They went

PART I CHAPTER I YOU could hear the waves moaning, out yonder

There was no escaping from the sea. It hung like a menace, they sometimes said, over the low-lying city. Day and night that pungent salty odour invaded the town; for the ocean entered up a short river-channel into its very

heart, the docks; and billows dashed lustily against the huge embankment or sea-wall which, at this hour of the afternoon, would have been crowded with folk but for those gusts of rain that kept them indoors. A warm summer rain, interspersed with flashes of merry sunshine. Green things were sprouting on the plain; the mountains, further back, had veiled themselves in mists. Here, in the streets, moisture fell in glad cataracts upon the pavements and spurted up again, buffeted by the wind, against the granite shop-fagades or those polished marble fronts of the nobler palaces that shone like mirrors with the wetness.

And a rainbow hung in the sky, an ordinary one. Nobody paid much attention. It was " a rainbowish sort of place," as the old king was often heard to remark.

Such were the splashings and drippings, and such the din he made himself with his implements, that old Lelian, working with his back to the half-opened door, kept on thinking himself quite alone. He was a cheery, muscular mortal who knew his craft and had made fine weapons in his day ; it was not for nothing that he bore the title of Court-armourer. Who wanted armour nowadays? They lay about in corners, the old shields and swords and helmets cunningly wrought with his own hand; there they lay, a pitiful collection, rusting and forgotten. Often he looked at them, and shook his head dubiously.

He wore sandals and breeches of leather; his gaiters were fastened with coloured straps. There was a ring of copper in one of his ears, and his bare arms, issuing out of that sleeveless tunic, were encircled with bracelets of the same metal — common copper ! His mouth was almost hidden under a drooping grey moustache; grey, too, was the long hair that tumbled from either side of his head, whose summit was cropped close, after the fashion of bygone days. All of which proved him to belong to that older generation, a generation of warriors. There were not many of them left now. They used to fight, in his time. They went to battle crowned with garlands, as to a feast ; often enlarged their wounds purposely ; always preferred death to dishonour. Those days were over. Nobody talked about fighting any more. It was an era of peace, of splendour and luxury, and wrongdoing. Those fountains and coloured marbles; the gold, the jewels, the steaming vapour-baths and colonnades and pleasure-houses and dancingbooths and — and worse ! All those tawnyskinned merchants from foreign countries, clad in glittering robes — where would it end? Nobody, of course, could help liking the young princess who fostered these growths. Nobody could refuse her anything. Yet Lelian, like everybody else, had heard queer tales about her.

He shook his head more dubiously than ever, and pondered awhile.

Queer tales! If only her parents had seen fit to bring her up more strictly — to send her, for instance, to that far-famed college oh the Sacred Eock

At this point of his meditations, he grew suddenly aware of a strange feeling. He was no longer alone. Eyes were gazing upon him from the doorway at his back. And before he had time to turn round, he heard the words ;

" Make me a mask, my good Lelian. A mask of copper. And greeting."

It was the young lady herself. Wet with the shower, she laughingly wrung out the drops from the thick-clustering hair which fell in a ruddy torrent over her shoulders. Her mantle of green was clasped by a belt at the waist; breast and arms were ablaze with precious stones, the envy of other women. No man ever saw them. She might wear what clothing or jewels she liked: they only saw her face. Or if by chance their eye lingered on such outward things, it was only to divine the shapely curves of her limbs underneath. She had been standing at the door unperceived for a short time, wondering what to say and how to say it. As usual, she had gone straight to the point.

There was nothing uncommon in the princess, thus unattended, entering the shop of an artizan or trader. It was a jovial, democratic place. The royal family — the two parents and their only child — were vastly popular, and the young lady herself, when she pleased, was more democratic than any one else and moreover, though only nineteen years of age — nineteen years, or perhaps a little more — perfectly capable of taking care of herself. She was on familiar terms with many merchants; in the case of a goodly number of them, it was at her own request that they had left their distant homes in South or East and settled down here to do business. As to old Lelian, she often consulted him about metals and enamels, for she was passionately fond of such things and had a workshop of her own in her tower. Not long ago, out of sheer caprice, she had even persuaded him to become a member of the Goldsmiths' Guild, a collection of foreign craftsmen who could poise an emerald in a ring as though it hung in water and tease the ductile gold into filagree work finer than a spider's web — men with whose aspirations he had nothing in common, and whose womanly delicacy of touch he neither wished nor tried to rival. Yet he yielded; who could refuse the princess anything? Had he not watched her growth with a kind of scared joy, and fashioned brooches and bracelets for her, in sport, when she was still a little child? She always loved things of price and beauty, though now, with growing years, her tastes had expanded; no longer content to frolic with metals, she worked her wUl upon men and houses and streets. The city had become her plaything.

