Fimm the fruiterer had seen her, with Form his son, who was almost a man. Form had gone senseless with love, said Fimm, and had crept away from his father in the night to follow the road taken by the Lady—into the Deep Forest, said Fimm. For two nights now Form had not returned, and no one in the village had seen him.
“Well, lads are wild,” said I, “and a Lady in White is as good a cure for wildness as any. He will return when she has taught him to be some little tamer.”
But nay—Fimm would not agree. And Pandeler the weaver was of the same mind, though Pandeler does not take kindly to nonsense. He himself bad seen the Lady in White. She had come to his shop to buy his finest samite, and there his two sons, the twins Paoul and Pendit, had seen her. They had come to blows over her—they who were as close to each other as two fingers on the same fist—and Paoul had gone away in search of her, followed soon afterward by Pendit, though they were both of them under the banns to be married to the ripe young daughters of Swonsil the fletcher.
Yet that was not the greatest wonder of it, said Pandeler. Neither of his sons had been seen in the village for two days—but that also was not the greatest wonder. Nay, the wonder was that Pandeler himself had near arisen in the black night and followed his sons into the Deep Forest, hoping to find the Lady in White before them. He had only refrained, he said, because he was too old to make a fool of himself in love—and because if the truth were known it would be that he was altogether fond of Megan his wife.
“What is she like, then,” I said, “this Lady in White?” It was in my mind that any woman able to lead Pandeler the weaver by the nose would be worth a look or twain.
But he gave no answer. His eyes gazed into his tankard, and if he saw the Lady in White there he did not say what he saw.
Then other men spoke. If all the tales were true, this Lady had already consumed some half dozen of our young men; and no one of us knew a thing of her but that she came to the village from the Deep Forest and that when she left she took herself back into the Deep Forest.
Well, I thought of all this often In my smithy—and not with displeasure, it’s true. If our young men were fool enough to lose themselves in the Deep Forest—why, soon the village would be full of maidens in need of consolation. And who better to console them than Mardik the blacksmith?
But that look in Festil my brother’s face stood the matter on other ground. When he came to me and said that he had seen the Lady in White, I put down my hammer and considered him seriously. Then I took a step to bring myself close to him and said, “It’s come to that, has it? When will you be after her?”
“Now!” he said gladly. It pleased him to think that I understood his desire. “I only came to tell you before I left.”
“You are wiser than you think, my brother,” said I. And because I am not a man who hesitates when he has made his decision, I swung my fist at once and hit mad Festil a blow that stretched him on the dirt of the smithy. “I have no wish to lose my only brother,” I said, though it’s true he was not like to hear me. Then I bore him sleeping to our hut and put him in his bed and contrived a way to bolt his door. When I was sure of him, I went back to my forge.
But I was wrong. The blood of our father flows in him as well after all, and he is stronger than he seems. When I returned home at midday, I found him gone. He had been able to break the wallboard that held my bolt in place. Without doubt, he was on his way into the Deep Forest.
I went after him. What else could I do? He was a dreamer and a loon, and he knew more of witches than of smithing. But he was my brother, and no other could take his place. Pausing only to slip my hunting knife into the top of my boot, I left the house at a run. It was my hope to catch him before he managed to lose himself altogether.
I ran to the stables and threw a saddle onto Leadenfoot, the gray nag that draws my wagon when I go to do work at the outlying farms. Leadenfoot is no swiftling—what need has a blacksmith’s wagon for swiftness?—but when I strike him hard he is faster than my legs. And he fears nothing, because he lacks the sense for fear—which is an advantage in a blacksmith’s nag. So he heeded the argument of my quirt and did not shy as many horses do when I sent him running down the old road into the Deep Forest.
That road is the only way which enters the Forest; and all the talkers at the Red Horse had agreed that when the Lady in White left the village she walked this road. It began as a wagon-track as good as any, but it has long been disused and no longer goes to any place, though surely once it did in times so long past that they have been forgotten by all the village. Now only mad priests claim knowledge of the place where the old road goes. They say it goes to Hell.
Hell, forsooth! I have no use for such talk. Yet in its way Hell is as good a name for the Deep Forest as any. As I ran Leadenfoot along the road at his best speed, the trees and the brush were so thick that I could see nothing through them, though the sun was bright overhead; and birds answered the sound of Leadenfoot’s shoes with cries like scorn. I called out for Festil, but the woods took my voice and gave back no reply.
In a league or two the road grew narrower. Grass grew across it, then flowers and brush. Fallen limbs cluttered the way, and the black trees leaned inward. Leadenfoot made it clear to me that he would not run any more, though I hit him more than I am proud to admit. And nowhere did I see any sign of Festil.
