The Charwoman's Shadow
by Lord Dunsany
XXX: The End of the Golden Age
When Ramon Alonzo read his father’s letter a fear came into his daydreams, and he stood a long while wondering. Peter stood before him gazing into his face, and Anemone by his side was quietly reading his thoughts; and both saw trouble there, rushing up black and suddenly to darken the coming years. And there he stayed while two phrases went up and down amidst his dismayed thoughts—“the daughter of some illustrious house” and “well established in honour before the coming of the Moors.” What should he do? Were those two phrases to wither away his happiness? And yet what way of escape? Hope herself seemed blind to it.
“What is the matter?” Anemone said, as he stood there still and silent.
“It is from my father,” he said.
And she knew then that his father would not receive her, but she said nothing.
“Peter,” he said after a little while, “I must go on alone. Guard my lady.”
To her he turned to give excuses and reasons for leaving her awhile in the forest; but she left all to him and needed no reasons.
A little way further they went on together, Peter walking behind; and then Anemone and Ramon Alonzo parted as though it had been for years, though they were only a few hundred paces from the Tower, and Ramon Alonzo had sworn to return to her long before evening. Then he left her and went down to the edge of the forest where it touched the rocky land at the end of the garden; and Peter assured Anemone that his young master would soon return, for that he ever kept his word to the last letter of it: but she was full of heaviness from that dark news that had troubled Ramon Alonzo, although she knew not the words of it, yet she felt it as on sultry days in summer we feel the thunder before we have seen a cloud.
When Ramon Alonzo came to the edge of the forest he hid himself carefully by an old oak that he knew; then he looked towards the garden.
And soon he saw walking on those remembered paths his sister with the Duke of Shadow Valley. They were coming towards him and he saw her clearly, a new gaiety in her dress, and a look in her face that was almost strange to him. Then they turned back again. The next time that they approached he watched her face to find a moment when he could show her that he was there without the Duke perceiving him. And for long he only saw that new look increasing the spell of her beauty; and though the Duke looked seldom toward the forest, and had she glanced for a moment he might have signed to her, yet he caught not one of those glances roving from under her lashes, and the pair went back again to a further part of the garden.
The Duke was talking to Mirandola, that handsome head bending towards her; and suddenly she lifted her head, looking far beyond the garden, and her gaze was out over the forest where Ramon Alonzo hid. And suddenly he waved his kerchief to her by the hollow old bole of that oak by which they had played of old. She saw the sign and at once walked nearer to him, the Duke walking beside her. And when he saw that tall and slender figure in black velvet and sky-blue plume coming towards him with her, he signed to her again and again to come alone; but they still walked on, and left the end of the garden, and crossed the strip of rocky heathery land. They found him standing by the old hollowed oak. He doffed his hat to the Duke, then hastily said what he had tried to sign: “Mirandola, I have a word to say to you apart.”
And she said: “My secrets are his.”
Then Ramon Alonzo felt that his judgment had not been trusted, and that Mirandola, his sister, should have doubted that he had good grounds for his request troubled the lad to the heart. And when she made no motion to draw apart with him alone he blurted out in his pique every word of his father’s letter, though the Duke was standing beside him, petulantly bent on showing how right he had been to ask her to hear him alone. And then he told her mournfully how he was engaged to wed a maiden whom he had rescued from the magician, and who was fairer than the earliest flowers on bright March mornings in Spain.
When the Duke heard this he smiled.
“And she is of no noble house?” he said.
“Aye, there it is,” said Ramon Alonzo.
“Where is she?” asked Mirandola in her quiet kind voice, whose very tones seemed to know her brother’s heart, as the echoes of chimes know belfries.
“There in the forest,” he said.
Mirandola looked at the Duke.
“Let us see her,” he said.
So Ramon Alonzo turned and led the way, and the betrothed pair followed together. He strode on as though all alone in the wood with his sorrows, disappointed at having had no talk with Mirandola alone, for he had had much hope from her wisdom if he could have talked with her thus, as so often he had talked when they were younger, smoothing the difficulties of tinier troubles. So he walked downcast and moody, though once he fancied that he heard behind him the sound of soft laughter.
When Ramon Alonzo came where Anemone waited with Peter he was silent yet, extending an arm towards her where she stood smiling, fair, as indeed he had said, as any flower looking up at the morning through dews of the earliest Spring. The Duke doffed his hat and bowed, and Mirandola went up and kissed Anemone. “So I must wed illustriously,” said Ramon Alonzo in bitterness.
During one of those brief moments that Destiny uses often to perfect an event with which she will shape the years, none of them spoke. Then Anemone slowly turned towards Aragona, towards her own people that rejected her.
“Hold,” said the Duke, “I will write to the Just Monarch. Bless his heart, he will do this for us.”
