Tales from Tennyson

by Baron Alfred Tennyson Tennyson

"No, master, don't be angry at your little girl. Caress me, let me feel myself forgiven, for I have not the heart to ask for another boon. I don't suppose that you know the old rhyme, 'Trust not at all or all in all?'"

Then Merlin looked at her and half believed what she said. Her voice was so tender, her face was so fair, her eyes were so sweetly gleaming behind her tears.

He locked her hand in his again and said, "If you should know this charm you might sometimes in a wild moment of anger or a mood of overstrained affection when you wanted me all to yourself or when you were jealous in a sudden fit, you might work it on me."

"Good!" cried Vivien, as if she were angry, "I am not trusted. Well, hide it away, hide it, and I shall find it out, and when I've found it beware, look out for Vivien! When you use me so it's a wonder that I can love you at all, and as for jealousy, it seems to me this wonderful charm was invented just to make me jealous. I suppose you have a lot of pretty girls whom you have caged here and there all over the world with it."

Then the great master laughed merrily.

"Long, long years ago," he said, "there lived a King in the farthest East of the East. A tawny pirate who had plundered twenty islands or more anchored his boat in the King's port, and in the boat was a woman. For, as he had passed one of the islands the pirates had seen two cities full of men in boats fighting for a woman on the sea; he had pushed up his black boat in among the rest, lightly scattered every one of them and brought her off with half his people killed with arrows. She was a maiden so smooth, so white, so wonderful that a light seemed to come from her as she walked. When the pirate came upon the shore of the Eastern King's island the King asked him for the woman, but he would not give her up. So the King imprisoned the pirate and made the woman his queen.

"All the people adored her, the King's councilmen and all his soldiers, the beasts themselves. The camels knelt down before her unbidden, and the black slaves of the mountains rang her golden ankle bells just to see her smile. So little wonder that the King grew very jealous. He had his horns blown through all the hundred under-kingdoms which he ruled, telling the people that he wanted a wizard who would teach him some charm to work upon the queen and make her all his own. To the wizard who could do this he promised a league of mountain land full of golden mines, a province with a hundred miles of coast, a palace and a princess. But all the wizards who failed should be killed and their heads would be hung on the city gates until they mouldered away.

"So there were many, many wizards all through the hundred kingdoms who tried to work the charm, but failed; many wizard heads bleached on the walls, and for weeks a troupe of carrion crows hung like a cloud above the towers of the city gateways. But at last the king's men found a little glassy headed, hairless man who lived alone in a great wilderness and ate nothing but grass. He read only one book, and by always reading had got grated down, filed away and lean, with monstrous eyes and his skin clinging to his bones. But since he never tasted wine or flesh—the wall that separates people from spirits became crystal to him. He could see through it, perceive the spirits as they walked and hear them talking; so he learned their secrets. Often he drew a cloud of rain across a sunny sky, or when there was a wild storm and the pine woods roared he made everything calm again.

"He was the man that was wanted. They dragged him to the king's court by force, he didn't want to go. There he taught the king how to charm the queen so that no one could see her again, and she could see no one except the king as he passed about the palace. She lay as if quite dead and lost to life. But when the king offered the magician his league of golden mines, the province with a hundred miles of sea coast, the palace and the princess, the old man turned away, went back to his wilderness and lived on grass and vanished away. But his book came down to me."

"You have the book!" cried Vivian smiling saucily. "The charm is written in it. Good, take my advice and let me know the secret at once, for if you should hide it away like a puzzle in a chest, if you should put chest upon chest, and lock and padlock each chest thirty times and bury them all away under some vast mound like the heaps of soldiers on the battle-field, still I should hit upon some way of digging it out, of picking it, of opening it and reading the charm. And then if I tried it on you who would blame me?"