The Summer's King

by Wilder, Cherry;

  The fool and his farthings tumble away from the mailed feet of the three knights who have reached the foot of the gangway. They make obeisance to the king, so far as their strip mail will allow, and the knight of the Hunters acts as spokesman.

  “King Sharn Am Zor,” he begins. And even in the accents of a knight of the realm, it is thinned a little into Shennazar. “We bid you welcome in the name of the orders of Eildon. I am Mortrice of Malm and this is the noble Sir Pellasur of Hay, knight of the Falconers, and the noble Sir Tarn of Whitrow, knight of the Fishers. Pray you mount up with this your noble company and follow. You are lodged at Sennick Fortress.”

  The king bows to the three knights, observing the ruddy countenance of Sir Mortrice, the dark glance of Sir Pellasur, the youthful brow of Sir Tarn. He nods to the herald and to Captain-General Britt. The disembarkation proceeds smoothly. One of the stolid mounts from the livery stable, a brown gelding that does indeed have a look of Redwing, is brought forward for the king, and it bears him safely all the time that he is in Eildon. Now he rides forward, just as he had hoped to do, and receives the greetings of those who gathered to welcome him.

  The ranking personage and the only member of the royal courts to welcome the king is a lady in an open carriage: Princess Gaveril Tramarn. By her smooth look, her wise and unfriendly dark eyes, he guesses that she is not wearing her years. Her long robe is entirely quartered with the arms of all her feoffs and possessions. Her spreading headdress of gauze is adjusted by a lady-in-waiting so that king and princess may speak face to face. Sir Pellasur speaks her name and titles to the king, who bows his head, unsmiling, and says: “My greetings to the noble house of Tramarn!”

  The princess bobs her head with a broad smile.

  “What did he say?” she demands out of the corner of her mouth. “Sir Gerr of Kerrick, is that you? Can you tell me what the King of Kemmelond said?”

  Gerr rises to the occasion.

  “Sire,” he says loudly to the king, “the princess is suffering from deafness. She did not hear your greeting.”

  “Perhaps I gave none,” says Sharn Am Zor, smiling terribly at Gaveril and riding on.

  A ripple of laughter or surprise follows him. Led by the three knights and followed by his own champions, his escort, the Eildon folk who gathered for his curious welcome, and at last by the twenty officers of his guard, he sets out on his first long ride across Lindriss.

  As the procession winds along fine streets, between high houses, or through many tracts of parkland the patches of mist still come and go. Vistas, glimpses of the city, are all that the king beholds. More than once, between the tall houses or on the brow of a hill, other groups of knights and their followers can be seen, as if there were several processions all crossing the city at once, hardly aware of each other.

  At last, after riding for more than an hour, the three knights draw rein in the shadow of a mighty fortress. Sennick stands upon a low hill above a warren of grey houses and narrower streets, a village that has become part of the great city. It has two massive round towers of grey stone linked by a wall with a battlemented walk upon the top. Each tower stands in a separate round garden plot with a low rampart faced with stone and a drawbridge crossing the moat. Yet there the likeness ends. The tower on the left looks as if it has been scrubbed clean or newmade; banners fly from its arrow-slit windows. The garden below this tower is a perfect round of soft, clipped, bright green Eildon grass with two or three young trees standing in beds of mooncups and daisies, yellow and white. The tower on the right is of old, dark stone without banners. Its round garden is grassy but unkempt with nothing but an old plum tree struggling into blossom with a few spring flowers among its mossed roots.

  “King Sharn!” cries Sir Mortrice of the Hunters, as the procession slowly comes to a halt. “You have come first to the fortress and may choose the tower where you will lodge!”

  “Great Goddess, Sire,” says Tazlo, on the king’s left, “there is no choice . . .”

  As other voices are raised and the escort begins to drift towards the bright tower, Sharn feels a gentle touch on his right boot. He glances down and sees one of the fool’s small companions, the little maid, gazing up at him with large, liquid brown eyes. She holds a finger to her lips, and with her other hand points urgently towards the old, dark tower. Weary with the long ride and the strange welcome, the king makes his decision, feeling as if he were plunging into the icy waters of the moat.

  “Another trick,” he murmurs to Gerr of Zerrah.