Often she came to see the armourer. She liked him, above all, because he could hold his tongue. The princess, like everybody else, had a reputation to keep up.

"A mask," the old man began, hesitatingly.

What kind of mask, he wondered. For what purpose? He moved his implements about with an undecided gesture and then, suddenly mindful of his duty, drew up that square stool of oaken timber upon which the young lady had often rested. She remained standing. She seemed to be in a hurry.

" Like this," she explained once more, going into its construction and mechanism. "And with a screw at the back, like this — you follow?"

The armourer nodded thoughtfully.

" It can be made, my lady. And shall be made. But "

" Oh, for fun."

Her notions of fun were not those of everybody ; they were almost peculiar to herself. This mask, for example — it was quite an original idea of hers. She was tired of poisons.

" Nothing easier, my lady," he began again. " But, I was going to say, a screw of that kind, if incautiously pressed, might hurt or even suffocate the wearer."

It is possible, though not likely, that she would have answered, " that is precisely what I want it for " : she stopped short in time. The door opened wide and, together with a gust of warm wind, a young boy entered the room. This was Harr6, aged about twelve, a sturdy imp who had been bred among the remote and fierce tribe of the Alloquisti. , Nearly everybody disliked Harr6 save the princess, who had discovered him in a curious manner and now found him useful for household purposes. He was clothed at that moment in a deerskin, and the rainwater ran down his bare legs. What added considerably to his picturesque appearance was the fact that he was painted blue; blue from head to foot; blue of a bright celestial tint, extracted from a certain variety of the colour-producing plant which was found only in that distant territory. Like the rest of his savage race, he wore a deerskin on those rare occasions when he wore anything at all; a garment which in his case was made to hold together across the shoulders by means of a bow-shaped fibula of electron designed by the princess herself; the thing looked well, and was one of her earliest attempts in that composition.

He promptly unclasped it and, fumbling underneath, produced a package of some brown material held together by a hempen cord. It gave forth, on being opened, a shawl of finest texture, an exquisite product that came from far, far away — from the regions known as the Koof of the World. Some man of the East, some slender and dusky princeling, had once laid it, together with other gifts, at the queen's feet.

" Your mother sends this," he said. " She fears you may get wet. She implores and commands you to put it on. She also begs you "

" How did she know I was here? "

" I told her. I guessed it. I saw you go in this direction."

To look at the young lady's face, nobody could have divined at that moment how angry she was. She went on, quite kindly:

" What more, my child? "

" She begs you to appear at the palace tonight. There will be something of a feast. A wealthy Greek merchant is arriving: I forget his name. Yes, Theophilus! And also a new Christian preacher."

" What, another one? "

" His ship is already sighted from the North- West. And the quite-too-chaste-and-venerable Mother Manthis has sailed across and will doubtless be there. I think your mother fears there may be some dispute between her and the Christian. She always fears such little things."

" Bother that druidess," said the young lady, who had other plans for the evening.

Harr6 always named the person in question by her full title and with the deepest respect, ever since one memorable occasion when the old lady had proved to him that she, at all events, was not to be trifled with. Manthis, the arch-druidess, tolerated no nonsense, least of all from what she called " mere males." She kept a kind of college or seminary for yonng girls on the Sacred Rock, the largest of a group of islands which rose out of the sea a couple of miles off. As a member of the highest aristocracy of the land, and also in virtue of her sacerdotal and political character, she put in an appearance at court as often as she could ; as often, that is, as she could spare time from her pupils. The girls were uppermost in her mind; all else was subordinate to their welfare. She worked for them, and them alone, out on that island. Not that there was lack of evil-speaking in the town, even in regard to so austere and transparently upright a personality as Manthis. Men whispered that she used to live on the borders of her little lake in the character of a Groac'h or wicked fairy, entrapping young men to her underground palace by means of a boat shaped like a sleeping swan, and there transmuting them into fishes or frogs for mysterious purposes of her own. Others, equally ignorant or malicious, claimed that she was the last survivor of a company of nine abandoned women who, vowed (as they said) to perpetual virginity, dwelt on that seagirt rock under the pretence of worshipping the chaste moon'; terrified sailormen had seen them, each clad in a single garment, dancing nocturnal rounds on the lonely beach or sailing landward tinder the stars to meet their lovers. Whoever set eyes on Manthis might well marvel how such tales could ever have arisen.

