The Harp and the Blade (24 page)

“Who looks like a toad that a snake’s half swallowed?

Who stinks like a corpse that a wolf’s half hollowed?

Whose plans were a traitor’s? Whose plans weren’t followed?

Gregory’s! Drink his soul to Hell!

“Who harried this kite and mangled his pinions?

Who burned up his crops and slaughtered his minions?

Who and with what swords? Conan’s and Finnian’s!

Wine for the brands, and drink it well!

“Who bellowed for kegs of wine by the wagon?

Who poured it in cups the size of a flagon?

Who then walked off with no trace of a jag on?

We know
—
wahoo!—

  but

    we

      won’t

        tell.
”

Everybody was already in a good humor, and our own very ripe good humor but served to heighten the general tendency. They whooped, and we saluted them while taking stock of the seating arrangements. Our two empty seats were in the middle of one side of the family table, of course; and Ann had thoughtfully arranged for Fulke to sit next to us in his earned place as one of the honored. Beyond him were Jean and his wife, while Rainault and his were next to where I would sit. Ann and Marie were beyond them again at one end of the board. Raymond was not there, having evidently elected to sleep.

It was customary to keep the side toward the generality in the hall open, but there were unusual and unbalanced features of the placing. “You are not sitting next to me, my little dove,” Conan called out deeply.

“I am not, my hero,” Ann called back with serene firmness. “I have no intention of having my ears deafened and my ribs bruised when you start showing how you and Finnian massacred armies.”

Conan laughed. “My wise woman!” he praised her as we finally advanced to seat ourselves. “You know, I think we’ve come to the right place, brother. They have wine here.”

“Providential,” I pronounced. “Shall we have a toast?”

“Naturally. I suppose you have sense enough to know whom we’re going to toast first?”

I caught Marie’s amused eye on us and winked. “Fill the cups,” I challenged, “and I’ll prove that I know.”

Conan handed mine to me, and we rose. “We’ll drink now,” he began loudly, and as he spoke everyone in the hall started to lift his wine. Fulke was imitating the others, but I reached over and spilled his to the floor.“To the man who brought the horses to the men who needed them!” my friend went on. “Were it not for him we’d be feeding crows instead of drinking with you all tonight. To Fulke!” And we two, at least, drained our cups to him. Others might not give him justice, but we appreciated to the full the special courage and coolness required for waiting, inactive, for the right moment. When every sort of devilment is breaking loose within sight and hearing, it’s harder to stay still than to act.

Fulke was stunned and embarrassed, which was as it should have been. A cocky youngster is as unpleasantly hard to overlook as a neighboring goat on a damp night. Conan picked up the lad’s cup, filled it and thrust it before him. “You can drink this next one,” he smiled.

Still red, Fulke looked up. “Father Clovis?”

“None other,” I assured him, “and we’ll throw the Abbot into the cup for good measure.”

After Jean, his good-natured face laughing with wine, had toasted the chief and Rainault had called for a drink to me, we sat down to eat. I understand it was a particularly good meal and that I ate like a starving bear, but I have no recollection of that. All I can remember is that Conan or I would stop every now and then and loudly propose to the other some new thing to drink to. The only one I can bring back was dedicated to the life-long sacrifice the capon had made for us.

While we were getting our second wind after the feast, Fulke sang for us. He had a pleasant voice and played well, though the viol has but flimsy tones if a man is used to the power and sweep of the harp. As I listened dreamily, I looked around, liking what I saw and counting it my own. No idea could have startled me just then, but actually a startling thing had taken place in my life. I was thinking of this place as my home and of these people as my clansmen.

And why not? It was a fine thing to see them, young people and old, hearty and happy at the feast, snug in their fortress. And each of them would always have a smile or a good word for me. They already looked on me as a leader; only my acceptance of the status was needed to make it official. As for those at the table with me, it was not likely that I would ever again find so many I liked as well.

