Last Tales

by Isak Dinesen

  Just as he was thinking of this, his ear caught the sound of music, the notes of a flute, played at a long distance. His face changed. He turned his horse’s head round and rode down the track of live gold-dust, now extinguished, toward the mill of Masse-Bleue.

  Down here he had soon to ride through long milk-white stripes of mist, which rose from the damp meadows near the river. Below them the sward was still bright green. In the midst of a grass field a gate rose straight before him, dark in the dark. He did not care to get off to open it, but made his horse walk back a little, and, hurrying it on, he jumped the gate. It was a risky thing to do in the dusk; the horse had become wild by it; he himself grew warm and comfortable from his success. A strong smell of marsh-whortleberry and bog-myrtle contracted his nostrils. The stars came out one by one.

  IV

  The lady of Champmeslé came out of the shade of the forest to the white road, and walked onto the bridge leading across the lock of the mill pond to the mill. The smell of running water and water-weeds was fresh and quelling here. The hour of noon was absolutely still, not a soul about, and the heat heavy as lead, the whole landscape was somber with it as if seen through a pair of dull blue glasses. Even the mountain-high white clouds had a sort of dusk in them. Childerique paused on the bridge. Nobody knew that she was here, and that thought itself was inspiring to her; this had not happened to her since she had been married. She had been in such uproar all night, now, if she hesitated it was neither from fear nor irresolution, but just to gain her breath. She had been filled with wrath, and had started from the high terrace of Champmeslé like one of those great white clouds, sweeping down with thunder and lightning upon the mill of Masse-Bleue. But this dead silence, these smooth rapid waters rushing away under her feet—were they hers or the miller’s widow’s—and with whom were they in league?

  The miller’s widow opened the door of the mill house, and appeared on the threshold as if she had been expecting her. She was wiping her round arms, that had flour on them, on her skirt. The women of her tribe, Childerique knew, often smile very sweetly and coaxingly, but laugh out only in triumph or amorousness.

  The gypsy was eighteen years old, broader than Childerique and more rounded in all her lines, and singularly light of movement. She was barefoot and had on nothing more than a shirt and a closely folded, faded blue cotton skirt. Although both married and widowed she, here in her own house, wore her thick hair in two pigtails; between them at the nape of her neck a coarse tatter of hair bristled out, a sign of strength.

  At the nearness of this strong and fresh young body Childerique’s fury came back; she felt in her hands the desire to seize the rich round amber-colored throat and to strangle this creature who defied her, and a deadly nausea at the thought of touching her, as if she had had a snake in front of her—and the latter feeling was the strongest.

  “You come to me, my lovely lady,” said the gypsy, “all the long way, in the midday heat! Please God you will not regret it. Come in, come in now.” She held open the door, and as Childerique was about to walk in, she kissed the palm of her hand and deftly placed it for a moment upon the threshold.

  Within the room of the old wooden mill house it was hotter and closer than outside. A stripe of golden dust of light lay across it from the small window. The miller’s wife had been taking her new bread from the oven; it was arranged upon shelves along the wall. She lifted a three-legged chair into the middle of the floor for her guest. Childerique sat down because a tiredness and giddiness had come upon her. She thought: “I would as well sit down in a viper’s nest.”

  “I am informed,” she said slowly, “that your dogs are again, in your old manner, running mad down here.” The gypsy stared at her, clear-eyed, patient as a child. “That is your affair,” said Childerique, “but you may not snap at anyone outside your own pack. You, you have bewitched the young Lord of Haut-Mesnil. Get you gone.” As she pronounced her brother’s name she held on with both hands to the seat of the chair. “Get you gone,” she repeated. She remembered having been told how the pious old miller had used to birch his young wife. “This creature,” she thought, “is used to more brutality than I can even think of.” She tried to remember the old modes of punishment of which she had, as a child, been shown the instruments, at Haut-Mesnil.