The princess was not thinking of those legends just then. She was thinking of herself. She seldom thought of anything else. " That explains," she mused, " why they want me at the palace tonight."

The queen was always anxious to avoid trouble and discussions; she hated what she called " scenes," especially at court. It was so easy, she declared, to demean oneself in friendly wise with everybody ! Perhaps she foresaw that there might be words between the druidess and this new Christian preacher, as in the case of his predecessor. Manthis could doubtless be trusted to do the right thing in every emergency; she could keep her temper like any other high-born lady. And all would have gone smoothly on the first occasion but for that particular Christian missionary — the only one, up till then, that had ever set foot in the town — who turned out to be such a violent venerable that things had ended, between himself on the one side, and the druidess and court and citizens on the other, in a complete misunderstanding. A complete misunderstanding! Which was a pity, for the townsfolk, as well as the royal family, were nothing if not well-disposed towards strangers.

" Scenes " of this kind, the queen decided, must never occur again ; apart from all other reasons, they were bad for the old king's health. And hitherto they had been successfully avoided. Such was the tact and innate kindliness of the royal couple that no scandal ever occurred since the days of that first Christian — "peace at any price " had become the watchword of the entire court.

This, then, was the reason why the queen was anxious for her daughter to appear that evening. And also to enliven the assembly in general. For life at the palace was dull, and it was observed that whenever the princess showed herself and came away from her beloved tower — which was fairly often, seeing that, like a good girl, she always gratified her parents when she could spare time from her own occupations — there was more laughter and joy than usual in that rather formal gathering.

" Go and wait outside the door," she now said to Harr6. "And here! Take this dreadful woollen contrivance with you. Fancy asking me to wear it ! What next? "

She presently followed him, after a few final words with the armourer about her new toy. They stepped together into the street and soon reached an open space with arches running round it, and fountains and flower beds in the centre — it lay beside the harbour where countless ships were moored, one beside the other, in the still green waters. The shower had ceased; a gleam of evening sunshine was breaking through the clouds.

The princess enquired :

" Did you hear, as you entered, what I was saying about the brooch? "

" In that wind and rain? How could I hear anything? "

" Now listen, Harr6. Why did you tell my mother where I was, since I have forbidden you to do so? Why? Look at me."

She glanced so strangely into his eyes that he began to tremble all over. It was not the first time she had looked at him like this, and under that scorching fire all his impudence seemed to wither away.

" Why ? " she persisted.

" I forgot. I also thought you would like something to protect you from the wet."

She was wearing a necklace that hung loosely over her bosom, a necklace of male carbuncles; they glowed with a crimson light and were set in massive gold. Now she raised her arms and detached its clasp beneath the thick hair that streamed down her back. Then, taking the jewel in her hand, she began to count the stones along one side. At the eleventh she paused, and rubbed away the moisture on its surface. Laying her hand on the boy's shoulder, she said in gentle fashion :

" You know something about pigs, don't you, Harr6? "

' Don't I? " he replied, his heart swelling with Alloquistian pride. " Our pigs are the finest in the world. They are so big and strong and fleet of foot that no stranger can approach them, and if "

" I thought so. Now look through that stone, and tell me what you see. Hold it before your eye. Close the other eye. Look into the sun."

He did so.

" All red," he replied. " Like blood."

" Look again. What do you see? "

" I see — ah, how strange ! I see a little pig. It is tied to a stake by one leg, and a man is beating it with a crooked stick. It cries all the time. I can hear it."

" Look more carefully. What else? "

Harr6 hesitated long before replying. At last he said :

" I see nothing more. It is always tied to that stake, and always being beaten, and always crying. The poor little pig ! It cries very badly."

" That is what I shall do to you, Harr6. I shall turn you into a little pig like that one, and lock you up in a stone like this one "

" Yes. But I shall not wear you round my neck. I shall take you in a boat a three months' sail beyond the Sacred Rock, and drop you to the bottom of the sea. There you will lie deep down, all alone among the weeds, always tied up and always crying "

" And always being beaten with a crooked stick, if — if ever you disobey me again," she added in a more kindly tone of voice. " Now look at me."

He looked, and saw that her wrath had fled. The horror of the vision endured. He knew that she could keep her word, and would. She was well capable of such a deed, if only for fun. There was no doubt whatever that the princess, for all her youth, had drunk of the water of Entri and was already a magician. Nobody but she, thought Harr6, could have talked over those dwarfs and made them do her bidding. That alone proved her power.

