The Charwoman's Shadow
by Lord Dunsany
XIII: Ramon Alonzo Compounds the Potion
Next morning Ramon Alonzo rose full early, all impatience to do Mirandola’s errand, all eagerness to exercise his new skill. That day the magician was to teach him more spells and alternative ingredients, doubtless with quips at the expense of Matter, scoffs at the vanity of the ambitions of Man, quotations from ancient philosophers, and lore of his own seeking. An opportunity not given to every young man; for this master had gathered and stored with his own hands the fruits of many ages, besides the lore he was heir to from former philosophers.
When Ramon Alonzo entered the room that was sacred to magic he saw with a sudden joy that this opportunity was not yet to be his. For he had come down the spiral stair of timber and stone by the palest earliest light, and the magician was not yet about. But with his new learning glowing bright and fresh in his mind he ran a sure eye over the Master’s shelves and saw the ingredients he needed. Then he took from a jar some dust of Ozymandias and mixed it in right proportions with some of the dust of Helen. His shrewd young mind guessed well the aphorisms that the Master would have uttered over these pinches of dust; for, secure with his doses of elixir vitae, he neglected few chances to mock the illusions of Man. Attar of roses and crocodile’s tears were close by in their vials, and the dried skin of a nightingale hung on a nail near. He procured a flame and burned some of the feathers and pounded them into a powder, and mixed it up with the rest. Then he hastened towards the wood, anxious to gain the door before the magician came, and to do the work unaided; for he knew that the aged had often ideas of their own, setting undue store by ritual and unprofitable quotations, and hindering eager work that the young would do in a hurry. He came to the door to the wood and listened a moment acutely. Not a sound came from the corridors; the magician was not yet afoot. The dew was yet in the wood, and of this he got a small cupful, gathering it drop by drop from the bent blades of grass; and here he found large snails and, after a while, a glowworm. And these he carried into a hollow oak where the darkness was deep enough to be lit by the glowworm; and in the light of that he put all his mixture together, saying the while a spell that had great repute in Persia. The viscid substance he poured into a vial, out of the common mortar in which he compounded it, and carefully corked the vial and turned back towards the house in the wood. And, attracted by the croon of the curious Persian spell, or else by the scent of the love-potion, small things of the wood were lured to follow him. He heard the pattering of their feet behind him; but if he turned they were away on the other side of the oak-boles, and if he went back to a tree behind which one hid and walked round to the other side, he heard small fingernails scratching, always on the far side from him, and knew the small creature had gone up the tree and slipped round it whenever he moved, so as to keep the trunk between it and anything human. They were only imps, light creatures composed of the idleness and mystery of the wood, and led now by curiosity, which was their principal motive. Soon the pattering of footsteps ceased, for they dared come no nearer to the magician’s house, but sat down behind their trees uttering little cries of wonder.
When Ramon Alonzo returned to the house in the wood he sought at once for the charwoman, and found her in her nook amongst all her pails.
“Anemone,” he said, “I am going back to my home, for my sister has need of a love-potion.”
“For what purpose needs she that?” said the charwoman.
“I know not,” said Ramon Alonzo, “but she desired one.”
“Is she not young?” said the charwoman.
“Aye,” said Ramon Alonzo, “but perhaps she wished to make sure.”
“Aye, they are sure, those potions,” said the charwoman, for she knew much of magic, having minded that house for so long. “Only let him see her first after he hath drunk of the potion, or even be nearest to her at that time, and he hath no escape after that from magical love. You have the potion there?” For Ramon Alonzo had the vial in his hand.
“Aye,” said he, “I made it myself in the wood.”
“He taught you how?”
“Yes,” said Ramon Alonzo.
“And for that you gave your shadow,” she said sorrowfully.
And he would have explained to her that he had learned more than this, but she would not heed him, only sitting on the straw with dejected head, and mourning to herself over his shadow.
Then seeing her sorrowful face, and the gloom of that dark nook, and the sombre melancholy of all things round her, he sought to persuade her to flee from the house in the wood, and he would escort her into Aragona. But she only said: “The world is harder than his house.”
