Read Ebook: The Silver Stallion: A Comedy of Redemption by Cabell James Branch

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BOOK ONE: LAST SIEGE OF THE FELLOWSHIP

BOOK TWO: THE MATHEMATICS OF GONFAL

BOOK THREE: TOUPAN'S BRIGHT BEES

BOOK FOUR: COTH AT PORUTSA

BOOK FIVE: "MUNDUS VULT DECIPI"

BOOK SEVEN: WHAT SARA?DE WANTED

BOOK EIGHT: THE CANDID FOOTPRINT

BOOK NINE: ABOVE PARADISE

BOOK TEN: AT MANUEL'S TOMB

HEREWITH BEGINS THE HISTORY OF THE BIRTH AND OF THE TRIUMPHING OF THE GREAT LEGEND ABOUT MANUEL THE REDEEMER, WHOM GONFAL REPUDIATED AS BLOWN DUST, AND MIRAMON, AS AN IMPOSTOR, AND WHOM COTH REPUDIATED OUT OF HONEST LOVE: BUT WHOM GUIVRIC ACCEPTED, THROUGH TWO SORTS OF POLICY; WHOM KERIN ACCEPTED AS AN HONORABLE OLD HUMAN FOIBLE, AND NINZIAN, AS A PATHETIC AND SERVICEABLE JOKE; WHOM DONANDER ACCEPTED WHOLE-HEARTEDLY , AND WHO WAS ACCEPTED ALSO BY NIAFER, AND BY JURGEN THE PAWNBROKER, AFTER SOME LITTLE PRIVATE RESERVATIONS: AND HEREINAFTER IS RECORDED THE MANNER OF THE GREAT LEGEND'S ENGULFMENT OF THESE PERSONS.

BOOK ONE

LAST SIEGE OF THE FELLOWSHIP

--Et la route, fait elle aussi un grand tour?

--Oh, bien certainement, ?tant donn? qu'elle circonvient ? la fois la destin?e et le bon sens.

--Puisqu'il le faut, alors! dit Jurgen; d'ailleurs je suis toujours dispos? ? go?ter n'importe quel breuvage au moins une fois.

--LA HAULTE HISTOIRE DE JURGEN.

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THEY relate how Dom Manuel that was the high Count of Poictesme, and was everywhere esteemed the most lucky and the least scrupulous rogue of his times, had disappeared out of his castle at Storisende, without any reason or forewarning, upon the feast day of St. Michael and All the Angels. They tell of the confusion and dismay which arose in Dom Manuel's lands when it was known that Manuel the Redeemer--thus named because he had redeemed Poictesme from the Northmen, through the aid of Miramon Lluagor, with a great and sanguinary magic,--was now gone, quite inexplicably, out of these lands.

For whither Manuel had gone, no man nor any woman could say with certainty. At Storisende he had last been seen by his small daughter Melicent, who stated that Father, mounted on a black horse, had ridden westward with Grandfather Death, on a white one, to a far place beyond the sunset. This was quite generally felt to be improbable.

Yet further inquiry had but made more deep the mystery as to the manner of Dom Manuel's passing. Further inquiry had disclosed that the only human eyes anywhere which had, or could pretend to have, rested upon Dom Manuel after Manuel had left Storisende were those of a little boy called Jurgen, the son of Coth of the Rocks. Young Jurgen, after having received from his father an in no way unusual whipping, had run away from home, and had not been recaptured until the following morning. The lad reported that during his wanderings he had witnessed, toward dusk, upon Upper Morven, a fearful eucharist in which the Redeemer of Poictesme had very horribly shared. Thereafter--so the child's tale ran,--had ensued a transfiguration, and a prediction as to the future of Poictesme, and Dom Manuel's elevation into the glowing clouds of sunset....

Now, these latter details had been, at their first rendering, blubbered almost inarticulately. For, after just the initiatory passages of this supposed romance, the parents of Jurgen, in their first rapturous relief at having recovered their lost treasure, had, of course, in the manner of parents everywhere, resorted to such moral altitudes and to such corporal corrections as had disastrously affected the putative small liar's tale. Then, as the days passed, and they of Poictesme still vainly looked for the return of their great Dom Manuel, the child was of necessity questioned again: and little Jurgen, after sulking for a while, had retold his story without any detected deviation.