Then, remembering the dwarfs, he began to smile once more. What a trick he played them ! And how well everything had turned out! For it was better, assuredly, serving this beautiful lady than guarding swine with the AUoquisti, among the damp woods and bracken and standing stones, and being beaten by a stern blue father and a stern bine mother every single day of his life.

Meanwhile they moved forth again along the quays towards the great sea-wall or embankment whereon stood the tower of the young lady, Harr6 walking respectfully behind his mistress, with the bundle underneath his deerskin- The sun shone ; tall buUdings stUl trickled with moisture; it sped gleefully down the gutters and found its way at last into the Great Drain — that masterpiece of engineering which had cost its famous Eoman builder, Ormidius Limpidus, much anxious thought. It ran far out to sea, close beneath the lady's tower, and some said there was a secret stairway from her apartments right down to its sullen black waters. Nobody knew the truth of this, and the Great Drain itself told no tales.

And now they had climbed the embankment against whose granite foundations the tide was ramping and raging.

" Your lady mother will be sitting out yonder," said Harr6.

" Likely enough. And doing her embroidery. And singing that venerable song. Poor old thing! She never changes."

The sky was full of wetness and joy, and streaked with gold like a lion's mane. Of such a hue, like a flaming wisp torn down from the glory of sunset, was the lady's hair; one would have called it red, but for the fact that she happened to be a princess. It was a prodigy, this hair, for that of all the other citizens was black or brown by nature, though some ladies tried to imitate her ruddy tint by means of soap made from tallow and the ashes of a certain tree. And her eyes were green ; green as moss, or as those tangled ribbons of emerald that sway mirthfully among their dun companions in the water of rocky sea-clefts. There was something of the untamed beauty of the ocean in her look and carriage; something of the wildness of Aithryn whom the countryfolk in their simplicity, believing everything distant or unknown to be miraculous, held to be a legendary sea-god.

For nobody in the town had ever beheld the Aithryn of flesh and blood, that rather stupid man — Aithryn the menace, the predestined destroyer; nobody save the queen, and that was nineteen years ago — nineteen years, or perhaps a little more.

She, poor old thing, had taken him for a friend ; for somewhat more than a friend.

Chapter II

IT was the business of Ando, the court prophet, to " keep it up," that is to say, to prevent the conversation at palace entertainments from flagging, as it sometimes did. When sufficiently sober, as he sometimes was, he might be heard to descant on this wise :

" We have seen it in the land of the Chauci " and there he generally paused, to gain attention.

"What have we seen?" one of the guests would ask, more out of politeness than for any other reason. Ando's stories were fairly well known; that of the Chauci in particular. He was going to say something to flatter the king, the founder of the city; something about that stone embankment which he had built.

" How, from the dawn of time, there has been sullen rivalry between land and water. They are always stealing marches on one another. The sea strives by force or guile to encroach upon the earth; it engulfs whole cities beneath the waves, and secretly, in days of summer calm, gnaws away the foundations of headlands and islets. They crash asunder, toppling down in wintry gales, and water gleams where rock once stood. Elsewhere the land thrusts forth promontories and spits, stealthily driving back the sea from its old haunts. Then came man " Here he would pause again.

" What of it? " the civil guest would ask.

" Man took sides with earth. He embittered the strife. Long ago he went in simple-minded hordes, armed to the teeth, to fight the tides which threatened to roll over his fields; soon he constructed ships that mocked the storms; he built' dykes and stole unnumbered leagues of old ocean-meadows like those of the Chauci which happen to be still unreclaimed; he drove piles into the waves, planting towns and pleasure-houses over their very heads. So the warfare proceeds. Like two bad neighbours, they continue to shift one another's boundary-marks, and the issue remains ever undecided. What land gains here and today, the sea will snatch yonder and tomorrow. But "

"What of it?"

" With us, my friends, the case is different. We are not Chauci, at the mercy of the floods. Our sea is driven out for ever and ever. Granite endures."

" Ah, that embankment ! You are eloquent tonight, Ando."

" Eloquence and bravery : these be the two gifts of our race. Eloquence is mine; bravery, the king's."

" Enough, Ando, enough ! " the ancient monarch (himself not remarkable for sobriety) would often interpose on such occasions. " Enough ! It is lucky you are generally too drunk to be eloquent. Come, let us have another game of chess. That will make you brave and warlike for a change."

