrimony: and from Uther’s line, his grandfather was Constantine, whose Latin house is rooted in the seed of wandering Aeneas, who comes of ill-starred Priam; and by that reckoning, all Europe and all Asia falls within his scepter’s sway, and every land over which the Roman Eagles flew, or the twinned crosses of British sovereigns, supported by fair unicorn and savage lion, or purer lilies of France, and what was claimed of old by Spanish kings or fierce Germanic tribes, or of the Hapsburg emperors, or else the Labarum of Byzantine fame. Is there an inch of Earth where never fell the conquering footstep of some child of Troy, or Rome, or Camelot? Was not Arthur Priam come again, and imperator of Rome?”

  “What was Arthur,” Oberon replied, with dry, ironic scorn, “but a single king whose dynasty ended with himself, betrayed by barren wife unfaithful, and at his highest power, ruled but a little bit of Welsh and Northumbrian Land? Through what twisted and forgotten genealogies can you trace the golden thread of deposed monarchs long crownless and unnamed, and put the wreath of bold Aeneas on the brow of some common man, and claim, Here is the Lord of Troy and Troynovant, and all the Earth besides?”

  “First by birth, and next by merit of his deeds: for though the world has long forgotten who is eldest of the eldest line, the fairy-queen has not: nor has Fame dispraised all the Drakes and Gordons of his line, or all the gray-eyed men (which is the mark and legacy of his blood) whose strange adventures, though swallowed up in Mists of Everness, yet still the Queen of Otherworld, and all her courtiers, recall and praise: Carter, Caine, and Kinnison, their escutcheons bright, still grace the silver walls of Sessremnir, my hall, and deeds there figured are not forgotten, though unremarked on Earth: and all these heroes of the latter days share common ancestors with the Pendrake name. And he is greatest of his great house; nor am I ungrateful for the deed my Anton did in Inquanok, which earned of him thy enmity.”

  “What boots it?” said the dark monarch. “Great deeds or none done by his hand, yet they shall never grasp the scepter. There is nowhere in human lands where kings are kings, save where toiling multitudes suffer under iron rods of tyrants in Arabic sands or sad Africk shores; crowned heads who bow to parliaments, I reckon not.”

  “And yet in dreams when men say Here is King, tis Arthur’s name who first comes to praising lips, not Barbarosa, thy ward. Who of the sleeping kings has greatest fame, sayst thou? Brian Boru, or Heimdall’s sons, or your forgotten emperor, or the lord who held the sword I yielded him from the lake-waters of Avalon, and, at my behest, drove with the Cross of Christ all Fir-bolg of the faerie-mounds and pagan imps away from British towns and hearts? Ah, how your piskies shrieked and fled when churchbells rang!”

  “And thine as well. You wound yourself to wound me: is your womanish hate so fierce?”

  “I need not the praise of all the world, and do not covet lands when moon-light does not shine: the praise of my mortal lover is enough, and he be my true lord, true of heart.”

  “No lordship, his. The Pendragon heir will not be crowned.”

  She laughed a silvery laugh. “That, I yield thee. For coronets he holds in scorn. Proud and wild America will not endure the scepter that the sleepy sons of Europe seek: and when they dream of justice, it is of Robin Hood, and Gaberlunzie they speak, for Americans deem Justice flies into the wilderness, when the town by savage tyranny is ruled, and lives in the hearts of simple men, when she is missing from the halls and courts of high estate.”

  “Then he knows his humble place, nor should his common hands, mired with the reek of earthly toil, have dared to touch the lily whiteness of my Queen. The day the Horn of Everness is mine again, that same day your Pendrake dies! My wrath will not be gentle with baseborn mortals who make thee harlot.”

  “Fie on thee, thou two-mouthed hypocrite, who says and unsays his sworn word as swift as mortals breathe but in and out! Bring forth Io and Europa and Leto and Maia, Thetis and Metis and Mnemosyne, Callisto and Gunnlod and Erda, and every buxom English milkmaid you have dragged by the hair into your rough bed, or surprised by night in tangled green wood, and let them vow your constancy! How often Hymenaeus has been abused by you, or Vor who watches marriage vows! I am done with thee, fa
ther of bastards; and my hero will defy thee, surely as his daughter will. Your time is done, your tide is ebbed; and even as the changeful moon eclipses her fair face from silver-litten nights, so too I turn my face from thee, who could have been my Lord, had thou been true. Begone! To frown at thee were too much favor!”

  His one eye narrowed, and a fire seemed to be in it, but he smiled a small smile and spoke in a mild, lilting whisper: “Exiled of my rightful realm, I know well why I earn thy scorn; but soon the worlds are mine again, nor will my fealty be foresworn, by every mortal who forgets his dreams with morn. ’Tis realmlessness, not faithlessness, thy queenly heart doth shun; when my estate is once more great, thy love and adoration shall triflingly be won.”

  With this, she flourished high the silver beam that served her as a scepter, crying out, “Arch-seducer, yet so little of womenish-kind you know! No crown regained will win mine heart, nor any dignity sword or scepter can bestow. Now, my faerie folk, away! We will chide thee if we longer stay!”

  The wind picked her lightly up, and she whirled away, dancing like an Autumn leaf; and all about her in the air, the gleams of dew from the grass, and the colors of moonlight followed her in wide, wild circles, so that some part of the beauty of the night and the hues and glamour of the night-world seemed to fade and fail as she was gone.

  Robin Goodfellow picked up his wand, about which two serpents coiled, saying, “Good, my Lord, vex not thy brow with frowns. Mortal men be fools withal. If they will sell their freedom for a piece of gold on earth, or half of one, how much quicker will they shed all manliness to sup the golden apples of the sun?”

  “My faerie court, dance and wassail! ’Tis mine command!” called Oberon, gesturing hugely with his scepter, “Rejoice! The golden vales of paradise unlock, once Clavargent rests again in hand, men shall be free of pain and strife, and we shall walk once more in waking life; dream-treasures shall unheap a generous horde, and our empire and empress both restored! The sea of dreams shall o’erflood and rule again the daylit land!”