None knew till the letter was written quite what would be asked, nor what the Just and Glorious Monarch would do; yet suddenly all seemed decided.
Back then they went to the Tower; Mirandola, the Duke, and Ramon Alonzo. But not Anemone, for Ramon Alonzo knew not yet what to say of her to his father, though the Duke had suddenly lit his hopes again and they shone down vistas of years. So with one swift thought, that long pondering would not have bettered, he remembered Father Joseph, and commanded Peter to lead her to the good man’s little house. This Peter did, and there she was lodged awhile and honourably tended; and, had her memory held any more than hints of those dark ages in the sinister house in the wood, Father Joseph would have been, as he nearly was, surprised; and this, so well knew he man and his pitiful story, he had not been since long and long ago when he was first a curate and all the world was new to him. In the Tower, while his parents were greeting Ramon Alonzo and hearing halting fragments of his story whose whole theme he must hide awhile, the Duke of Shadow Valley with toil and discomfort, yet still with his own hand, inscribed a letter to the Victorious King. Therein he told his comrade in many a merriment the glad news of his happiness, then added a humble request concerning Anemone, and closed with a renewal of the devotion that his house ever felt towards that illustrious line. And now with meagre spoils his bowmen were coming in, for he had bidden them hunt rabbits; and to one of these he gave at once this letter, bidding him haste to its splendid destination. And the bowman hastened as he had been commanded, and travelled for all the remainder of that day and through most of the night, so that he saw the next sunset glint on the spires of that palace that was the glory and joy of the Golden Age. And there the most high king, the Victorious Monarch, sat on a throne of velvet and wood and gold; and lights had been brought but lately, and two men stood by the throne holding strange torches that the King might see to do any new thing; but the King had naught to do but to ponder the old cares over, for he had wide dominion. Then into the hall came the bowman.
When the King read he rejoiced. Then he rose and gave a command, commanding preparations. And these preparations were for his own presence at the wedding of the Duke and Mirandola. But amongst his rejoicings, and those august preparations, and the grave cares he inherited, he forgot not his friend’s petition and the humble affair of Anemone. So again he commanded, bidding his pen be brought. So one bore the pen down the hall on a cushion of scarlet and yellow, which are the colours of Spain. And the Victorious King took up the pen and wrote upon parchment, writing out with his own hand the humble name of Anemone. And in that illustrious hall, the pride of the Golden Age, he wrote an ample pardon for her low birth, and set his name to the pardon that he had written and sealed it all with the glorious seal of Spain. And the pardon was carried then, on the cushion of scarlet and yellow, to that Archbishop that waited upon the King, watching his spiritual needs from moment to moment. And when the pardon was come before the Archbishop he raised his hands and blessed it.
The bowman bore the pardon back to the Duke, who gave it to Ramon Alonzo. Thenceforth it became treason to speak of the low birth of Anemone, nor may historians allude to it to this day: that pardon had annulled it; she became of illustrious lineage. And in their loyal avoidance of any reference to Anemone’s occupation the Spanish people let drop into disuse the very name of charwoman, lest inadvertently they should ever apply it where it was treason to do so. Still they speak there of broom-lady, woman of the pail, crockery-breaker, floor-warden, scrub-mistress, but never of charwoman, unless a light and unreliable spirit blown over the Pyrenees by a south wind out of Spain has grossly misinformed me.
What more remains to be told of the fortunes of Ramon Alonzo and of the allied House of the Duke of Shadow Valley? Of the wedding of Mirandola good old books tell, in words whose very rhythms dance down the ages with a stately merriment and a mirthful march that are well worthy of their most happy theme. To them I leave that chronicling. In London alone the lucky wayfarer going north by the Charing Cross Road, and taking fortunate turnings, will find in the Antiquareum at the end of Old Zembla Street sufficient of these to his purpose. There, if the old curator dreams not too deeply of bygone splendours of the enchanted days, as may happen on long dark Saturdays, he will find the books that he needs. For there sleep in their mellowed leather on those shelves, and laugh in their sleep as they dream of the Golden Age, such books as Fortunate Revelries, The Glorious Waning of the Golden Age, The Sunset of Chivalry, and Happy Days of the Illustrious. And all these tell of that wedding, illumining the event with a dignity and a splendour such as our age considers presumptuous for any affair of man. I make no mention of such books as may be stored in Madrid, nor such as pedlars are likely still to be selling in hamlets of unfrequented valleys of Spain. Suffice it that no full tale is told of the Golden Age that does not revel happily over that day. Of the wedding of Ramon Alonzo and Anemone the good and glorious books tell a briefer tale, for no archbishops performed the holy rite, and the King’s self had returned to the burden of his dominion. Yet were they well wed; for Father Joseph did this with his own hands, and blessed them out of the store of his kind old years. And she, with the years of magic cast away, aged as we all age, slowly and mortally. And all those golden books agree on one quaint exaggeration, and record, sometimes with curious and solemn oath, that she and Ramon Alonzo lived happily ever after.