  The gypsy sighed, and shifted onto a position customary to her, standing upon one little foot, with her other naked ankle in her hand. “Ah, ah,” she said, “how hard they speak, how hard! Ah, stop it, you cut the heart of the poor girl, you fine lady.”

  Childerique looked hard at her; she felt her own face under her wide summer bonnet burning. The air of the room, filled with the fragrance of flour and new bread, was heavy for her to breathe. She was at this moment held by a queer fancy. She remembered how she had been taken, as a child, to see the Queen as she had been passing through Pirigueux, and how at the sight of the ceremonial she had thought: “Whatever happens, happens because it pleases the Queen.” Even when it had begun to rain the little girl had felt that it did so because the Queen allowed it, because the rain pleased the Queen. Now, in the presence of the young gypsy the fancy, long forgotten, was recalled. “This woman,” she thought, “is pleased with whatever happens,” and this seemed to her to be a strange treachery at the hands of fate. “But my God,” she thought, “what is the matter with this Simkie? Why on earth is she like a queen, this slut on her bare feet? Is it really the queens and the gypsies who have all that they want, and only we, the women of the great houses and the estates, who have to work to hold up the world?” The words of the Scripture came back to her: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love.” Her thoughts shied at the name called forth to her. Could it be the same with the Devil as with God? Would he have the equal reward to give for being loved? “Yes,” she thought, “yes, it is so. It is all because Simkie is really a witch, this extraordinary content in her, like that of a child. It is the witch’s happiness; this is what she sells herself for to the Devil.” And somewhere at the bottom of it, as if at the bottom of the mill pond, she saw the doom of the witch, the sadness and dreadfulness of her fate.

  “Are you God, beautiful lady?” asked the gypsy, watching her face. “Are you to manage all the world?”

  “Yes,” said Childerique with all the strength of her heart. “I am to manage the world here, at Champmeslé. God himself has placed me here to do so. You know that too, all of you. Beware of me.”

  “But how can it be, my mistress,” said the young woman in the slow and lisping voice, the mellifluous drawl of her tribe, the fortune-teller’s voice. “How can it be? If I have indeed bewitched the lord of Haut-Mesnil, how can I undo it now? You, you know yourself that young men are after women with long hair, who speak sweetly to them, who sport with them. If it be only that, say so, my sweet lady, for you know that a young woman can again make a young man leave her, whom she has made to come to her. But if there have been spells and magic there, and the Devil has helped me—why! the Devil is on to the work even now, and you and I cannot stop him, indeed we cannot, my dear, dear mistress.”

  She was out of breath with speaking so insinuatingly, and stood as if she waited for a decision, very still.

  “Yes,” said Childerique hoarsely, “you have bewitched him. You brought him to you by spells, you know it well.” At this the gypsy woman began to sway and rock her body as in pain; all her movements were graceful and fascinating.

  It occurred to Childerique that her brother had held the girl in his arms. A strong pain and alarm ran through her; she looked away and down. At the same time, as if even the idea of a gentler and sweeter human relation, brought into this place of harsh judgment, was softening the air of it, the terrible hardness which had been like a pain in her entrails these twenty hours seemed to loosen. As often, when she was suddenly and strongly moved, her thoughts ran to her mother; she remembered her good-will to the foreigners within her land.

  “Simkie,” she said, looking again at the g
ypsy, and for the first time calling her by her name, “release my brother of this magic, and I will forgive you and do you no harm.”

  Simkie wrung her hands. “Oh, Madame,” she said, “the Devil is not to be jested with. We shall have to make a stronger magic, you and I now, to break the power of the one which has been made.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Childerique. “If you have made one charm, you must be able to make another.”

  At the very moment she thought: “What is this that I am saying? How do I get this into my head? I have got fever, surely.”

  “And what shall I do it for, my lady?” asked Simkie. “If my lord marries me I shall sleep in a silken bed. Why shall I undo my work? What are you going to give me for it?”

