The World of Romance: being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 — John Shaqi
The World of Romance: being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856Morris, William
Science
The World of Romance: being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856
Morris, William
Middle Ages -- Fiction; Tales
For eight hours I had been asleep; on awaking, the blood rushed up into
my face, I heard my mother's low mysterious song behind me, and knew not
what harm might happen to her and me, if that knight's coming made her
cease in it; so I struck him with my left hand, where his face was bare
under his mail-coif, and getting my sword in my light hand, drove its
point under his hawberk, so that it came out behind, and he fell, turned
over on his face, and died.
Then, because my mother still went on working and singing, I said no
word, but let him lie there, and put the door up again, and found Hector
dead.
I then sat down again and polished my sword with a piece of leather after
I had wiped the blood from it; and in an hour my mother arose from her
work, and raising me from where I was sitting, kissed my brow, saying,
'Well done, Lionel, you have slain our greatest foe, and now the people
will know you for what you are before you die--Ah God! though not before
_I_ die.'
So I said, 'Who is he, mother? he seems to be some Lord; am I a Lord
then?'
'A King, if the people will but know it,' she said.
Then she knelt down by the dead body, turned it round again, so that it
lay face uppermost, as before, then said:
'And so it has all come to this, has it? To think that you should run on
my son's sword-point at last, after all the wrong you have done me and
mine; now must I work carefully, least when you are dead you should still
do me harm, for that you are a King--Lionel!'
'Yea, Mother.'
'Come here and see; this is what I have wrought these many Peter's days
by day, and often other times by night.'
'It is a surcoat, Mother; for me?'
'Yea, but take a spade, and come into the wood.'
So we went, and my mother gazed about her for a while as if she were
looking for something, but then suddenly went forward with her eyes on
the ground, and she said to me:
'Is it not strange, that I who know the very place I am going to take you
to, as well as our own garden, should have a sudden fear come over me
that I should not find it after all; though for these nineteen years I
have watched the trees change and change all about it--ah! here, stop
now.'
We stopped before a great oak; a beech tree was behind us--she said,
'Dig, Lionel, hereabouts.'
So I dug and for an hour found nothing but beech roots, while my mother
seemed as if she were going mad, sometimes running about muttering to
herself, sometimes stooping into the hole and howling, sometimes throwing
herself on the grass and twisting her hands together above her head; she
went once down the hill to a pool that had filled an old gravel pit, and
came back dripping and with wild eyes; 'I am too hot,' she said, 'far too
hot this St. Peter's day.'
Clink just then from my spade against iron; my mother screamed, and I dug
with all my might for another hour, and then beheld a chest of heavy wood
bound with iron ready to be heaved out of the hole; 'Now Lionel weigh it
out--hard for your life!'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account