The Charwoman's Shadow
by Lord Dunsany
XXVIII: Gonsalvo Sings What Had Been the Latest Air from Provence
Thus it came about that the Lord of the Tower sent again for Father Joseph, and bade him write him a letter; and the letter was folded and sealed and given to Peter to bear to Ramon Alonzo at the magical house in the wood.
On the day that Father Joseph had left the Tower to go to his own small house the Duke lay in his bed all day very restless. It was the third day of his strange illness. Whenever a step was heard outside his room he watched his door with a fierceness alight in his eyes which only faded from them when he saw Mirandola. He seldom spoke to her, but he could not curse her; he accepted the food that she brought him, and none else ventured near him. And so that day went by and the evening came, and Gulvarez in the room where the boar-spears hung took an old guitar of his host’s, that years and years ago Gonsalvo had played; and striking up a tune Gulvarez sang. And the tune was one that so long haunted valleys of Andalusian hills that none knew who first sang it or whence it came. It was a common love-song of the South. The words were vague, and varied in different villages, so that a lover had wide choice how he would sing the song. Gulvarez sang it with a heavy feeling, looking towards Mirandola and singing all the tenderer lines the loudest. When he had finished his hostess thanked him, and Gonsalvo began to tell of old songs that he too had known, but his lady checked him that Mirandola might speak; and they both sat silent, waiting for their daughter to thank Gulvarez.
Then Mirandola said: “ ’Tis a pleasant song. I pray the Saints that the Duke hear it not.”
She said it with such an awe that alarm touched Gulvarez.
“The Duke?” he stuttered.
“Yes, I pray he hear not,” she said. “For he hath a most strange fury, and small sounds trouble it much. I fear lest he should rise from his bed and slay you.”
And she listened, even as she spoke, to hear if the Duke were stirring. And Gulvarez grew red and said: “Not at all,” and “By no means”; and the Lady of the Tower said “Mirandola!” and the Lord of the Tower knew not what to say.
And a silence fell and Gulvarez still glowed red, like a misty autumnal sun in a still evening. And only Mirandola was quite at ease.
At last to break that silence Gonsalvo sang a merry love-song that in his own young days was newly come from Provence. Only those had known it then who kept an ear to what was doing in the wider world beyond the boundaries of Spain, and who watched the times and were quick to note whenever they brought a new thing; and of these Gonsalvo was one; and so he had got that song, no great while after its arrival in Spain (brought over the Pyrenees by a wandering singer, as birds sometimes carry strange seeds), but the song was old among the troubadours. As Gonsalvo sang he thought of the days when it was something to know that song, showing either that the singer had travelled far or was one of those quick minds that caught all things new; the merrier the notes the more he thought of those days. And the more he thought of them the more he regretted that they were all gone over the hills. A melancholy came into Gonsalvo’s voice. Each line of the song seemed to roll him further and further away from that young man that had known so long ago the latest air from Provence. Ah well. Such feelings must come sooner or later to all of us. But Gonsalvo was not a meditative man, and to him they came most rarely, troubling him scarcely ever; now they all welled up in him at the sound of that song, and at the thought that for aught Gonsalvo knew it was no longer the latest air. His melancholy deepened. His memory drew those merry lines from the past, with a tone as sad as the groans of an aged man, who winds up a pail of bright water out of a well, with pain in all his old joints.
Gulvarez no more than Gonsalvo knew the Provençal tongue, yet the lilt of the tune should have told him that it was a merry song. But he watched his host’s face with care and saw there what he heard in his tones; he therefore mopped his eyes with a kerchief, thinking to please Gonsalvo. Then Gonsalvo sought to explain that it was a merry song, and was highly thought of as such in better years if not now; and all amongst his explanations Gulvarez thrust in words, seeking to explain his kerchief. Why was it that during all this time Mirandola seemed to sit there smiling? For her lips never moved. Then the Lady of the Tower, seeing that the silence, that had hung so heavily over them after Mirandola’s remark, had not been bettered, though broken, by Gonsalvo’s merry song, rose from her seat and beckoned to Mirandola; and, closing the explanations of the men with fair words to Gulvarez, went thence with her daughter. So passed the third day of that illness that so strangely afflicted the Duke.
And the fourth day came; and on this day Father Joseph was seen riding away on his mule. When Father Joseph walked over to the Tower, and for a few days left the little village, the folk sinned there gladly; but when he rode away on a mule, they knew not whither, and was not back by evening, a piety came uneasily down on the village, and not only no one sinned but they scarcely sang; for none gave absolution like Father Joseph.