  Childerique could not answer; she sat dumb. “For honor’s sake, for the honor of Haut-Mesnil”—these words had been strong in her heart all day. But she was ashamed to speak them to the gypsy. She could not tell her that she was really here on her mother’s errand, for the sake of that young heir of Haut-Mesnil whom she had failed to bear, and that the strength and courage of the dead woman were bearing up her own, in the service of their house. She looked round in her mind for something to promise the sorceress.

  “Let it be for nothing, then,” said Simkie and sighed. “Who knows, who knows, I may get my reward for serving you still, in some way. Only repeat this, which you said, that you will not harm me afterwards nor will any of your people.”

  “No, that we will never do,” said Childerique.

  “But what shall the words of the witchcraft be now, my lady?” asked the gypsy. “What am I to demand of the Devil of the water, if he will come to us? For what shall he have come?”

  Childerique felt again the blood in her face. “For this,” she said, “that the lord of Haut-Mesnil turn entirely … ”

  “No, no,” the gypsy quickly interrupted her, placing a finger on her lips. “Names must never be spoken, that is against the rules of witchcraft. No, wait, I shall speak for you and you will tell me if I am right in what I say, if it be to your good pleasure. This,” she went on after a moment, speaking very slowly, and looking down, “shall be a charm to turn the heart of your brother, your father’s son, entirely away from the woman whom he now loves, and thinks of as his wife. This shall be a charm to separate the two forever with the help of our guest, whom we have called for.”

  “Yes,” said Childerique, staring into the gypsy’s face.

  Simkie stood again for a while in deep thought. “It can be done,” she said at last, “but not now. You must come back for it. Come this time tomorrow, and it will be for you to speak the words, for if I have once spoken a charm I cannot myself speak against it again. And you must bring with you …” She stopped herself. She seemed to change and grow heavier. All her lightness of limb and movement had gone from her; she looked worn like a woman with child. “Madame,” she said after a long time, “you must bring your little son to help us make the spell. A male child, who has in him blood common to you, who will speak the charm, and of him about whom we speak it. Blood, Madame, such noble blood is precious in magic.”

  Childerique thought: “My little son? How am I to bring him here if nobody may know? I shall have to carry him all the way through the forest except where he can run a little.” The idea itself was charming to her; it was rare that she had the child to herself without the nurses. “But what am I to tell them,” she thought, “to get away without anybody knowing?”

  Simkie saw that she hesitated. “Come, come then,” she said, speaking all the time now in the same heavy and strained way, as if a great weight had been laid on her. “You do not quite have faith in Simkie? Come, I will show you a little magic to make you believe, a little only today.”

  Childerique looked round her bewildered. “Come this way,” said the gypsy, and opened the door to the mill room. Childerique stopped on the threshold for a moment. She had need of her courage now. It was not that she was afraid of what might befall her in there, but she felt the fatality of this one step which took her from the daylight of her life till now into the play with unknown powers. What made her, after a second, walk on was not the convocation of her strength, but her love of danger. The unknown called to her. And she would now know more of witchcraft.

  Everything within the large old building was wry and crooked, and from this room to the other, three high steps led down. The huge room of the water wheel was much older than the rest of the mill, and built all in timber, now black with age. The room was dim; the panes of the windows were green and covered with cobwebs. Down here it was suddenly quite cold. The room had an atmosphere of its own, made by the presence of the water; its breath met you on the threshold. The river ran below the heavy floor boards. Childerique felt all at once cool and fresh, her face and hands all bedewed like a silver cup quickly filled with ice-cold water. She followed the miller’s widow across the floor. This was the room in which the gypsies were said to have their dancing and singing at night. The floor was smoothed and polished with the dragging about of heavy sacks, the sweeping away of grain, and the steps of two hundred years.

  This, Childerique thought, was the only room which, within the dreams of her young brother, she had not entered. Well, she was here now. If within his dreams of the future she should still not be there, his dreams would not be true, not in accordance with reality.

