The Charwoman's Shadow
by Lord Dunsany
XXII: Ramon Alonzo Crosses a Sword with Magic
Shadowless Ramon Alonzo went through the wood, as miserable in every glade and every shaft of sunlight as a man that crept through a city after being robbed of his raiment would feel whenever he came to a busy street. Shadowless he entered the house.
Now was a time for caution; his shadow gone, his eternal soul in danger, now was the time to watch the magician warily till an hour might come that should be favourable to a request. But every circumstance that should have urged delay drove the youth onward impetuously. How if he should die that night, and the doomed shadow get a throttle-grip immediately on his soul and drag it down to Hell! He durst not wait. He must win back that shadow.
And even as he thought of the daily pains of Hell; which are far beyond the imagination of such as Ramon Alonzo, but he had been well instructed in these by good men; even as he thought of the round of pains and terrors, he remembered with chivalrous faith the charwoman’s shadow.
He hastened along the corridors: the old woman that had been Anemone, at work by her pail, saw him go by and noticed that he was running: he came to the door of the room that was sacred to magic. He entered; there had been no spell on the door of late, so that the pupil might come to the room for work; he came breathless before the magician. That learned man was sitting at his lectern alone with his own thoughts, that were beyond our needs or concern: he raised his head and looked at Ramon Alonzo.
“Master,” said Ramon Alonzo, “a script that I had from a man in the wood. Strange words. I pray you read them.”
In the look that the Master gave him he saw he had failed.
None the less he spoke again all the more earnestly. “I pray you, Master,” he said.
Still that look. And then the magician slowly shook his head; and Ramon Alonzo knew that hope was over.
“Give me my shadow,” he blurted out then.
“No,” said the magician.
“Why not?” shouted Ramon Alonzo.
“It is my fee.”
“I have learned nothing for your fee.”
“You have learned from me,” said the Master, “the manner of compounding a love-potion.”
“I made it,” said Ramon Alonzo, “and a man drank it.”
“He will love fiercely,” the magician said.
“It made him most monstrous sick,” said Ramon Alonzo.
“Ah,” said the magician.
“Give me back my shadow,” Ramon Alonzo repeated.
“I have taught you other learning for my fee, rare learning come from of old.”
“You have not taught me the making of gold,” said the youth.
“I have taught you a rarer wisdom, a more secret thing.”
“What?” said Ramon Alonzo.
The magician paused, and in a graver voice he said: “The oneness of matter.”
“It is naught to me,” said the other.
“It is a most rare learning,” the Master answered. “Few know that there is but one element with a hundred manifestations. Few knew it of old. And few have handed this rare knowledge down. It is worth incomparably more than my fee.”
“It is naught to me,” repeated Ramon Alonzo. “Give back my shadow.”
“No,” said the magician, “for you cannot give back this rare, this incomparable knowledge. Neither shall I give back my fee.”
“The shadow was worthless: it would not grow. And now it has run away.”
“Ah,” said the magician.
For the last time Ramon Alonzo blurted out his useless request: “Give me back my shadow.”
And the magician answered: “I keep my just fee.”
And Ramon Alonzo turned his face toward damnation, yet remembered his knightly quest. “Then only give me the charwoman’s shadow,” he said.
“She has had years for it,” said the Master.
“Such years!” exclaimed Ramon Alonzo.
“They were many,” replied the magician.
“Give up her shadow,” said menacingly Ramon Alonzo.
“No,” said the magician.
And on that No the young man’s sword was out and its point was before the face of the magician. He did not move his gaze from Ramon Alonzo or from that glittering point, but leaned his right arm out behind him, the hand feeling downwards, and slightly bending his head as his arm went back. So the Master’s hand came to the lid of a box on the floor and felt the rim and opened it and went in, and gripped what lay within all in an instant.
Then, flaming before the eyes of Ramon Alonzo, appeared a flash of lightning fixed to a resinous hilt, that dark and rounded lay gripped in the Master’s hand. The flash was little longer than Ramon Alonzo’s sword, and more jaggedly crooked, and was rather red than yellow, as though it had slowly cooled while it lay in the box.