  He raises his voice and says, “Good Sir Mortrice, I trust Eildon hospitality. I will choose the tower yonder, the one that wears its years!”

  His words are understood by the Eildon nobles; there is a burst of laughter and applause. The king’s trumpeters sound his call, the drawbridge of the dark tower is lowered. Farr the Fool and his three farthings play their music and tumble about on the drawbridge, leading the king and his followers into the tower.

  Sir Pellasur makes bold to say, “King Sharn . . . Majesty . . . will you keep the fool then?”

  “For the moment,” says Sharn, “but the white horse may go back to the fairground.”

  The king is dismounted quickly in a spacious inner ward and brought through a warm well-appointed hall up to a set of rooms with rich hangings, a pleasant fire, gleaming oaken furniture of antique design. As he sinks into a chair by the fire, Prickett is in the doorway wringing his hands. Two guardsmen bring in Zilly of Denwick, green as his cloak, and lie him on a settle. The healer has been summoned.

  “Zilly!” the king kneels beside his friend. “That damned gift horse! What ails you, man? Something broken?”

  Denzil of Denwick is now deathly pale, a terrible color. He can only whisper, “Forgive me, old son . . . we showed them . . .”

  Then he faints dead away, his eyes rolling up in his head. Captain Ruako, the healer, makes a quick examination, has the lord carried up to his bedchamber overhead.

  “My King,” he says, “it is a brain-shaking. Nothing worse. I believe there are no bones broken, a little bruising.”

  “Can he be healed?”

  “He must have rest, my King.”

  “We must all have rest.” The king sighs. “Eildon is a wearying country.”

  Tazlo Am Ahrosh and Gerr of Zerrah, when they appear, are full of confidence again, praising the stables, speaking boastfully of the Tightness of the king’s choice of a residence. Sharn Am Zor is encouraged by their high spirits, but he has a flicker of doubt. Neither of these two men—Gerr, the straight-featured Athron knight, and Tazlo, the brash northerner—are strong in judgment. He sees it for the first time.

  When the king has dined, Nerriot, the lute player, offers a favorite Eildon air. Suddenly a sound of stranger music penetrates the dark tower; Tazlo, at a narrow window, cries out with excitement.

  “Look there, my King!”

  Below, in the afternoon sunshine, twenty bag-pipers, hairy men with bare knees, bright plaids and feathered bonnets, are caterwauling before the bright tower. Another party on tall horses and shaggy ponies is poised before the drawbridge with a welcoming escort of Eildon knights. A smaller escort than was sent for Sharn Am Zor.

  “Yet they too have a prince,” murmurs Nerriot. “See there, Dan Sharn: the tall man on the grey is Prince Borss Paldo.”

  Preceded by half a dozen pipers, a dark and ferociously hairy young man clad in a tribal kilt and bristling with dirk, claymore and eagle plumes, rides over his drawbridge on a black charger.

  “Great Goddess!” says Sharn Am Zor. “That can only be Diarmut Mack Dahl, the King of the Isles!”

  The arrangements in the bright tower, it turns out, are sparse and cold. The Chameln guards hear the men of the isles complaining through the wall that separates the two stableyards. The men of the isles are quarrelsome; all leave is cancelled among Sharn’s followers.

  At twilight a knight comes with his esquire to the drawbridge of the dark tower and sounds a call. Sharn Am Zor, rested now
and dressed in fresh finery, goes down eagerly to greet his cousin, Prince Beren Pendark.

  The young man who stands before him in the hall is no older than himself and of middle height, with light brown hair worn rather long in the Eildon fashion. He has an open, pleasant face, but his manner is very strained and stiff. He has come to bid the king to a grand ball at the Pendark Court, and, first of all, to collect the deed of the land pledge. Sharn smiles, asks after all the members of the House of Pendark, and offers, besides the land pledge parchments, a gift of jewels and woven stuff.

  The king feels again a curious whisper of unease, as if the noble old hall in which he stands were full of phantoms, hidden watchers. Farr the Fool comes out of the shadows to a burst of music and capers about before the king and the prince.

  “Shennazar!” he sings harshly. “Shennazar of Kemmelond and Beren of Pendark!”

  He makes a doggerel verse for his song:

  “Shennazar sits in Eildon Hall

  Beren and his watchdogs come to call!”