I looked them over, finishing with Marie. The insidious thing about conceiving the idea of marrying a particularly pretty girl is that the more a man thinks about it the more reasonable it seems. A little pulse of passion stirred in me as she caught my glance, smiled, and resumed talking to Ann. No, there didn’t seem to be any sense in going anywhere else, now that I rationally considered. The Lord could attest that I’d done all the traveling, and more, that I’d ever benefit by.

A bard didn’t have to keep moving except in pursuit of new audiences, and as a landed man I wouldn’t have to scratch for such a catch-as-catch-can living. That would be a fine thing, too, for instead of using good effort to turn out a lot of popular nonsense I could give my time to writing something I could be proud of, maybe. And the matter of a livelihood aside, I could get more done if I didn’t have to be always on the go. Take Virgil and Horace: they stayed on the premises and got things accomplished. I nodded a head full of vague plans for master works.

Fulke had finished another piece and was being called on for more. I looked at his instrument enviously, wondering where and how I was going to obtain another harp. I could make the frame and string one myself, but where I’d get the proper stringing was something else again. Possibly, I thought hopefully, Fulke himself had the craft of preparing the gut.

When he begged off to rest awhile, the women cleared away the dishes and left us with the wine. In token that we were resuming our obligations I filled Conan’s cup and my own. “You know,” I said, my face aglow with the sudden inspiration, “there’s someone to whom we owe attention that we haven’t fixed up this evening.”

He eyed me with interest. “Who could that be?”

“The lad we both love—Chilbert!”

“Right, by God!” Conan brought his big fist down on the table with a bang. I caught up my cup in time, but he slopped the others and flipped Rainault’s neatly into his lap. Everybody but the latter was delighted, and he was appeased as soon as his cup was filled again. “Now about Chilbert,” Conan said in a businesslike voice.

After a weighty discussion of forms and styles we decided on something approximating the Irish satire/With this to go on we set to work, gravely weighing the abusive values of words and metaphors until we’d hit upon our theme. Then with Conan supplying hints and occasional epithets, I set to the making. By dipping a finger in wine I was able to keep track of the rhymes and key words.

Loud talking and louder laughter were incessant in the room. But we had attained that hushed clarity which attends the later stages of a careful wine drunk. Other beverages do not grant this Indian summer of the brain, and our fellows might not have been sharing its charm; but we were fully endowed. We worked with unperturbed concentration, pausing only to pour and drink. Finally, after mumbling it over together a couple of times, we shouted for attention and gave it to the world at the top of our voices.

“Had I been a bunion or a fiend’s hang nail,

A louse on a viper, or an eel gone stale,
’

I’d have hated to be slated To doff my breeches.

Fated to be mated

To the bitch of bitches,

The whore Who bore

In her festering belly

The crawling corruption, murderously smelly

As the oldest member of an ancient eggery,

Ranker than Judas, Ganelon, or Gregory—

That thing called Chilbert, fish-scaled and verminous,

His face the spit and image of his terminus;

His sum a belch fathered by thin, sour wine,

A participle dangling on a vile bard’s line,

A tick and a leech and the sweat of a craven

Fused to a cheese in the crop of a raven,

A walking hare tip, a dung heap slug,

A pustule on the rump of an idiot bug!

Here’s to you, Chilbert, may the Devil’s tail spike you!

May you marry a ferret and have children just like you!

It was an immense success. The men were riotous with laughter and demanded repetitions we were nothing loth to give. After each every man present would toast Chilbert with solemn ceremony. He should have been there.

But by the time we got tired of that we were merely started with song. It didn’t matter whether or not anybody else joined in or even listened. We sang in French first, then switched to chanting Latin poems, Irish ballads and Danish lays.

Then the good talk began. And here, too, one language was not enough for the largeness of our minds. We exchanged viking experiences in Danish, talked of school life in Gaelic, and mooted points of scholarship in Latin. We told jokes, both those of the flesh and those of the spirit; we reconstructed philosophies and smashed them with a quip; we drank to heroes, retold the lives of saints in a way that seemed unbelievably funny at the time, though the bawdy details now elude me, wrangled over poets, and wondered at the terrific intellect of the man who’d invented wine.