In the Tower it was as yesterday, for an anxious hush still hung over all the house because of the dreadful thing it had done to the Duke. And none dared trouble that hush by suggesting a new thing; and events came slowly. The Duke’s strength still gained gradually, and his magical fury gradually faded, if indeed it faded at all. Mirandola still saw a glitter of wrath in his eyes, whenever she opened his door, which only faded when he saw it was her, bringing him food or drink. And the wrath with which he watched the door seemed to Mirandola magnificent; for it seemed to her that no more than lightnings or splendid dawns would he turn aside to let mean things have their way, or assist gross things to prosper; and she had seen gross men and watched mean ways, and had had a fear that for aught that she could do she would come amongst grossness and meanness in the end; so what was crude and common would teach the mundane way once more to the rare and fine.
They spoke little; for the Duke’s wrath would not easily allow him to speak to any of that house that had so strangely wronged him, although it could not rage at Mirandola.
Downstairs Gulvarez said tender things to her; but, as it was ever his way to say these the loudest, she hushed him with one hand raised and an anxious air, lest the Duke should hear any sound and be moved to yet fiercer humours. And none knew how the Duke fared except Mirandola, and she told all truthfully; yet always with an anxiety in her voice which made all the future uncertain and checked Gulvarez’ boldness, as though he had suddenly come to the verge of a country that was full of a damp white mist. Amongst such uncertainties this day passed like the last.
The fifth day of the Duke’s strange illness came. A troubled piety reigned in the village, and Father Joseph was still far away, being then with Ramon Alonzo in the magician’s wood. In the Tower none knew if the Duke’s illness abated, but now he had grown accustomed to Mirandola’s entry, and knew her step and her hand upon the door, and no longer watched the door with glittering wrath whenever he saw it move. But none knew if he would yet suffer the approach of any other, and none touched his door that day but Mirandola.
Gulvarez enquired of her how the Duke fared.
“I fear,” she said, “he will never forgive our poor house.”
“I will speak to him later,” said Gulvarez.
“I trust he may forgive you for bringing him here,” she said. “If so, he may well forgive us.”
It was thus that Mirandola would speak to Gulvarez. Such words did not at first seem wrong, but there was no comfort in them. Rather they stirred anxieties, and, on thinking over them afterwards, it often seemed as though nothing less than a slight to Gulvarez were hid in them. Mirandola’s mother spoke to her about this, telling her how she ought to converse with Gulvarez; and Mirandola listened readily. Still it was a hushed house, in which it seemed that nothing dared happen until the Duke was cured. So the fifth day passed. And the next day brought back Father Joseph, tired on his mule to his little house by the village. And the folk rejoiced and made merry when they saw him riding their way in the afternoon, and through the evening they kept up their rejoicing, and into the starry night with dancing and song; and of this came things that are not for this tale.
But over the Tower a hush still brooded heavily. It was like a prisoner who waits in the dark for his trial. He knows not how great his crime will prove to have been. Again and again he guesses its consequences. Meanwhile his judge eats and sleeps and has not yet heard of him. Something of this uncertainty hung over all that household until they knew how gravely the Duke had been wronged and if he would surely recover. And still none dare approach him but Mirandola. And on this day the Duke spoke with her, not merely answering questions that she asked of him concerning the food or drink that he desired, but talking of small things distant from that house. And she sat so long while they talked that all the house grew troubled; for only from Mirandola could they learn how the Duke fared. All the while that she tarried their alarm was growing, and when at length she appeared it was anxious questions they asked of her.
The Duke was no worse, she said.
“And his anger? What of his anger?” one asked of her tremulously.
“He has his whims,” she said; “but he is not angry.”
She returned to the room in which her parents sat with Gulvarez. And there she found a certain restraint as they spoke with her, for the same strange thing all at once had surprised all three; and this was that in the sore perplexity that had come upon them, and of which they had thought so deeply for six days, the key seemed suddenly in the hands of Mirandola. She knew how he fared, knew that he would recover; above all she seemed to be able to soothe his wrath. Terrible menaces seemed to be lifting, of which the worst was that the Duke should die; but after that they feared almost as much his recovery, dreading what he might do for the insult that had been offered him. But now it seemed, at least to Gonsalvo, and was indeed obvious to all, that if Mirandola could thus soothe his wrath it might be averted from all of them. Then Gonsalvo and Gulvarez walked in the garden and planned how, when the Duke should be recovered, Mirandola should lead him out to the road with his bowmen, so that he should pass neither his host nor his friend, who would be at that time in the garden; and the Duke should not see Gulvarez till long after, when his wrath was abated, and Gonsalvo never again. From this planning they soon returned well satisfied; Gonsalvo, his mind now eased of a burden that had weighed on it for six days, was telling volubly of old hunts he had known; while Gulvarez meditated gallant phrases, and stepped gaily into the house all ready to utter them to Mirandola. But Mirandola was gone again to sit and talk with the Duke.