The Cream of the Jest, James Branch Cabell [smart ebook reader .TXT] 📗

it is time your master shift another puppet.”

So Horvendile descended, still poetizing: “Pus ab mi dons no m pot valer”⁠—or in other wording:

“Since nothing will avail to move my lady⁠—not prayers or righteous claims or mercy⁠—and she desires my homage now no longer, I shall have nothing more to say of love. I must renounce love, and abjure it utterly. I must regard her whom I love as one no longer living. I must, in fine, do that which I prepare to do; and afterward I must depart into eternal exile.”

IV Of the Double-Dealer’s Traffic with a Knave

Horvendile left the fortress, and came presently to Maugis d’Aigremont. Horvendile got speech with this brigand where he waited encamped in the hill-country of Perdigon, loth to leave Storisende since it held Ettarre whom he so much desired, but with too few adherents to venture an attack.

Maugis sprawled listless in his chair, wrapped in a mantle of soiled and faded green stuff, as though he were cold. In his hand was a naked sword, with which moodily he was prodding the torn papers scattered about him. He did not move at all, but his somber eyes lifted.

“What do you plan now, Horvendile?”

“Treachery, messire.”

“It is the only weapon of you scribblers. How will it serve me?”

Then Horvendile spoke. Maugis sat listening. Above the sword-hilt the thumb of one hand was stroking the knuckles of the other carefully. His lean and sallow face stayed changeless.

Says Maugis: “It is a bold stroke⁠—yes. But how do I know it is not some trap for me?”

Horvendile shrugged, and asked: “Have I not served you constantly in the past, messire?”

“You have suggested makeshifts very certainly. And to a pretty pass they have brought me! Here I roost like a starved buzzard, with no recreation save to watch the turrets of Storisende on clear afternoons.”

“Where Ettarre prepares to marry Sir Guiron,” Horvendile prompted.

“I think of that.⁠ ⁠… She is very beautiful, is she not, Horvendile? And she loves this stately kindly fool who carries his fair head so high and has no reason to hide anything from her. Yes, she is very beautiful, being created perfect by divine malice that she might be the ruin of men. So I loved her: and she did not love me, because I was not worthy of her love. And Guiron is in all things worthy of her. I cannot ever pardon him that, Horvendile.”

“And I am pointing out a way, messire, by which you may reasonably hope to deal with Sir Guiron⁠—ho, and with the Counts Emmerick and Perion, and with Ettarre also⁠—precisely as you elect.”

Then Maugis spoke wearily. “I must trust you, I suppose. But I have no lively faith in my judgments nowadays. I have played fast and loose with too many men, and the stench of their blood is in my nostrils, drugging me. I move in a half-sleep, and people’s talking seems remote and foolish. I can think clearly only when I think of how tender is the flesh of Ettarre. Heh, a lovely flashing peril allures me, through these days of fog, and I must trust you. Death is ugly, I know; but life is ugly too, and all my deeds are strange to me.”

The clerk was oddly moved. “Do you not know I love you as I never loved Guiron?”

“How can I tell? You are an outlander. Your ways are not our ways,” says the brigand moodily. “And what have I to do with love?”

“You will talk otherwise when you drink in the count’s seat, with Ettarre upon your knee,” Horvendile considered. “Observe, I do not promise you success! Yet I would have you remember it was by very much this same device that Count Perion won the sister of Ettarre.”

“Heh, if we fail,” replies Maugis, “I shall at least have done with remembering⁠ ⁠…” Then they settled details of the business in hand.

Thus Horvendile returned to Storisende before twilight had thickened into nightfall. He came thus to a place different in all things from the haggard outlaw’s camp, for Count Emmerick held that night a noble revel. There was gay talk and jest and dancing, with all other mirth men could devise.

V How the Double-Dealer Was of Two Minds

It was deep silent night when Horvendile came into the room where Ettarre slept. “Out, out!” cried Horvendile. “Let us have more light here, so that men may see the beauty men die for!” He went with a torch from lamp to lamp, kindling them all.

Ettarre stood between the bed-curtains, which were green hangings worked with birds and beasts of the field, each in his proper colors. The girl was robed in white; and upon her breast gleamed the broken sigil of Scoteia, that famed talisman which never left her person. She wore a scarlet girdle about her middle, and her loosened yellow hair fell heavy about her. Her fine proud face questioned the clerk in silence, without any trace of fear.

“We must wait now,” says Horvendile, “wait patiently for that which is to follow. For while the folk of Storisende slept⁠—while your fair, favored lover slept, Ettarre, and your stout brothers Emmerick and Perion slept, and all persons who are your servitors and well-wishers slept⁠—I, I, the puppet-shifter, have admitted Maugis d’Aigremont and his men into this castle. They are at work now, hammer-and-tongs, to decide who shall be master of Storisende and you.”

Her first speech you would have found odd at such a time. “But, oh, it was not you who betrayed us, Horvendile⁠—not you whom Guiron loved!”

“You forget,” he returned, “that I, who am without any hope to win you, must attempt to view the squabbling of your other lovers without bias. It is the custom of omnipotence to do that, Ettarre. I have given Maugis d’Aigremont an equal chance with Sir Guiron. It is the custom of omnipotence to do that also, Ettarre. You will remember the tale was trite even in Job’s far time that