  In the middle of the room rose the wooden walls of the water wheel’s house. “We shall call the magic of the wheel,” said the gypsy, “which is the most honest of all magics. Come, my little wheel, my full moon, I let you loose; you shall have all the river to turn you, and no grain to grind.”

  Her bare feet made no noise as she went to loose the wheel. With an effort she heaved up the ponderous bolt which connected the wheel with the water.

  At once the room became alive. Above and below a hundred little voices whispered and groaned, the timber creaked and moaned, heavy iron sang and snarled, beyond all the voices rose the roar of the wheel and the splashing of water.

  The sweat had sprung out all over the gypsy’s face, and as she stood now close to her, Childerique was again struck by her sudden disfigurement. She dragged herself along laboriously, and she had the stiff and empty face of a woman near her confinement. Childerique felt quiet and strong now, her own body light as when she was a child. She was victorious at last, her adversary prostrate before her; she was even, with all the honors of war, being taken into the heart of the fortifications of the enemy. In her triumph her heart was ready for forgiveness, and beating loudly.

  The gypsy let up the door to the wheel’s shed. “Look down,” said she.

  Childerique walked out on a little gangway near the wheel, holding onto the rail. She was at once splashed all over by a delicate sprinkle of fresh drops—this was a joke on the part of the water. At this moment, she thought, for the last time: “How can I be so foolish? There will be nothing there but just water.”

  She had indeed to wait long, before anything else showed itself to her. Then it was as if by a sudden jerk her own position was changed; she was no longer gazing down, or there was no longer any up and down in the world. At this, and all at once, the noise round her changed; it had sense; it spoke.

  Before her a great pattern of glowing red sparks was forming itself. First it was like a wheel, then settled into a sort of fixity, but what it was she could not tell. From time to time it was blurred, some of the lights were put out. A strange smell, alarming to her, and a new noise, a grunting or rummaging, spun round her head.

  Now again she saw clearly. The sparks were not a pattern on a dark ground, they were themselves the background, that of a flaming evening sky. The black lines, and stripes upon it, were the lower branches of a fir thicket; these branches were dead and bare because the growth was so dense that no light reached down here.

  The large moving forms amongst the trees were a troop of huge black boars, some of them quite close to her. They were all busy grunting and rooting up the earth
, buffeting one another and rubbing their flanks and backs upon the mighty fir trunks. A sow with her young passed her; a terrible old boar with terrible tusks turned and fixed his little red eyes on her, and afraid that he would come for her she flinched back. It was all gone. She was in the mill again, giddy and out of breath.

  She found herself staring, with a queer delight, into the face of the gypsy. “What is that? What was all that?” she asked.

  “That was the old forest of Haut-Mesnil,” answered the miller’s widow. “That was just the place where the great house stands now.”

  Enraptured and transported Childerique turned again to the water wheel. She no longer asked herself what it all meant, or why the gypsy was showing it to her. She felt only a deep ecstasy about this new world opened to her. Had anybody tried to drag her away from the wheel, her mind would have been deranged by grief. The water was now foaming under the buckets of the wheel. “Look again,” said the witch.

  Again the noise changed; this time it grew fainter, as if melodious. A great and sweet, fresh calm came upon Childerique.

  Before the landscape had shown itself, she knew that it was lovely. It was again the wood, and the picture was dark; she could distinguish the depth, and the stems of the trees by the lighter green of the grass and the undergrowth only. It was either after sunset, or very early morning, before sunrise. Just in front of her lay a vast space of water, and upon it hung a thin milky mist. She heard wild ducks a little way off, between the rushes. It was all dim around her, like a big bouquet of foliage, reflected within a thick silver mirror. But she herself—to get this view of it all, she must be in the water, the clear surface up to her chin, and she remembered for a moment the dragonfly on a broad green leaf which she had watched from the mill bridge. What a deep pleasure it was to sit upon the water like this!