He reasoned with her, saying suave things of the world; but she only answered: “There is no place for me there.”
And then he said: “I will come back for you, and when I come I will get back your shadow.”
And she shook her head sorrowfully as she always shook it whenever he spoke of that.
“But I have a plan,” he said.
And when she only shook her head again he told her what his plan was.
“I saw the spell,” he said, “when he opened the shadow-box, and have seen it again since. It is in Chinese and I cannot speak it, but now I remember it well, each syllable; and I will learn the art of the pen and then I will make the likeness of one of those syllables upon parchment. There are three syllables, but I will make the likeness of only one at first, and with it I shall write words of my own imagining, making them square and outlandish. And I shall say to him: ‘Master, I was given this writing by a heathen man that I met. I pray you read it for me.’ ”
She listened at first, but when he spoke of writing words of his own imagining she turned again to her melancholy.
“But hearken,” he said, and his eagerness gained her attention. “Oft as he reads he mutters, and if the room be dark and the script small then he will mutter surely, and I hear the words that he mutters. Now when all the script is strange to him but one word, he will surely mutter that one and then stop and ponder; and I shall hear that word and remember. And then some days must go by, and many days; and then one day I will bring him another script, with the second syllable, and long afterwards the third, and then I shall have the spell.”
She was listening now with a look on her face that seemed to be like hope; but hope had been absent from her face so long that if it now shone in her eyes its image there was too faint for Ramon Alonzo to be quite sure what it was. And after a while she said: “Learn not the art of the pen from him. There are good men that can teach that art, and not only he.”
“Why?” said Ramon Alonzo.
“Because,” she said, “if he deems that you have not the art he will not suspect you wrote it.”
And then Ramon Alonzo knew that she hoped, for she had taken a part in his plan. And for a long while they talked of it. And all the while the faint hope of the charwoman grew, and her eyes shone now with a bright unwonted light in the haggard withered face.
One thing she warned him which Ramon Alonzo remembered, and that was to give up his false shadow to the magician before he opened the shadow-box, if ever he should be able to open it. For the magician could cut off the false shadow, having the necessary tools; but if this were not done he would never be able to rid himself of it and would always have two shadows, a true and a false. Thus they plotted together; but Ramon Alonzo thought nothing of his own shadow, planning only to rescue hers, with his thoughts as they roved to the future fixed on nothing but the picture of her old face lit up by some feeble smile from a wan happiness when she should have her old shadow again.
And now the morning was wearing on to the hour when the magician would be astir, and Ramon Alonzo desired to be gone before he appeared. For he had acquired a lore in his youth which taught him ever to avoid the aged when merry plans were afoot; for the aged would come with their wisdom and slowness of thought, and other plans would be made, and there would be, at least, delay. So he was impatient to go, and yet he dallied, reluctant that any word should be the last, reluctant to leave the new plan that they had made between them, and reluctant to leave the old woman, who somehow held his sympathy in such a way as he had not been taught that it could be held by the aged.
Then they spoke of trifles as folk often do that are at the moment of parting. He told of the imps in the wood, that he had never seen, but whose feet he had heard following. And she told him how to see an imp, which was easy. For a man can see three sides of a tree, and whatever comes the imp will go to the fourth side; and there he will wait till he is sure of being able to peep round without being seen. “But throw your hat past the right side of the tree,” she said, “and he will clamber round at once on to the left side, and you will see the imp.”
Of such trifles they spoke. But fearing now to see at any moment the dark form of the Master, or to hear his stride along the booming corridors, Ramon Alonzo made his farewells; and one last message of good cheer he gave her before striding away with his cloak and his sword to the wood.
“When I have rescued your shadow,” he said, “I will take you away from this house, and you shall be charwoman at my father’s tower, and the work will be light there and you may do it slowly, and none shall molest you and you may rest when you will and you shall have long to sleep.”
Some glance of gratitude he looked for; but a smile so strange lit her face and haunted her eyes, that he went from the sombre house and into the wood, and all the way to the open lands, still wondering.