3.How Anavalt Lamented the Redeemer
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THEN Madame Niafer arose, black-robed and hollow-eyed, and she made a lament for Dom Manuel, whose like for gentleness and purity and loving kindliness toward his fellows she declared to remain nowhere in this world. It was an encomium under which the attendant warriors stayed very grave and rather fidgety, because they recognized and shared her grief, but did not wholly recognize the Manuel whom she described to them.
And the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion was decreed to be disbanded, because of the law of Poictesme that all things should go by tens forever. There was no fighting-man able to fill Manuel’s place: and a fellowship of nine members was, as Dame Niafer pointed out, illegal.
It well might be, however, she suggested, with a side glance toward Holmendis, that some other peculiarly holy person, even though not a warrior— At the same instant Coth said, with a startling and astringent decisiveness, “Bosh!”
His confrères felt the gross incivility of this interruption,but felt, too, that they agreed with Coth. And so the fellowship was proclaimed to be disbanded.
Then Anavalt of Fomor made a lament for the passing of that noble order whose ranks were broken at last, and for Dom Manuel also Anavalt raised a lament, praising Manuel for his hardihood and his cunning and his terribleness in battle. The heroes nodded their assent to this more intelligible sort of talking.
“Manuel,” said Anavalt, “was hardy. It was not wise for any enemy to provoke him. When that indiscretion was committed, Manuel made himself as a serpent about the city of that enemy, girdling his prey all round: he seized the purlieus of that city, and its cattle, and its boats upon the rivers. He beleaguered that city everywhere, he put fire to the orchards, he silenced the mill-races, he prevented the plowers from plowing the land; and the people of that city starved, and they ate up one another, until the survivors chose to surrender to Dom Manuel. Then Manuel raised his gallows, he whistled in his headsmen, and there were no more survivors of that people.”
And Anavalt said also: “Manuel was cunning. With a feather he put a deception upon three kings, but the queens that he played his tricks on were more than three, nor was it any feather that he diddled them with. Nobody could outwit Manuel. What he wanted he took, if he could get it that way, with his strong hand: but, if not, he used his artful head and his lazy, wheedlingtongue, and his other members too, so that the person whom he was deluding would give Manuel whatever he required. It was like eating honey, to be deluded by Manuel. I think it is no credit for a private man to be a great rogue; but the leader of a people must know how to deceive all peoples.”
Then Anavalt said: “Manuel was terrible. There was no softness in him, no hesitancy, and no pity. That, too, is not a virtue in a private person, but in the leader of a people it may well be a blessing for that people. Manuel so ordered matters that no adversary ever troubled Poictesme the second time. He lived as a tyrant over us; but it is better to have one master that you know the ways of than to be always changing masters in a world where none but madmen run about at their own will. I do not weep for Manuel, because he would never have wept for me nor for anybody else; but I regret that man of iron and the protection he was to us who are not ruthless iron but flesh.”
There was a silence afterward. Yet still the heroes nodded gravely. This was, in the main, a Manuel whom they all recognized.
Dame Niafer, however, had risen up a little way from her seat, when the pious gaunt man Holy Holmendis, who sat next to her, put out his hand to her hand. After this she said nothing: yet it was perfectly clear the Countess thought that Anavalt had been praising Manuel for the wrong sort of virtues.
A fire was kindled with that ceremony which was requisite. The banner of the great fellowship was burned, and the lords of the Silver Stallion now broke their swords, and they cast these fragments also into this fire, so that these swords might never defend any other standard. It was the youth of these nine men and the first vigor and faith of their youth which perished with the extinction of that fire: and they knew it.
Thereafter the heroes left Storisende. Each rode for his own home, and they made ready, each in his own fashion, for that new order of governance which with the passing of Dom Manuel had come upon Poictesme.