We were having a marvelous time, but the others must have got tired of us. Most of them, mindful of the day of drudgery to follow, had left in a body fairly early. At what time we were deserted by Jean and Rainault I can’t say. I remember that we were intimately alone, and that the fact wasn’t of sufficient interest to make us comment.

Yet at a certain point, a few cupfuls left in the last flagon notwithstanding, we looked at each other thoughtfully. “We have had about enough,” Conan spoke for both of us. “There’s no use in overindulging ourselves.”

I was shocked at the idea. “Certainly not!”

He rose with immense dignity and nearly tripped over something. Looking down to see what his foot had caught on, we saw Fulke, prone and sleeping with quiet soundness. The lad must have felt it was his duty to try to keep up with us.

Conan stroked his chin broodingly. “What do you think can be the matter with him?”

“I don’t know,” I answered worriedly. “He must be sick or something.”

“You’d better take a look at him.”

I rolled Fulke over, which was a mistake, for he immediately began to snore. Rolling him quickly back on to his stomach, I stood up, shaking my head. “Why, he’s been drinking, Conan!”

“No!”

“You don’t think I’d say a thing like that about anybody unless it was so, do you?”

“That’s true. What do you think the world’s coming to, anyhow?”

“No good, I’ll bet,” I said darkly.

“That’s my own suspicion. And to think such things can happen in my house
—my
house!”

“He’s only a youngster, too.”

“Hardly more than a boy.” Conan’s face was now stern. “Well, let’s put him away now. We can lecture him in the morning.”

That was the end of that great night. Grinning at him affectionately, we picked Fulke up and went happily to bed.

We were a little subdued the next morning but had no regrets, realizing that a man cannot always walk the world as a giant. Conan spent the morning surveying the progress of the harvest, while I looked around for a suitable piece of seasoned timber to use for a harp frame. Finding one that would serve, although not of the best wood, I set to work. Albeit not an expert, I could fashion one that would do until I could secure one made by a master.

Later Raymond, still wan but looking much better for the good rest he’d had, found me and conversed awhile. He proved to be an intelligent, likable youth, and I made up my mind that I had done Conan a good turn by taking him into the household. He on his side was well pleased with everything.

“This is a fine place,” he stated, and I could see that he was already considering it possessively.

I was rough-hewing my timber down to workable dimensions and didn’t look up. “You won’t find a better one,” I said with conviction.

“I know that,” he said confidently, “because you brought me here.”

My head jerked up at that and I stared at him, speechless.

“You’re my luck,” he informed me with cool assurance. “I had bad luck before I met you. I had a chief I couldn’t like much and who ran things ill. Matters kept on getting worse, and the Dane raid just killed the place before it died. I nearly died myself, but I didn’t because of you. Then I didn’t have any particular place to go until I heard that Conan was a friend of yours. He turns out to be a real chief and a friend to follow—I’ve found out how his men feel—and his place is strong and living, with good people in it. And because of you I have a chance to show I deserve a place with the leaders. I’ll keep that place because I’ll work and fight well, and good service in a friend of yours will be rewarded.”

I was a little nonplused, and he noticed that. He smiled a little. “You see, I’m really your man; maybe the first you’ve ever had.”

This was true but none of anybody’s business in view of my new aspirations. “What makes you say that?” I growled.

“Marie told me about you. She says you don’t want either to follow or lead Only a woman would know that about a man on the basis of no evidence at all. Still it was pleasant to know I was one of her topics of conversation. “H-m-m,” I said noncommittally, mentally promising myself that she would see that I could run a house and rule those in it as well as the next man. I returned to my hacking, making a good resolution with every chip.

“Conan’s chief over everybody but you,” he pursued, “but I’ll follow him only if you have no present need of me yourself.”