CHAPTER 6
The Lady Tells Somewhat of Her Doings After She Left the Wilderness
Ralph stayed her speech now, and said: "When I asked of thee in theLand of Abundance, there were some who seemed to say that thou hast letmore men love thee than one: and it was a torment to me to think thateven so it might be. But now when thine own mouth telleth me of one ofthem it irks me little. Dost thou think it little-hearted in me?"
"O friend," she said, "I see that so it is with thee that thou wouldstfind due cause for loving me, whatever thou foundest true of me. Ordost thou deem that I was another woman in those days? Nay, I was not:I can see myself still myself all along the way I have gone." She wassilent a little, and then she said: "Fear not, I will give thee muchcause to love me. But now I know thy mind the better, I shall tellthee less of what befell me after I left the wilderness; for whatever Idid and whatever I endured, still it was always I myself that wasthere, and it is me that thou lovest. Moreover, my life in thewilderness is a stranger thing to tell thee of than my dealings withthe folk, and with Kings and Barons and Knights. But thereafter thoushalt hear of me what tales thou wilt of these matters, as the days andthe years pass over our heads.
"Now on the morrow we would not depart at once, because there we hadsome victual, and the king's son was not yet so well fed as he shouldbe; so we abode in that fair place another day, and then we went ourways westward, according to the rede of the carline; and it was manydays before we gat us out of the wilderness, and we were often hard putto it for victual; whiles I sat behind my knight a-horseback, whiles heled the beast while I rode alone, and not seldom I went afoot, and thatnowise slowly, while he rode the white horse, for I was as light-footthen as now.
"And of the way we went I will tell thee nought as now, because sure itis that if we both live, thou and I shall tread that road together, butwith our faces turned the other way; for it is the road from the Wellat the World's End, where I myself have been, or else never had thineeyes fallen on me."
Ralph said, "Even so much I deemed by reading in the book; yet it wasnot told clearly that thou hadst been there." "Yea," she said, becausethe said book was made not by my friends but my foes, and they wouldhave men deem that my length of days and the endurance of my beauty andnever-dying youth of my heart came from evil and devilish sources; andif thou wilt trust my word it is not so, for in the Well at the World'sEnd is no evil, but only the Quenching of Sorrow, and Clearing of theEyes that they may behold. And how good it is that they look on theenow. And moreover, the history of that book is partly false ofintention and ill-will, and partly a confused medley of true and false,which has come of mere chance-hap.
"Hearken now," she said, "till I tell thee in few words what befell mebefore I came to drink the Water of the Well. After we had passed longdeserts of wood and heath, and gone through lands exceeding evil andperilous, and despaired of life for the horror of those places, andseen no men, we came at last amongst a simple folk who dealt kindlywith us, yea, and more. These folk seemed to me happy and of goodwealth, though to my lord they seemed poor and lacking of the goods ofthe world. Forsooth, by that time we lacked more than they, for wewere worn with cold and hunger, and hard life: though for me, indeed,happy had been the days of my wayfaring, but my lord remembered thedays of his riches and the kingdom of his father, and the worship ofmighty men, and all that he had promised me on the happy day when Ifirst beheld him: so belike he was scarce so happy as I was.
"It was springtime when we came to that folk; for we had worn throughthe autumn and winter in getting clear of the wilderness. Not that theway was long, as I found out afterwards, but that we went astray in thewoodland, and at last came out of it into a dreadful stony waste whichwe strove to cross thrice, and thrice were driven back into thegreenwood by thirst and hunger; but the fourth time, having gotten usstore of victual by my woodcraft, we overpassed it and reached thepeopled country.
"Yea, spring was on the earth, as we, my lord and I, came down from thedesolate stony heaths, and went hand and hand across the plain, wheremen and women of that folk were feasting round about the simple roofsand woodland halls which they had raised there. Then they left theirgames and sports and ran to us, and we walked on quietly, though weknew not whether the meeting was to be for death or life. But thatkind folk gathered round us, and asked us no story till they had fedus, and bathed us, and clad us after their fashion. And then, despitethe nakedness and poverty wherein they had first seen us, they wouldhave it that we were gods sent down to them from the world beyond themountains by their fathers of old time; for of Holy Church, and theBlessed Trinity, and the Mother of God they knew no more than did I atthat time, but were heathen, as the Gentiles of yore agone. And evenwhen we put all that Godhood from us, and told them as we might andcould what we were (for we had no heart to lie to such simple folk),their kindness abated nothing, and they bade us abide there, and wereour loving friends and brethren.
"There in sooth had I been content to abide till eld came upon me, butmy lord would not have it so, but longed for greater things for me.Though in sooth to me it seemed as if his promise of worship of me bythe folk had been already fulfilled; for when we had abided there somewhile, and our beauty, which had been marred by the travail of ourway-faring, had come back to us in full, or it maybe increasedsomewhat, they did indeed deal with us with more love than would mostmen with the saints, were they to come back on the earth again; andtheir children would gather round about me and make me a partaker oftheir sports, and be loth to leave me; and the faces of their old folkwould quicken and gladden when I drew nigh: and as for their young men,it seemed of them that they loved the very ground that my feet trod on,though it grieved me that I could not pleasure some of them in suchwise as they desired. And all this was soft and full of delight for mysoul: and I, whose body a little while ago had been driven to dailytoil with evil words and stripes, and who had known not what words ofthanks and praise might mean!
"But so it must be that we should depart, and the kind folk showed ushow sore their hearts were of our departure, but they gainsaid us innowise, but rather furthered us all they might, and we went our waysfrom them riding on horned neat (for they knew not of horses), anddriving one for a sumpter beast before us; and they had given us bowsand arrows for our defence, and that we might get us venison.
