Читать книгу Hamlet had an Uncle - James Branch Cabell - Страница 4
ОглавлениеTHE SKIN OF SIGMUND'S WIFE: HOW IT GOT HORVENDILE OUT OF HIS KINGDOM
In Jutland at this time lived dozens of women who were no less beautiful than the wife of Earl Sigmund of Lökken, but none who had a more superb complexion. She was called, for this reason, Thora Fairskin; and among her admirers was Prince Wiglerus, the King of Denmark's third son.
This admiration was natural enough, because Wiglerus (who had just come out of Ragwak, after evading the not unjustified malice of the Sultan of Alcore) was by way of being a virtuoso of the beauties of women. Now Wiglerus, so far as he knew, was not actually in love with Thora Fairskin; but he did get an æsthetic delight from looking at her. Her features were good, her hair commendable, her eyes pleasing, her hands excellent: and her skin was marvellous. When you said gallant things to her, then all her small soft face became coloured tenderly, like an illumination in honour of your eloquence, of your arch wit, and perhaps even of your seductiveness. To an unattached well-seasoned adventurer who, at the instant, did not have in progress any affair of the heart, this spectacle was agreeable. That was all, at least for the present.
Meanwhile, Prince Wiglerus enjoyed this sort of innocent but partly earnest love-making; and through his indulgence in it, he induced far-reaching results, because if, upon the afternoon which begins this story, Wiglerus had not paused in the corridor, to exchange amenities with Thora Fairskin, then Wiglerus would have accompanied his brother-in-law Horvendile into the bedroom of Horvendile's wife. There would, in that case, have been no murder.
As the affair fell out, during those affable moments which Wiglerus gave over to polite compliments, Horvendile was killed very hastily by his brother Fengon. Wiglerus, entering the bedchamber, thus found his sister Geruth to be unmistakably Horvendile's widow; and to the farther end of the room, at the bottom of an elaborately embroidered piece of tapestry which presented the last hours of the last Nibelungs, he found also Fengon arising from a hurried inspection of the corpse of Horvendile.
Fengon smiled, somewhat sadly.
'My poor brother would have killed both Geruth and me,' said Fengon. 'But he had a weakness for the more obvious platitudes. So by good luck he paused first to denounce us suitably. By still better luck, I struck him, suitably, before his sword was out.'
Then said Geruth, who even in her present state of undress retained her strong sense of decorum--
'Yet it was not the part of a brave warrior to strike him from behind, my darling.'
'Nor was it the act of an intelligent person, my dearest, to turn his back upon me to rebuke you as a detected adulteress,' replied Fengon.
Wiglerus spoke next, in tones which he kept carefully neutral.
'So Horvendile, at long last, has caught the two of you in bed together. As a result, we confront a corpse with a hole in its back. That is awkward. There is no Demosthenes who could convince an idiot that Horvendile tried to run away from Fengon. Through this hole must leak out some unavoidable scandal. We must make the best of it.'
The Prince of Denmark reflected for an instant.
'Now then, Fengon, do you finish dressing! and do me the kindness to remember you found Horvendile about to kill Geruth. You struck in order to save her. By good luck he was tipsy. Put straight the bed-covers, Fengon, if you please. Stand quiet, my sister. This will not hurt you, not very much, and this is eminently necessary.'
Wiglerus drew out the dead man's sword from its scabbard. He struck swiftly, but with neat precision, making a long shallow cut in Geruth's left arm, which bled freely. He put the bloodied sword in dead Horvendile's right hand.
'So,' says Wiglerus, 'our evidence is prepared. You may scream now, my sister.'
All three of them shouted for aid.
