Читать книгу The High Place - James Branch Cabell - Страница 8

V

Friendly Advice of Janicot

WHEN he had entered a little way into Acaire, Florian came to an open place, where seven trees had been hewn down. A brown horse was tethered here, and here seven lilies bloomed with a surprising splendour of white and gold. These stood waist-high about a sedate looking burgess, unostentatiously but very neatly dressed in some brown stuff, which was just the colour of his skin. At his feet was a shrub covered with crimson flowers: no sun shone here, the sky was clouded and cast down a coppery glow.

Such was Janicot. Florian saluted him very civilly, but with appropriate reserve.

“Come,” Janicot said, smiling, “and is this the rapturous countenance of a bridegroom? I am not pleased with you, Monsieur the Duke, I must have happy faces among my friends.”

“So you also have heard of my approaching marriage! Well, I am content enough, and for me to marry the co-heiress of Nérac seems logical: but in logic, too, I cannot ignore that I ride toward a disappointing business. There is magic in the curiously clothed woman who is mistress of herself, the hour and you: but the prostrate, sweating and submissive meat in a tangle of bed-clothing—!” Florian shrugged.

“In fact,” said Janicot, as if pensively, “I have observed you. You do not enter wholly into the pleasures suitable for men and women: you do not avoid these agreeabilities, but your sampling of them is without self-surrender, and there is something else which you hold more desirable.”

“That is true.” Florian for an instant meditated. Florian shrugged. Then Florian dismounted from his white horse, and tethered it. Here was the one being in whom you might confide logically. Florian told Janicot the story of how, in childhood, Florian had ascended to the high place, and had seen the Princess Melior, whom always since that time his heart had desired.

And Janicot heard him through, with some marks of interest. Janicot nodded.

“Yes, yes,” said Janicot. “I do not frequent high places. But I have heard of this Melior, from men a long while dead, and they said that she was beautiful.”

“Then they spoke foolishly,” replied Florian, “because they spoke with pitiable inadequacy. Now I do not say that she is beautiful. I do not speak any praise whatever of Melior, because her worth is beyond all praising. I am silent as to the unforgotten beauty of Melior, lest I cry out against that which I love. When I was but a child her loveliness was revealed to me, and never since then have I been able to forget the beauty of which all dreams go envious. I jest with women who are lovable and nicely coloured; they have soft voices and their hearts are kind: but presently I yawn and say they are not as Melior.”

“Ah, but in fact,” said Janicot, “in fact, you do—without caring to commit yourself formally—believe that this Melior is beautiful?”

Now Florian’s plump face was altered, and his voice shook a little. He said:

“Her beauty is that beauty which women had in the world’s youth, and whose components the old world forgets in this grey age. It may be that Queen Helen possessed such beauty, she for whom the long warring was. It may be that Cleopatra of Egypt, who had for her playmates emperors and a gleaming snake, and for her lovers all poets that have ever lived, or it may be that some other royal lady of the old time, in the world’s youth, wore flesh that was the peer of Melior’s flesh in loveliness. But such women, if there indeed was ever Melior’s peer, are now vague echoes and blown dust. I cry the names that once were magic. I cry to Semiramis and to Erigonê and to Guenevere, and there is none to answer. Their beauty has gone down into the cold grave, it has nourished grasses, and cattle chew the cud which was their loveliness. Therefore I cry again, I cry the name of Melior: and though none answers, I know that I cry upon the unflawed and living beauty which my own eyes have seen.”

Janicot sat on a tree-stump, stroking his chin with thumb and fore-finger. He was entirely brown, with white and gold about him, and the flowering at his neatly shod feet was more red than blood. He said:

“In that seeing, denied to all other living persons,—in that, at least, you have been blessed.”

“In that,” said Florian bitterly, “I was accursed. Because of this beauty which I may not put out of mind, the tinsel prettiness of other women becomes grotesque and pitiable and hateful. I strive to mate with them, and I lie lonely in their arms. I seek for a mate, and I find only meat and much talking. Then I regard the tedious stranger in whose arms I discover myself, and I wonder what I am doing in this place. I remember Melior, and I must rid myself of the fond foolish creature who is not as Melior.”

“Ah, ah!” said Janicot then, “so that is how it is. I perceive you are a romantic. The disorder is difficult to cure. Yet we must have you losing no more wives: there must be an end to the ill luck which follows your matrimonial adventures and causes hypercritical persons to whisper. Yes, since you are a romantic, since all other women upset your equanimity and lead you into bereavements which people, let me tell you, are festooning with ugly surmises, you certainly must have this Melior.”

“No,” Florian said wistfully, “there is an etiquette in these matters. Even if I cared to dabble in sorcery, it would not be quite courteous for me to interfere with the magic which Madame Mélusine has laid upon the high place and her blood relations. It would be meddling in her family affairs, it would be an incivility without precedent, to her who was so kind to me in my childhood.”

“You think too much about precedent, Monsieur the Duke. In any event, Mélusine has half forgotten the matter. So much has happened to her, in the last several hundred years, that her mind has quite gone. She cares only to wail upon battlements and to pass through dusky corridors at twilight, predicting the deaths of her various descendants. You can see for yourself that these are not the recreations of a logical person. No, Florian, you are considerate, and it does you great credit, but you would not annoy Madame Mélusine by releasing Brunbelois.”

Said Florian gently: “My intimates, to be sure, address me as Florian. But our acquaintance, Monsieur Janicot, however delightful, remains as yet of such brevity that, really, whether you be human or divine——”

“Oh, but Monsieur the Duke,” replied the other, “but indeed I entreat your pardon for my inadvertence.”