And what of the magician: he whose strange threads have run so much through all the web of this story? He sent no spell to follow after Anemone and her lover, as for a while they had feared, but went all alone to his room that was sacred to magic, and took from the dust and darkness of a high shelf a volume in which he had written all he had learned about boar-hunting; and indeed no more was known of that art in any land, for he that had taught him had followed the boar well. In this he read all that day and all the night, assured that therein was the manifest way to happiness that all philosophers sought. But about the third day, when none returned to him, and he was quite alone, and he felt it was vain to look for another now who should be worthy to receive from him the tremendous secrets of old, he rose from his book and said, “The years grow late.” He went then to his tower and quaffed one gulp of that fluid that was named elixir vitae, and, carrying the bottle to that passage that for so long Anemone scrubbed, he cast it heavily down upon the stone. And then he took from a box a flute of reed, and cloaked himself and went out of his magical house.
He went a few paces into the wood, then raised the reed to his lips. He blew one bar upon it of curious music, then waited listening eagerly. And there came to his ears the scurry of little things, nimble, elvish, and sprightly, over dead leaves of the wood. At that he strode away, going swiftly northwards, and there followed him all manner of magical things: fays, imps, and fauns, and all such children of Pan.
In the open lands he raised his pipe again and blew on it two strange notes, which seemed for a while to haunt the air all round him, then they drifted slowly afar. And to that call responded the things of the world, tiny enchanted folk from many an elf-mound and many a fairy ring; they joined the fantastic group that had come from the deeps of the wood, and followed after the Master. And with him went old shadows, some taken from earthly folk, and some that seemed cast upon other fields than ours by other lights than our Sun. He led them on through all the beauty of Spain. On the high hills he blew those two notes once more; and all that had their sole dwelling in moonlight and river-mist, or in the deep romance that overflows from old tales, told at evening in glamour of firesides, came out from their lurking-places at the edge of the olden years, and the dimness of distance, and the other side of grey hills, and followed him over the fields and valleys of Spain, till there came in sight one morning the tips of the Pyrenees. Soon he was crossing these with that wild crew behind him, and butterflies that had followed him out of Spain. He blew his strange notes once upon a peak, where his tall cloaked figure looked tiny seen from the fields, and his uncouth following only specks on the snow. Nevertheless Spain heard him; and as those notes with their lure and persuasiveness went murmuring among the villages, singing and promising I know not what, and calling away as naught should call from the calm and orderly ways, all the cathedrals rang their bells against him. And the chimes filled all the valleys and lapped over the rims of the hills, till all the air of Spain was mellow and musical with them, and yet the things of romance and mystery went leaping after the Master, and yet more hearts than ever told of it after turned that day towards the peak and the pass of the Pyrenees. Through the pass he went and the children of Pan followed. Then they turned eastwards and away and away. In Provence today there are tales that few folk tell, yet still remembered in the hearts of the peasantry; they tell how once the things of the olden time came that way from the mountains. And away they went through Europe, leaving a track of fable and curious folklore that, except where it is lost near cities and highways, can be followed even yet. And after them always went whatever was magical, and all those things that dwelt in the olden time and are only known to us through legend and fable.
On and on the magician strode, undaunted by rain or night or rivers or mountains, going onward guided by dawns, always due eastwards. Weariness came on him and still he strode on, going homeless by quiet hamlets in the night, and waking new desires by the mere soft sound of his footfall and the scurrying of little hooves that always followed his journey. And there came upon him at last those mortal tremors that are about the end of all earthly journeys. He hastened then. And before the human destiny overtook him he saw one morning, clear where the dawn had been, the luminous rock of the bastions and glittering rampart that rose up sheer from the frontier of the Country Towards Moon’s Rising. This he saw though his eyes were dimming now with fatigue and his long sojourn on earth; yet if he saw dimly he heard with no degree of uncertainty the trumpets that rang out from those battlements to welcome him after his sojourn, and all that followed him gave back the greeting with such cries as once haunted valleys at certain times of the moon. Upon those battlements and by the opening gates were gathered the robed Masters that had trafficked with time and dwelt awhile on Earth, and handed the mysteries on, and had walked round the back of the grave by the way that they knew, and were even beyond damnation. They raised their hands and blessed him.
And now for him, and the creatures that followed after, the gates were wide that led through the earthward rampart of the Country Towards Moon’s Rising. He limped towards it with all his magical following. He went therein, and the Golden Age was over.