It certainly all sounded quite improbable. Nevertheless, here was the only explanation of the land's loss tendered anywhere by anybody: and people began half seriously to consider it. Say what you might, this immature and spanked evangelist had told a story opulent in details which no boy of his age could well, it seemed, have invented. Many persons therefore began sagely to refer to the mouths of babes and sucklings, and to nod ominously. Moreover, the child, when yet further questioned, had enlarged upon Manuel's last prediction as to the future glories of Poictesme, to an extent which made incredulity seem rather unpatriotic; and Jurgen had amplified his horrific story of the manner in which Manuel had redeemed his people from the incurred penalties of their various sins up to and including that evening.

The suggested inference that there was to be no accounting anywhere for one's unavoidable misdemeanors up to date,--among which Dom Manuel had been at pains to specify such indiscretions as staying out all night without your parents' permission,--was an arrangement which everybody, upon consideration, found to be more and more desirable. Good-hearted persons everywhere began, with virtually a free choice thus offered between belief and disbelief, to prefer to invest a little, it well might be, remunerative faith in the story told with such conviction by this sweet and unsullied child, rather than in the carping comments of materialists,--who, after all, could only say, well out of earshot of Coth of the Rocks, that this young Jurgen was very likely to distinguish himself thereafter, either in the pulpit or upon some gallows.

Meanwhile one woeful fact was, in any case, undeniable: the saga of that quiet, prospering grand thief of a Manuel had ended with the inconsequent, if the not actually incredible, tales of these two little children; and squinting tall gray Manuel of the high head had gone out of Poictesme, nobody could say whither.

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AND meanwhile too the Redeemer's wife, Dame Niafer, had sent a summoning to each of the nine lords that, with Manuel, were of the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion: and all these met at Storisende, as Niafer commanded them, for a session or, as they more formally called it, a siege of this order.

Now this fellowship took its name from the banner it had fought under so destroyingly. Upon that sable banner was displayed a silver stallion, which was rampant in every member and was bridled with gold. Dom Manuel was the captain of this fellowship; and it was made up of the nine barons who, under Manuel, had ruled Poictesme. Each had his two stout castles and his fine woodlands and meadows, which he held in fealty to Dom Manuel: and each had a high name for valor.

Four of these genial murderers had served, under the Conde de Tohil Vaca, in Manuel's first and utterly disastrous campaign against the Northmen: but all the nine had been with Manuel since the time of the great fighting about Lacre Kai, and throughout Manuel's various troubles with Oribert and Thragnar and Earl Ladinas and Sclaug and Oriander, that blind and coldly evil Swimmer who was the father of Manuel; and in all the other warrings of Manuel these nine had been with him up to the end.

And the deeds of the lords of the Silver Stallion had fallen very little short of Manuel's own deeds. Thus, it was Manuel, to be sure, who killed Oriander: that was a family affair. But Miramon Lluagor, the Seneschal of Gontaron, was the champion who subdued Thragnar and put upon him a detection and a hindrance: and it was Kerin of Nointel--the Syndic and, after that, the Castellan of Basardra,--who captured and carefully burned Sclaug. Then, in the quelling of Othmar Black-Tooth's rebellion, Ninzian of Yair, the High Bailiff of Upper Ardra, had killed eleven more of the outlaws than got their deaths by Manuel's sword. It was Guivric of Perdigon, and not Manuel, who put the great Arabian Al-Motawakkil out of life. And in the famous battle with the Easterlings, by which the city of Megaris was rescued, it was Manuel who got the main glory and, people said, a three nights' loan of the body of King Theodoret's young sister; but capable judges declared the best fighting on that day was done by Donander of ?vre, then but a boy, whom Manuel thereafter made Thane of Aigremont.

