At the Queen's Mercy

by Mabel Fuller Blodgett

“The door behind the veil shall open, and we shall know you no more,” she answered. “Yet till then what is the pleasure of my lord?”

Now I am a man who lives from one hour to the next. In this wise have I escaped much bitterness of spirit, and garnered in great store of sweet. It was plainly, then, the part of wisdom to let the future be, just as it was the part of a chivalrous man to let no shadow hang upon the converse that I should hold with this beauteous maid and her companions. So I drank of the wine they pressed upon me. I tasted of this flower-wreathed dish and that. I listened to the songs they sang, and sang in turn for their entertaining.

I was a king, but I was none the less a gentleman. I think I may say with truth, these fair ladies of my court grew fast to think with dread on that veiled door, and the moment that should mean farewell for them and me.

So the time went smoothly. I had it even in my heart to thank the dark-browed priest to whose command I owed this interval.

Had it not been for the captivity of my friend Dering and doubts of his fate, for the continued absence of the lady we had come to rescue, and for the cold reserve of Lah, the Queen, I could have flung myself with my whole soul into the delights that by some unknown chance encompassed me, a victim.

But as I have said, mine is a light and joyous nature, and so it was that when I kissed the little hand that held my trencher, my thoughts were more with the slender fingers that I pressed and their beauteous owner, than with black parting and divers other sorrows yet to come.

And now I have to relate a strange thing, and one, beginning with what was to me an impulse stranger yet.

It was the evening of the sixth day. I sat in the midst of my fair court, and was glad of the event, however sinister, that had brought me to that place.

Then on a sudden a yearning came to me to be alone. I am ever one to spare a woman’s feelings. If an ungracious thing must indeed be said, I say it, but I wrap the words about with tender nothings, and the wound is dealt so gracefully, that oft times the stricken one forgets the hurt in dreaming on the manner of its coming.

Not so, alas! on this occasion, though I grieve to say it. For I turned as bluntly as ever did my trusty comrade Dering, whose breadth of shoulder does with the fair sex what his tongue would ever again undo, only that there is no counting on a petticoat, and it is oft times the whim of the fickle ones to follow, spaniel-like, him who most derides them.