IN THE DONJON KEEP
GILBERT W. GABRIEL 1912
At first the darkness was impenetrable, black and choking. There was no sound, except for the occasional soft spatter of water that dripped to the stone floor from the mouldy ceiling. Then through a narrow, barred window came the moonlight in a mottled shaft of phosphorescent green, and licked its way across the floor, to the edge of the bier. It shone on two kneeling, crouching figures, and full on the face of the corpse.
The eunuch, a great, gaunt negro, lifted his head and showed his red, rolling eyes and his skin, gleaming like bronze in the moonlight. "He was my friend," he whimpered, bending over the loathsome dead. "He was my friend."
"Aye, aye," mused the jester, fingering the mildewed shroud, "and sooth, he was the finest mute that ever crooked a back in the Bohemian court. Famous he was, all hereabouts, to the marches of the northern sea."
"And so high was he in the king's favor and graces!" snivelled the eunuch. "They shall never find another such as he."
"True, true; and yet hast heard another must be found? The king has thus ordered: another mute must now be gotten to take his place—another just so strange." The jester bent over the face and shuddered. A few swift clouds sped across the moon, and caused the greenish shadows under the misshapen features to flicker and melt grotesquely. Then the light shone clear again and he saw the broken, twisted nose; and the eyes that stared obstinately from their split lids; and the gaping, grinning mouth that, years ago, the torturers had cut wide upon each seared and tattooed cheek; and the swollen, split lips that could not hide where once had been a tongue. He passed his hand along the shroud and lightly touched the ugly hump where the spine had been pressed and snapped, and the slanted shoulders and the twisted hips and legs. "Thou wast so laughable to all the court," he cried. "Thy bones were so comically broken. And now, another must be made for the court's delight, just so comical as thou. Aye, aye," and he sighed heavily, "Jesu have pity on the child's face of some young page or squire."
The iron door behind them swung suddenly open, and a captain of the palace guard clanked into the donjon. The flare of a spluttering flambeau, which he held in his hand, caused them to blink and shrink away, beyond its yellow circle. But he thrust it close to their faces with a cross oath. "Silence," he growled, "cease thy shrill chatterings. What dost thou here, foul black? By what right hast thou left thy post before the ladies' hall—before the chamber of the king's favorite?"
"He was my friend," the eunuch faltered. "I wished to pray for him that was my friend."
"Pray? To thy heathen gods?" Upon his coat of mail the captain thumped a vigorous sign of the cross. "Go, get thee back, lest aught should happen in thy absence. Thou knowest the penalty, both for thee and any gallant that dare pass the Lady Suelva's portal. Thou know'st the penalty," and he slapped his thigh with the flat of the halberd that hung from his girdle.