Yet Holden of N?rac, the Marshal of St. Tara, was the boldest of them all, and was very well able to hold his own in single combat with any of those that have been spoken of: Coth of the Rocks had not ever quitted any battle-field except as a conqueror: and courteous Anavalt of Fomor and light-hearted Gonfal of Naimes--who had the worst names among this company for being the most cunning friends and coaxers of women,--these two had put down their masculine opposers also in gratifyingly large numbers.

In fine, no matter where the lords of the Silver Stallion had raised their banner against an adversary, it was in that place they made an end of that adversary: for there was never, in any time, a hardier gang of bullies than was this Fellowship of the Silver Stallion in the season that they kept earth noisy with the clashing of their swords and darkened heaven with the smoke of the towns they were sacking, and when throughout the known world men had talked about the wonders which these champions were performing with Dom Manuel to lead them. Now they were leaderless.

These heroes came to Storisende; and with Dame Niafer they of course found Holy Holmendis. This saint was then very lately come out of Philistia, to console the Countess in her bereavement. But they found with her also that youthful red-haired Horvendile under whom Dom Manuel, in turn, had held Poictesme, by the terms of a contract which was not ever made public. Some said this Horvendile to be Satan's friend and emissary, while others declared his origin to lurk in a more pagan mythology: all knew the boy to be a master of discomfortable strange magics such as were unknown to Miramon Lluagor and Guivric the Sage.

This Horvendile said to the nine heroes, "Now begins the last siege of the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion."

Donander of ?vre was the youngest of them. Yet he spoke now, piously and boldly enough. "But it is our custom, Messire Horvendile, to begin each siege with prayer."

"This siege," replied Horvendile, "must nevertheless begin without any such religious side-taking. For this is the siege in which, as it was prophesied, you shall be both against Judah and against Jerusalem, and against Thebes and Hermopolis and Avalon and Breidablik and all other places which produce Redeemers."

"Upon my word, but who is master here!" cried Coth of the Rocks, twirling at his long mustachios. This gesture was a sure sign that trouble brewed.

Horvendile answered: "The master who held Poictesme, under my whims, has passed. A woman sits in his place, his little son inherits after him. So begins a new romance; and a new order is set afoot."

"Yet Coth, in his restless pursuit of variety, has asked a wholly sensible question," said Gonfal, the tall Margrave of Aradol. "Who will command us, who now will give us our directions? Can Madame Niafer lead us to war?"

"These things are separate. Dame Niafer commands: but it is I--since you ask,--who will give to all of you your directions, and your dooms too against the time of their falling, and after that to your names I will give life. Now, your direction, Gonfal, is South."

Gonfal looked full at Horvendile, in frank surprise. "I was already planning for the South, though certainly I had told nobody about it. You are displaying, Messire Horvendile, an uncomfortable sort of wisdom which troubles me."

Horvendile replied, "It is but a little knack of foresight, such as I share with Balaam's ass."

But Gonfal stayed more grave than was his custom. He asked, "What shall I find in the South?"

"What all men find, at last, in one place or another, whether it be with the aid of a knife or of a rope or of old age. Yet, I assure you, the finding of it will not be unwelcome."

"Well,"--Gonfal shrugged,--"I am a realist. I take what comes, in the true form it comes in."

Now Coth of the Rocks was blustering again. "I also am a realist. Yet I permit no upstart, whether he have or have not hair like a carrot, to give me any directions."

Horvendile answered, "I say to you--"

But Coth replied, shaking his great bald head: "No, I will not be bulldozed in this way. I am a mild-mannered man, but I will not tamely submit to be thus browbeaten. I believe, too, that Gonfal was insinuating I do not usually ask sensible questions!"

"Nobody has attempted--"

"Are you not contradicting me to my face! What is that but to call me a liar! I will not, I repeat, submit to these continued rudenesses."

"I was only saying--"

But Coth was implacable. "I will take directions from nobody who storms at me and who preserves no dignity whatever in our hour of grief. For the rest, the children agree in reporting that, whether he ascended in a gold cloud or traveled more sensibly on a black horse, Dom Manuel went westward. I shall go west, and I shall fetch Dom Manuel back into Poictesme. I shall, also, candidly advise him, when he returns to ruling over us, to discourage the tomfooleries and the ridiculous rages of all persons whose brains are overheated by their hair."

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