How had he eluded me? I had not left him alone more than half the morning, and he had been sleeping soundly when I had bolted his door. He could not have awakened immediately. He could not have broken the wallboard without effort and time. He could not have outrun me. Yet he was gone. The Deep Forest had swallowed him as completely as the jaws of death.
Railing against him for a fool and a dreamer, I left Leadenfoot and searched ahead on foot. Shouting, cursing, searching, I followed the road until it became a path, and the path became a trail, and the trail vanished. Almost I lost my way for good and all. When I found it again, I had no choice but to return the way I had come. All about me, the birds of the Deep Forest cried like derision.
At the place where I had left Leadenfoot, I found him gone also. This day everything was doomed to betray me. At first, I feared that the senseless nag had broken his reins and wandered away off the road. But then I found his shoemarks leading back down the road toward the village. I followed as best I could; and now there was a fear in me that darkness would come upon me before I could escape these fell trees.
But in the gloom of sunset, I gained a sight of Leadenfoot, walking slowly along the road with a rider upon his back.
I ran to catch the nag and jerked the reins, pulling the rider to the ground. Mad Festil.
“Mardik,” he said. “Mardik my brother.” There was joy in his voice, and there was joy in his face, and all his movements as he rose to his feet and clasped me in his arms were as certain as truth. And yet he was blind. His eyes were gone in a white glaze, and I did not need the noon sun to see that there was no sight in them.
I held him with all the strength of my anger and pain. “What has she-done to you?” I said.
But my grip gave him no hurt. “I have seen her,” he said.
“You are blind!” I cried at him, seeking to turn aside the joy in his face.
“Yet I have seen her,” he said. “I have seen her, Mardik my brother. I have entered her cottage and have won through its great wonders to the greatest wonder of all. I have seen the Lady in White in all her beauty.”
“She has blinded you!” I shouted.
“No,” he said. “It is only that my eyes have been filled by her beauty, and there is no other thing bright enough to outshine her.”
Then I found that I could not answer his joy; and after a moment I gave it up. I did not say to him that he was mad—that there was no cottage, no place of wonder, no Lady who could blind him with her beauty unless she had seduced him to eat the mushroom of madness and had done him harm by choice. I stored these things up amid the anger in my heart, but I did not speak them. I put
Festil onto Leadenfoot’s back and mounted behind him; and together we rode out of the Deep Forest in the last dusk.
That night, with mad Festil sleeping the sleep of bliss in our hut, I went to the Red Horse as was my custom. I said nothing of my brother’s folly—or of his blindness. I listened rather, sifting through the talk about me for some new word of the Lady in White. But no word was said, and at last I spoke my thought aloud. I asked if any of the young men who had followed the Lady into the Deep Forest had returned.
The older men were silent, and the younger did not speak; but in his own time Pandeler the weaver bestirred himself and said, “Pendit. Pendit my son has returned. Alone.”
I saw there in his face that he believed his other son Paoul dead. Yet I asked him despite his grief, “And what says Pendit? How does he tell his tale?”
With head bowed, Pendeler said, “He tells nothing. No word has he spoken. He sits as I sit now and does not speak.” And in the firelight of the hearth it was plain for all to see that there were tears on the face of Pandeler the weaver, who was as brave a man as any in the village.
Then I returned to our hut. Featil my brother slept with a smile on his mouth, but I did not sleep: My heart was full of retribution, and there was no rest in me.
The next morning, I spoke with Festil concerning the Lady in White and the Deep Forest, though it’s true that all the speaking was mine, for he would say nothing of what had happened to him. Only he said, “My words would have no meaning to you.” And he smiled his joy, wishing to content me with that answer.
But when I asked him how he had come to be riding Leadenfoot out of the Deep Forest, he did reply. “When I had seen her,” he said, “I was no longer in her cottage. I was in the dell that cups her cottage as a setting cups its gem, and Leadenfoot was there. I heard him cropping grass near at hand. He came to me when I spoke his name, and I mounted him and let him bear me away. For that I must ask your pardon, my brother. I knew not that you had ridden him in search of me. I believed that the Lady in White had brought him for me, in consideration of my blindness.” Then he laughed. “As in truth she did, Mardik any brother—though you scowl and mutter to yourself at the thought. You are the means she chose to bring Leadenfoot to me.”
The means she chose, forsooth! He spoke of magic again, though he did not use the word. And yet in one way he had the right of the matter, despite his blindness. My scowl was heavy on my face, and I was muttering as I mutter now. Therefore I swore at him, though I knew it would give him pain. “May Heaven damn me,” I said, “if ever again I serve any whim of hers.” Then I left him and went to the smithy to bespeak my anger with hammer and anvil. For a time the fire of my forge was no hotter than my intent against this Lady in White.