"It is not to be said that we did not encounter perils; but thereof Iwill tell thee naught as now. We came to other peoples, richer andmightier than these, and I saw castles, and abbies, and churches, andwalled towns, and wondered at them exceedingly. And in these placesfolk knew of the kingdom of my lord and his father, and whereas theywere not of his foes (who lay for the more part on the other side ofhis land), and my lord could give sure tokens of what he was, we weretreated with honour and worship, and my lord began to be himself again,and to bear him as a mighty man. And here to me was some gain in thatpoverty and nakedness wherewith we came out of the mountains and theraiment of the simple folk; for had I been clad in my poor cloth andgoat-skins of the House of the Sorcerer, and he in his brave attire andbright armour, they would have said, it is a thrall that he is assottedof, and would have made some story and pretence of taking me from him;but they deemed me a great lady indeed, and a king's daughter,according to the tale that he told them. Forsooth many men that saw medesired me beyond measure, and assuredly some great proud man or otherwould have taken me from my lord, but that they feared the wrath of hisfather, who was a mighty man indeed.
"Yea, one while as we sojourned by a certain town but a little outsidethe walls, a certain young man, a great champion and exceedingmasterful, came upon me with his squires as I was walking in themeadows, and bore me off, and would have taken me to his castle, butthat my lord followed with a few of the burghers, and there was abattle fought, wherein my lord was hurt; but the young champion heslew; and I cannot say but I was sorry of his death, though glad of mydeliverance.
"Again, on a time we guested in a great baron's house, who
dealt sofoully by us that he gave my lord a sleeping potion in his good-nightcup, and came to me in the dead night and required me of my love; and Iwould not, and he threatened me sorely, and called me a thrall and acastaway that my lord had picked up off the road: but I gat a knife inmy hand and was for warding myself when I saw that my lord might notwake: so the felon went away for that time. But on the morrow cametwo evil men into the hall whom he had suborned, and bore false witnessthat I was a thrall and a runaway. So that the baron would have heldme there (being a mighty man) despite my lord and his wrath and hisgrief, had not a young knight of his house been, who swore that hewould slay him unless he let us go; and whereas there were otherknights and squires there present who murmured, the baron was in a waycompelled. So we departed, and divers of the said knights and squireswent with us to see us safe on the way.
"But this was nigh to the kingdom of my lord's father, and that felonbaron I came across again, and he was ever after one of my worst foes.
"Moreover, that young champion who had first stood up in the hall rodewith us still, when the others had turned back; and I soon saw of himthat he found it hard to keep his eyes off me; and that also saw mylord, and it was a near thing that they did not draw sword thereover:yet was that knight no evil man, but good and true, and I wasexceedingly sorry for him; but I could not help him in the only way hewould take help of me.
"Lo you, my friend, the beginnings of evil in those long past days, andthe seeds of ill-hap sown in the field of my new life even before thefurrow was turned.
"Well, we came soon into my lord's country, and fair and rich andlovely was it in those days; free from trouble and unpeace, a happyabode for the tillers of the soil, and the fashioners of wares. Thetidings had gone to the king that my lord was come back, and he came tomeet him with a great company of knights and barons, arrayed in thenoblest fashion that such folk use; so that I was bewildered with theirglory, and besought my lord to let me fall back out of the way, andperchance he might find me again. But he bade me ride on his righthand, for that I was the half of his life and his soul, and that myfriends were his friends and my foes his foes.
"Then there came to me an inkling of the things that should befall, andI saw that the sweet and clean happiness of my new days was marred, andhad grown into something else, and I began to know the pain of strifeand the grief of confusion: but whereas I had not been breddelicately, but had endured woes and griefs from my youngest days, Iwas not abashed, but hardened my heart to face all things, even as mylord strove to harden his heart: for, indeed, I said to myself that ifI was to him as the half of his life, he was to me little less than thewhole of my life.
"It is as if it had befallen yesterday, my friend, that I call to mindhow we stood beside our horses in the midst of the ring of great menclad in gold and gleaming with steel, in the meadow without the gates,the peace and lowly goodliness whereof with its flocks and herdsfeeding, and husbandmen tending the earth and its increase, that greatand noble array had changed so utterly. There we stood, and I knewthat the eyes of all those lords and warriors were set upon mewondering. But the love of my lord and the late-learned knowledge ofmy beauty sustained me. Then the ring of men opened, and the king cameforth towards us; a tall man and big, of fifty-five winters, goodly ofbody and like to my lord to look upon. He cast his arms about my lord,and kissed him and embraced him, and then stood a little aloof from himand said: 'Well, son, hast thou found it, the Well at the World's End?'
"'Yea,' said my lord, and therewith lifted my hand to his lips andkissed it, and I looked the king in his face, and his eyes were turnedto me, but it was as if he were looking through me at something behindme.
"Then he said: 'It is good, son: come home now to thy mother and thykindred.' Then my lord turned to me while the king took no heed, andno man in the ring of knights moved from his place, and he set me inthe saddle, and turned about to mount, and there came a lord from thering of men gloriously bedight, and he bowed lowly before my lord, andheld his stirrup for him: but lightly he leapt up into the saddle, andtook my reins and led me along with him, so that he and the king and Iwent on together, and all the baronage and their folk shouted andtossed sword and spear aloft and followed after us. And we left themeadow quiet and simple again, and rode through the gate of the king'schief city, wherein was his high house and his castle, thedwelling-place of his kindred from of old."
The Well at the World's End: A Tale Page 31