At once the two men engaged, at first across the lectern, then working wide of it as they fought. Young Ramon Alonzo had a pretty style with the sword, and the skill of his antagonist was nothing magical, for his years had been given to other studies than those of thrusting and parrying; yet his weapon was magical, and thrilled up the steel the moment it touched the rapier, jarring the young man’s arm as far as the shoulder, shaking his elbow and nearly wrenching his wrist. And every time that either of them parried the young man felt that jar and shock jolting along his right arm. So great a blow might have cast his sword from his hand had it been delivered by an earthly weapon, but that lightning-flash with which the magician fought had the curious effect of making Ramon Alonzo’s fingers grip tighter whenever he felt the shock in his arm. Had it not been for this he was lost. And even though he kept his sword in his hand he had hard work to parry, for the magician thrust rapidly at him. Soon his arm was growing numb, and he attacked vehemently then, so as to end it while he still had strength in his arm; but the magician parried each thrust and, once returning a lunge of Ramon Alonzo’s, brought the weapon so near his face that it singed his hair. And after that the magician beat his mortal antagonist backwards, dazzled and numbed but still fighting. It became clear that had that Master given his days to the sword and studied all the mysteries of the rapier he had been a notable hand at it. None of the young man’s thrusts went home; and suddenly a thrust of the magician, partially parried, slipped over the earthly hilt and along the mortal arm, searing the flesh and setting fire to cloth, so that Ramon Alonzo fought a few strokes with a flaming sleeve, till he patted it out with his left hand and still fought on. And now he was near the door and the Master pressing him still, a dark lithe shape lit up by the flash of his eyes, in a gloomy room crossed and re-crossed by the glare of the lightning. A sudden rally Ramon Alonzo made from the lintel, but was beaten back and again his arm was seared, and tumbling more than retreating he reeled back through the door.
“Cross no swords with magic,” said the magician warningly, with his strange sword in the doorway; but he came no further, and Ramon Alonzo was left alone with despair, while the Master returned to the gloom of the room that was sacred to magic, and to occupations that are beyond our knowledge.
Ramon Alonzo stayed awhile by the door, which still opened to the gloom of the magical room, his sword in his shaken hand, and not till he saw that his enemy did not deign to follow did he turn slowly away. But as soon as the thrill of the risk of death was gone, new troubles and even terrors overtook him. On Earth he had lost his shadow and lost a fight; hereafter his salvation. He was defenceless in this sinister house, for his sword had failed him, and impetuously he had cast his careful and patient plans away. He believed that none could advise him; he saw, as men often do in such times of despondency, nothing between him and everlasting damnation. He would not even pray, counting himself already among the damned, unto whom prayer is forbidden. He heard the charwoman late at her work in a corridor, but moved away from her, being in no mood to speak. But she saw him and came after him, and, seeing all at once the need that he had of comfort, she brought it him, though he would have none of it, so that she had to give comfort without his knowledge.
He did not tell her that his false shadow was gone, and would not tell her that the magician had beaten him, nor that the shadow-box was locked forever, and his soul involved in the doom of his true shadow; but he said, “All is lost.” And this he repeated often, whenever he thought she was trying to give him comfort.
“But you have the first syllable of the spell,” she said.
Little had this comforted her when first he had told her, but now that he needed comfort she said it as earnestly as though by this one syllable alone the long box could be opened.
“All is lost,” he repeated.
“The first syllable is Ting,” she said.
“All is lost,” said Ramon Alonzo.
“The next might be Tong or Tang,” said the old woman. Idle enough such a remark, unlikely to be true, light words on which to build a hope of escape from Hell; Ramon Alonzo did not even answer them; and yet they started a thought in the young man’s mind that later led to a plan, out of which he built a hope, as slender as that last bridge that the Muslim crosses, but the hope seemed to lead to salvation.