  “The king is a fool if he chance to roam,

  The fool may be king in his faraway home . . .”

  His small companions join in the chorus:

  Sharn turns to his cousin and makes one last effort to understand the prince and to make the prince understand his own situation.

  “Cousin Beren,” he says, “I have set some store by ceremony in my own court, but now I wish it away. How fair and pleasant it might have been to arrange a marriage in our two families by a simple family gathering. I long to see your sister. I long to make her my queen. I would this were enough.”

  Prince Beren flushes darkly and hangs his head. “Cousin Sharn,” he says in a low voice, “I am honor bound to handle this as I do. Tonight you will meet my sister.”

  The king is filled with hope and confidence again. Prince Beren departs to bring the evening’s invitation to the King of the Isles in the neighboring tower. The order of march is given: Sharn Am Zor will take only his escort; the King of the Isles will be led first; then the Pendark escort will form a buffer between the island men and those of the Chameln. As he is wrapped in his cloak, Sharn calls the fool to his side.

  “Watchdogs?” he asks, “who would keep a watch on Prince Beren Pendark when he visits his cousin?”

  “Those who have him honor bound,” says the fool crisply.

  “The Council? His family?”

  “Yes to the one and no to the other.”

  “A name . . . do you have any names for these watchers?”

  “Paldo heads the Council. The patron of the Hunters. A huntsman works with beaters and decoys!”

  “Fool,” says the king, “how do I know that you are not some decoy?”

  “How indeed?” The fool grins. “It is a wise lord who knows all his friends and liegemen!”

  “I think I know what you are,” says the king. “But I cannot think how you came to Eildon.”

  Torches are lit, and the procession moves off to the west, across the city. Lindriss is beautiful in these smoke-blue twilight hours with lights flowering here and there in the houses and upon the tops of the towers. Presently the Pendark Court is reached, a white mansion, just as Count Barr described it, and the scene is a familiar one, a torchlit courtyard with lords and ladies coming with their servants to a great festival. King Sharn hopes that all uncertainty will be at an end; he will meet the princess and her mother and be chosen as the most worthy suitor.

  In the entry Sharn Am Zor comes face to face with Diarmut Mack Dahl, the King of the Isles. The chieftain is strongly built and somewhat above the middle height, although Sharn can give him several inches. He is well combed, his hair and beard, both lustrous, glossy black, are plaited and jeweled. His skin is tanned by the sun, and his eyes are a fine light blue. In his plaid velvet tunic and kilt he cuts a fine figure; he strokes his moustaches and shows his teeth in a smile. The king, thinking of Ferrad Harka, High Chieftain of the Durgashen, bows politely.

  “Greetings to the King of the Isles!” he says.

  “Greetings to the King of the Chameln!” replies Diarmut Mack Dahl in a thick and curious brogue.

  He holds out a hand, and Sharn clasps it. Diarmut says in a low voice, “By the moon, let’s not quarrel. These lowlanders will give us strife enough!”

  “Well said, noble Diarmut,” replies Sharn.

  So the two kings go in and their trumpet calls are sounded; they are led with their champions to opposite hearths and settled in the great hall of the Pendarks. The dancing floor is of polished tiles, white and blue, with patterns of fish and seashells. The Eildon nobles stare and laugh; the headdresses of the ladies billow about like ships in a gale.

  There is a trumpet call and some sort of commotion at the end of the bright room. Music begins to play, then breaks off. An old man leaning upon a staff and supported by a young page moves unsteadily out into the hall. His white elf-locks and straggling beard, his long wrinkled face and bent back are all out of place. There seems to be, far and wide, no other person “wearing their years,” not a grey head to be seen.

  “One king!” trumpets the old man in a shaking voice. “Yes, yes, I see: the young highlander. Greetings to you, Mack Dahl, from the House of Pendark. One king and where’s tother?”

  He is brought round slowly to face Sharn Am Zor and comes forward on his staff peering at the King of the Chameln.

  “By the Holy Tree and the Seven Stars!” roars the old man. “There is a king indeed! Is that the fine young fellow come from over the sea? I swear he has a look of Edgar! You there—Leffert, Lady Malm, Lady Evritt—does he not have a look of Edgar, my younger brother! Sharn, d’ye say? Sharn of Zor! Ah, it does my old eyes good to see such a fine young man and of my own house.”