Manthis, the arch-druidess, called Ando an untruthful parasite, who sacrificed everything to his belly. She had not the slightest faith in that embankment; it was one of several reasons why she had moved her girls away from the town, out of harm's way, to the Sacred Kock. She had read the city's Awenn, or fate. It was doomed. A certain section of the populace known as " old believers " — the armourer Lelian was one of them — agreed with her. They had ceased to trust the embankment; they saw danger ahead ever since the death of that violent venerable, the first Christian missionary, who predicted ruin to the town in certain ominous words about " retribution from the sea."

Meanwhile, it stood firm. . . .

The wide plain on whose furthermost and westerly projection the city lay had all been filched from the sea, inch by inch, in times of yore. The waves used to lap against the very hill-sides; now they broke five miles out, or thereabouts. Those many streamlets descending from the heights had brought down, in the lapse of ages, their silt and sand and stones, driving the ocean back from its old shore. So things stood, ere yet the king had laid the foundations of his new capital. If in those days you looked from the heights toward the setting sun, you beheld a marshy level intersected by sluggish rivulets that crawled in wayward fashion about its surface; tidal creeks, rising and falling mysteriously as the sea, out yonder, drove its vital flood into them or coaxed it back again. It was an inhospitable tract, bearing nothing but grey sedges and clumps of dismal tamarisk that leaned landward and whistled sharply in the wind. Ghostly sea-mists scurried across; a mournful wail of curlew might be heard, and the heron would flap its wings disconsolately over the muddy expanse. No men dwelt here. The soil was too poor. Moreover, at certain intervals, when tides were unusually high and westerly gales blowing their flercest, the ocean, as if resentful of this ancient insult, would reassert its right over the land. Then you might see water invade the reed-beds, creeping about stealthily till the whole plain was covered with a lustrous coating like glass; soon the surface Tvould change into a weltering mass of billows — white-crested waves, rolling one over the other and galloping in frantic glee against that Old hill-barrier of theirs.

" The horses of Aithryn," the countrymen would then say, taking them to be the white manes of the coursers of some sea-god that strove to regain possession of his former domain, of that land which had once been his. " Aithryn is jealous," they would add. " He wants his own back."

Ignorant folks, ready to believe anything! They fabled of Aithryn's palace beneath the waves, with columns of glowing amethyst and beryl; they told of his minstrels, his wives, his banquets; everything down there was much the same as on earth, only fairer — far fairer. . . .

Up to that time the king had dwelt in his old town near the foot of the hills — there, where the largest of those rivulets emerged upon the plain. He had constructed something of a port; small, flat-bottomed craft used to crawl up stream, their brown sails fluttering in the breeze or, on days of calm, drawn by horses that tugged them labouriously along the winding banks to that humble quay where the cargo, such as it was, used to be discharged. That was ended, now. Those days were gone and past. The old town stood deserted, its houses overgrown with ivy and bramble, its gardens merging into the woodland at their back — woodland through whose glades you could wander, a three hours' march and ever up-hill, into the sacred druidical forest. Then, however — and that was long ago, the king being in his fortieth year at the time and the young princess not yet bom — then it was the capital of a formidable realm. For the monarch had been nothing if not a warrior.

In his fortieth year he grew tired of fighting; tired, even, of hunting. His thoughts turned towards the arts of peace. He would devote himself henceforth to commerce and administration. How make his loving subjects wealthier and happier? The land was not deficient in riches; there were mines of copper and silver and salt, but what, he often asked himself, — what was the use of these minerals? They could not be exported to other countries in any reasonable quantity owing to lack of means, of transport and communications. There they lay — mere stones ! " I cannot feed my people on stones," he often said. A harbour! He needed a harbour.

It was about this period that news was brought to court of a stupendous sea-wall erected by the ruler of the Berovingians ; of the harbour which had sprung up in its shelter, of the ships that now called there, leaving a train of prosperity in their rear. He made enquiries among the few merchants who then frequented his capital, and learnt that this building of embankments was considered a fashionable occupation for royal personages ; structures of such a kind were then rising up in every part of the world, the wisdom of their builders being immortalized by bards and handed down in chronicles to posterity without end. This gave him food for meditation. It struck him that he would like to do something of the same kind. Like all sensible men, he had no objection to becoming, as it were, immortal.

" I have it," he said one day.

Often had he looked down from his palace upon the broad and ugly level of swamp; often had he seen that bleak spit of land thrust into the waves, five miles yonder, by the central and largest of its streamlets.

" The place for a port ! " he cried.

It would be warfare, too! warfare of the kind he liked best — into the enemy's country, into the realm of that domineering sea which on occasion was wont to gallop with impunity up to the very walls of this city. His terrestrial adversaries had all yielded to his arm. Now the sea should yield.