And Florian, too, bowed. “It is merely a social convention, of course. Yet it is necessary to respect the best precedents even in trifles. Well, now, and as to your suggestion, I confess you tempt me——”

“Only, you could not free Brunbelois unaided, nor could any living sorcerer. For Mélusine’s was the Old Magic that is stronger than the thin thaumaturgy of these days. Yet I desire to have happy faces about me, so I will give you this Melior for a while.”

“And at what price?”

“I who am the Prince of this world am not a merchant to buy and sell. I will release the castle, and you may have the girl as a free gift. I warn you, though, that, since she is of the Léshy, at the year’s end she will vanish.”

Florian shook his head smilingly. He knew of course that marriage with one of the Léshy could not be permanent. But this fiend must believe him very simple indeed, if Janicot thought Florian so uninformed as not to know that whoever accepts a gift from hell is thereby condemned to burn eternally: and to perceive this amused Florian.

“Ah, Monsieur Janicot, but a Puysange cannot take alms from anybody. No, let us be logical! There must be a price set and paid, so that I may remain under no distasteful and incendiary debts.”

Janicot hid excellently the disappointment he must have felt. “Then suppose we fix it that she is yours until you have had a child by her? And that then she will vanish, and that then the child is to be given me, as my honorarium, by”—Janicot explained—“the old ritual.”

“Well,” Florian replied, “I may logically take this to be a case of desperate necessity, since all my happiness depends upon it. Now in such cases Paracelsus admits the lawfulness of seeking aid from—if you will pardon the technical term, Monsieur Janicot—from unclean spirits. He is supported in this, as I remember it, by Peter Ærodius, by Bartolus of Sassoferato, by Salecitus, and by other divines and schoolmen. So I have honourable precedents, I do not offend against convention. Yes, I accept the offer; and the child, whatever my paternal pangs, shall be given, as your honorarium, by the old ritual.”

“Of course,” said Janicot reflectively, “if there should be no child——”

“Monsieur, I am Puysange. There will be a child.”

“Why, then, it is settled. Now I think of it, you will need the sword Flamberge with which to perform this rite, since Melior is of the Léshy, and that sword alone of all swords may spill their blood——”

“But where is Flamberge nowadays?”

“There is one at home, in an earthen pot, who could inform you.”

“Let us not speak of that,” said Florian hastily, “but do you tell me where is this sword.”

“I have no notion as to the present whereabouts of Flamberge. Nor since you stickle for etiquette, is it etiquette for me to aid you in finding this sword until you have made me a sacrifice.”

“Why, but you offered Melior, as a free gift!” said Florian, smiling to see how obvious were the traps this Janicot set for him. “Is a princess of less importance than a sword?”

“A princess is easier to get, because a princess is easier to make. A sword, far less a magic sword like Flamberge, cannot be fashioned without long training and preparation and special knowledge. But no man needs more than privacy and a queen’s goodwill to make a princess.”

“I confess, Monsieur Janicot, that your logic is indisputable. Well, when at the winter solstice you hold your Festival of the Wheel, I shall not sacrifice to you. That would be to relapse into the old evil ways of heathenry, a relapse for which is appointed an agonizing reproof, administered in realms unnecessary to mention, but doubtless familiar to you. However, I shall be glad to tender you a suitable Christmas present, since that sacred season falls at the same time.”

“You may call it whatever you prefer. But it must be a worthy gift that one offers me at my Yule Feast.”

“You shall have—not as a sacrifice, you understand, but as a Christmas present—the greatest man living in France. You shall have no less a gift than the life of that weasel-faced prime minister who now rules France, the all-powerful Cardinal Dubois. For the rest, your bargain is reasonable: it contains none of those rash mortgagings of the soul, about which—if you will pardon my habitual frankness, Monsieur Janicot—one has to be careful in all business dealings with your people. So let us subscribe this bond.”

Janicot laughed: his traffic was not in souls, he said; and he said also that Florian, for a nobleman, was deplorably the man of business. None the less, Janicot now produced from his pocket a paper upon which the terms of their bargain happened, rather unaccountably, to be neatly written out: and they both signed this paper, with the pens and ink which Florian had not previously noticed to be laid there so close at hand, upon one of the tree-stumps.

Then Janicot put up the paper, and remarked: “A thing done has an end. For the rest, these fellows will escort you to Brunbelois.”

“And of what fellows do you speak?” asked Florian.

“Why, those servants of mine just behind you,” replied Janicot.

And Florian, turning, saw in the roadway two very hairy persons in an oxcart, drawn by two brown goats that were as large as oxen; and yet Florian was certain that none of these things had been in that place an instant before. This Janicot, however easy to see through had been his traps for Florian, was beyond doubt efficient.

Florian said: “The liveries of your retainers tend somewhat to the capillary. None the less, I shall be deeply honoured, monsieur, to be attended by any servants of your household.”

Janicot replied: “Madame Mélusine has ordained against men and the living of mankind eternal banishment from the high place. Very well!”

He drew his sword, and without any apparent effort he struck off the head of his brown horse. He set this head upon a stake, and he thrust the other end of the stake into the ground, so that the stake stood upright.

“I here set up,” said Janicot, “a nithing post. I turn the post. I turn the eternal banishment against Madame Mélusine.”

He waited for a moment. He was entirely brown: about him lilies bloomed, with a surprising splendour of white and gold: and the flowering at his feet was more red than blood.

He moved the stake so that the horse’s head now faced the east, and Janicot said: “Also I turn this post against the protecting monsters of the high place, in order that they may all become as witless as now is this slain horse. I send a witlessness upon them from the nithing post, which makes witless and takes away the strength of the rulers and of the controlling gods of whatever land this nithing post be turned against. I, who am what I am, have turned the post. I have sent forth the Seeing of All the Seeing that makes witless. A thing done has an end.”