  Sharn Am Zor looks into the faded brown eyes and comes to the musty embrace of his Great-Uncle Kilnan Pendark. By this time he is glad of a welcome; greets the old man heartily.

  “How are they treating you?” asks the prince in a hoarse whisper. “Badly, I reckon. They’re a clannish pack of bastards here in the city. I am out of the world. I would sit down with you to a goblet of wine at the Gwanlevan palace, but I expect it cannot be. Good luck to you, and a great-uncle’s blessing.”

  Prince Beren and a lady who must be his mother have appeared and are approaching down the hall. It seems likely that the old prince will be led away, sent back to bed. There are rustlings and titterings among the guests. The prince makes the most of his outing.

  “I greet the company!” he says, bustling a few paces down the hall again. “And I am mighty glad to see all of you looking so well. I was never one for magic . . . eh, Merigaun . . . but I like to see a few heads of my color in any gathering. How would it be if everyone ‘wore their years’?”

  Sharn sees the Princess Merigaun raise a hand in alarm. Prince Kilnan straightens his bent back, lifts up his staff and utters a few words in Chyrian. There is a crackling of the air in the upper reaches of the hall as the spell takes hold, and then a general moan or gasp of despair. Before the eyes of the Chameln watchers, jaws slacken, skins are netted with wrinkles, bosoms and paunches bulge and sag, hair becomes grey or white with here and there a head of dyed hair surrounding a wrinkled face. The headdresses of the women totter upon their poor old heads, and the trunkhose or trews of the men hang upon their shrunken shanks. The mischievous old prince takes his leave. There is an instant murmuring from those stricken; each one unmasked makes his or her personal magic to repair the damage.

  The king and his companions stare in horror. A moment past, Sharn might have welcomed some defense against the hostile crowd of nobles, but the presence of so much magic is unsettling. He turns his face away from the awful readjustments going on all about him and meets the calm grey eyes of the Princess Merigaun. She sinks down before him, and he raises her up at once.

  “My dear cousin Sharn,” she says in a bell voice. “Majesty, you see the best and worst of Eildon.”

  “Mother,” says Prince Beren,
“the king has had no easy passage in Eildon this day.”

  “Come,” says Sharn, “we are all strong and undismayed, cousins. We observe your customs with keen interest.”

  Merigaun smiles, but Beren is still cast down. Sharn perceives that Effrim Barr described Merigaun very well; she is indeed a lady with ash-blonde hair, slender, grey-eyed and handsome, but he has omitted, or did not see, her most striking characteristic. She is a magic being, resembling Nieva, the messenger of the Falconers, with silvery skin in certain lights and a silvery chime to her voice.

  “We will start the dancing,” she says now. “My dear cousin, I have chosen a Long Garland for you to dance with my daughter.”

  So the musicians begin to play a familiar melody for this slow, courtly dance of Lien, and Merigaun leads the king down the hall to a group of maidens and ladies-in-waiting. One stands forth: it is the Princess Moinagh. In a dream Sharn Am Zor bows low to her, takes her small cold hand and begins the dance.

  He feels no shock of recognition; he imagined someone rather different. Yet there is no question about it: Moinagh Pendark is one of the most beautiful girls he has ever beheld. Neither the poets nor Effrim Barr did her justice. She is small and slender and her face is delicately modelled with high cheekbones and a mouth perfectly shaped. Her complexion is pale, flawless, glowing, so that she has her own aura. Sharn can see a blue pulse on her temple where the tendrils of her brown-black hair escape from a silver fillet. Her eyes, raised to his own, are very widely spaced and of a luminous grey-green with dark lashes and fine dark brows. Even before she smiles, shyly, and speaks to him, he thinks She is still a child . . . Her slenderness, her style of beauty is rather different from that admired in the court of Lien. She wears a maiden’s gown, simply cut without a surcoat, but of rich silken cloth shot with many colors: sea-green, turquoise, blue and silver.

  As Moinagh speaks to him, calls him “Cousin,” questions him shyly but with perfect composure about his homeland, Sharn is enchanted. To have the care of this exquisite creature, to have her trust and love, to reassure, teach and protect her, these things are worth all his pain. Yet for the first time he is plagued by the unbearable thought that he may not win Moinagh’s hand or be chosen as her husband.