The Witch-Woman Trilogy

  Then yet a third skeleton said: “It were far better that you should tarry with me. For I am Balkis; Sheba bore me, from out of the womb of an antelope; and in all the ways of love I am well skilled. My skill was spoken of throughout the happy land between Negran and Ocelis. King Scharabel chose me to be his queen because of that fine skill I had; and I rewarded him with a sharp troth-plighting. With one dagger thrust I took from him his kingdom and his life also. But it was in a bed builded of gold and carved with triangles that I conquered yet another king, when Solomon shaved from my legs three hairs, and I bereft him of his over-famous wisdom. So did he worship Eblis and Milcom after that midnight, because I served these gods very wantonly in their high places, and the old lewd itching Jew was enamored of my loveliness.”

  But Alfgar put aside the lipless mouth, and all the other mouldering cold bones, of wise Balkis, also.

  In such fashion did these skeletons, and yet other grinning small skeletons, flock after the tall wanderer and cry out to him. The sweetings of Greece and of Almayne and of Persia foregathered in that endless grayness with the proud whores of the Merovingians and of the Pharaohs, and each of these luxurious women wooed Alfgar. The empresses of Rome and of Byzantium came likewise: the czarinas of Muscovy and the sultanas of Arabia also attended him. The head-wives of the Caziques and of the Incas, the nieces of the Popes, and the maharanees of the Great Khans, all flocked about King Alfgar: and all were mouldy bones, in their torn and rotted gravecloths. Then from the mire along the gray roadway arose the voices of the queens of Assyria and of Babylon, who now were scattered dust and horse dung. All these, whom time had done with, now cried out wooingly to Alfgar.

  But infirm old Alfgar went onward without heeding any of them, for so strong was the magic which Ettarre had put upon him that all these who were the fairest of the women of this world no longer seemed desirable.

Chapter XIII. What a Boy Thought

  AT THE gate of the garden, beside the lingham post which stood there in eternal erection, sat a young boy who was diverting himself by whittling, with a small green-handled knife, a bit of cedar-wood into the quaint shaping which that post had. His hair was darkly red: and now, as he regarded Alfgar with brown and wide-set eyes, the face of this boy was humorously grave, and he nodded now, as the complacent artist nods who looks upon his advancing work and finds all to be near his wishes.

  “Time has indeed laid hold of you with both hands,” said this boy,” and the touch of time does more than the club of Hercules. It is not the Alfgar who had the pre-eminent name that I am seeing, but only a frail and blinded and deaf vagabond.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Alfgar, and even now he spoke in that grave and lordly manner which once had from a throne annoyed the more human of his hearers, “nevertheless, I have not departed from the old way of Ecben.”

  “I know that way,” the boy replied. “It is a pretty notion to have but one king and one god and, above both of them, one lady. Oh, yes, it is a most diverting notion, and a very potent drug, to believe that these three are holy and all-important. I too have got diversion from that notion, in my day. . . .”

  The boy shook his red curls. He said, shruggingly:

  “But no toy lasts forever. And out of that notion also time has taken the old nobleness and the fine strength.”

  Then Alfgar asked, “But what do you do here who wait in this gray place like a sentinel?”

  The boy replied:” I do that which I do in every place. Here also, at the gateway of that garden into which time has not yet entered, I fight with time my ever-losing battle, because to do that diverts me.”

  He smiled: but Alfgar did not smile.

  “To be seeking always for diversion, sir,” said Alfgar, with a king’s frankness,” is but a piddling way of living.”

  “Ah, but then,” the boy answered him,” I fight against the gluttony of time with so many very amusing weapons,—with gestures and with attitudes and with wholly charming phrases; with tears, and with tinsel, and with sugar-coated pills, and with platitudes slightly regilded. Yes, and I fight him also with little mirrors wherein gleam confusedly the corruptions of all lust, and ruddy loyalty, and a bit of moonshine, and the pure diamond of the heart’s desire, and the opal cloudings of human compromise: but, above all, I fight that ravening dotard with the might of my own folly.”

  “I do not understand these foolish sayings,” Alfgar returned. “Yet I take you to be that Horvendile who is the eternal playfellow of my lady in domnei—”

  “But I,” the boy answered, “I take it that I must be the eternal playfellow of time. For piety and common-sense and death are rightfully time’s toys; and it is with these three that I divert myself.”