The Witch-Woman Trilogy

  Wheresoever Madoc sang, though it were in a thieves’ kitchen or in the dark cell of a prison, his comforting music became a spur to the magnanimity of his hearers. They overflowed forthwith with altruism and kindliness and every manner of virtue which was not too immediately expensive: they loved their fellows, upon no provocation detectable by Madoc: and they exulted to be the favored children and the masterworks of Whoever happened to be their tribal god, in a universe especially designed for them and their immediate relatives to occupy.

  And Madoc envied the amiable notions which he provoked but might not share. For always, when his music soared at its most potent, he heard the skirling of another nature of music, which was all a doubtfulness and a discontent.

12. PUZZLE OF ALL ARTISTS

  Yet, as it seemed, no other person heard that skirling music. No other person willed to hear a music which doubtfulness and discontent made unexhilarating. They thronged, instead, to hear the sugared and the grandiose music which Madoc peddled, and which, like a drug, buoyed up its hearers with self-approval as concerned the present and with self-confidence as touched what was to come.

  They listened, and they grinned complacently, who were the kings and the archbishops and the barons and the plowmen alike,—each one of them already a skeleton and a grinning death’s-head so very thinly veiled with flesh and hair. They grinned, while at the feet of each lay crouched the inescapable gloom of his shadow, to serve as an ever-present reminder of that darkness which would presently leap and devour him. Meanwhile they listened to the bedrugging music which Madoc peddled: and every heart made of red, moving dust, upon a brief vacation from the lawns and gutters of earth, was exulting.

  It troubled Madoc whenever he heard any of his hearers talk exaltedly about the songs which Madoc made with his black quill, and it troubled Madoc that not any of the noble songs which he was making could ever wholly shut out from Madoc’s ears the skirling music of Ettarre the witch-woman.

13. LEADS TO A LIZARD

  Therefore he went to Maya of the Fair Breasts, who controlled Wednesday. Before her at that instant stood an amber basin with green stones set about the rim of it. Inside this basin was the appearance of a shining lizard with very red, protuberant eyes which moved and glittered as the panting creature whispered to Dame Maya about that which was to come.

  When Madoc came, the wise woman arose and put aside her cold, familiar counsellor. She went toward young Madoc with a light of wooing in her proud and sullen face. He found her exceedingly handsome, but he said nothing about this.

  Instead, before her kindling gaze, he looked downward. Thus it was that he saw the lizard had put on the appearance of a tiny silver-colored pig. As Madoc looked, this pig became a little horse, and then a sheep, and after that an ox, drifting out of one dwarfed bright shaping into another shaping just as a cloud changes. But Madoc said nothing about this, either.

  He said only, “Do you, who are all-wise, show me that way in which I may win to the accursed witch Ettarre, who has made empty my life, who permits no magnanimities to flourish in my parched heart, and who turns to mockery the noble songs that I write with the quill pen made of a feather from the wing of the Father of All Lies!”

14. HOW POETS MAY REFORM

  Dame Maya led him to a peaceful place where every kind of domestic animal was dozing in her fine market-garden upon Mispec Moor. Sheep and asses and pigs and oxen and draught-horses all rested comfortably in this peaceful place. They had not any care in the world, and no desires save those which food and sleeping satisfied.

  The wise woman said, “Through a magic well known to me, poor Madoc, you may become as one of these who have been my husbands.”

  He asked, “Were these once men?”

  Maya of the Fair Breasts answered him, reassuringly, “Yes: all these quiet and useful creatures at one time were mere poets, troubled as you are now troubled, and all these have I saved from that music which is made by the witch-woman, as presently I will save you.”

  Madoc cried out, “I do not ask for salvation, but for vengeance!”

  She said, “In vengeance there is neither ease nor wisdom; but upon Mispec Moor are both.”

  Madoc replied, “Nevertheless, I prefer that you tell me in what way I may come to the accursed witch, and may make an end of her music and of her also.”

  The sullen wise woman answered, standing now more near to him, “That way I will not ever tell you, because I like too much your appearance.”

15. RIGHT-THINKING REMEDIED