But all my angers and intents were changed in an instant when a soft voice reached me through the clamor of my pounding. I turned and found the Lady herself there before me.
She bore in her hands a black old pot which had worn through the bottom, and in her soft voice she asked me to mend it for her. But I did not look at the pot and gave no thought to what she asked. I was consumed utterly by the sight and sound of her.
Her form was robed all in whitest samite, and her head was crowned as if in bronze by a wealth of red-yellow hair that fell unbound to her shoulders, and her eyes were like the heavens of the night, star-bright and fathomless, and her voice was the music that makes men laugh or weep, according to their courage. Her lips were full for kisses but not too full for loveliness, and her breasts made themselves known through her robe like the need for love, and her skin had that alabaster softness that cries out to be caressed. Altogether, she struck me so full with desire that I would have taken her there in the dirt of the smithy and counted the act for treasure. But her gaze had the power to withhold me. She placed her pot in my hands with a smile and turned slowly and walked away. Her robe clung cunningly to the sway of her hips, and I did nothing but stare openly after her like the veriest calf.
But I am not a man who hesitates; and when she had left my sight among the huts on her way back to the old road and the Deep Forest, I did not hesitate. I banked the fires of my forge, closed my smithy, and went home. There in my room I bathed myself, though I do not bathe often, it’s true; and when I had removed some of the grime of smithing from my limbs, I donned my Easter garments, the bold-stitched tunic and the brown pants with leather leggings which the widow Anuell had made for me. Thus I readied myself to depart.
But when I turned from my preparations, I found Festil before me. He was laughing—not the laughter of derision, but the laughter of joy. “A bath, Mardik!” he said. “You have seen her.”
“I have seen her,” I said.
“Ah, Mardik my brother,” he said, and he groped his blind way to me to embrace me, “I wish you well. You are a good man. It is a test she gives you now. lf you do not falter or fail, she will fulfill your heart’s desire.”
“That is as it may be,” I answered. But in my own heart I said, Then I will not falter or fail, and you will not be blind long, Festil my brother. I returned his embrace briefly. Soon I had left our hut, and the village was behind me. I was walking along the old road into the Deep Forest, and there was an unwonted eagerness in my stride.
Stricken with desire as I was, however, I did not altogether lose sense. I took careful note of the passing trees on my way, finding landmarks for myself and searching for any path by which the Lady in White might have left the road. I discovered none, no sign that any Lady lived near this track, no sign that any Lady however white had ever walked this way. In a league or two, my heart began to misgive me. Yet in time I learned that I had not missed my goal. For when I neared the place where I had tethered Leadenfoot the day before, I came upon a branching in the road.
A branching, I say, though I do not hope to be believed. I will swear to any man who asks it that no branching was there when I came this way in search of Festil. But that is not needed. It is plain to all who dare travel that road that there is no branching now. Yet I found a branching, that is sure. If I had not, then none of the things that followed could have taken place.
In my surprise, I walked along this other road and. shortly came to the deli and the cottage of which Festil my brother had spoken. And he had spoken rightly: safe and sunlit among the gloom of the trees was a hollow rich with flowers, soft with greensward; and cupped in the hollow was a small stone cottage. Its walls had been whitewashed until they gleamed in the sun, and all the wood of its frames and roof had been painted red. White curtains of finest lace showed in the windows, and beneath the windows lay beds of columbine and peony. Faint white smoke rose from the chimney, showing to my keen desire that the Lady was within.
I went with heart pounding to the red door; and there I paused as if I, Mardik the blacksmith, were unsure of himself, so great and confused were my lust and my anger.
But then I recollected myself, put aside my unseemly hesitation. With my strong hand I knocked at the door, and there was both confidence and courtesy in the way I summoned the Lady in White.
The door opened, swung inward, though I saw no one, heard no one.
Then in truth began the thing for which I have no other name but magic. Many things in the world are strange, and magic is not needed to explain them. But in this thing I am beyond all my reckoning, and I know no explanation other than that I became ill in my mind, or ate of the mushroom of madness, or by some other means lost myself. But Festil my brother, who is wise in his way, says that I am neither mad nor all; and I must believe him when I cannot believe the thing of which I speak. He was there before me, and this thing named magic cost him his sight.
But magic or no, I have chosen to speak, and I will speak. My word is known and trusted, and no man in the village dares call me liar or fool, though at times I seem a fool to myself, it’s true. This, then, is the thing that befell me.
As the door opened, I stepped inward, into the cottage, so that no effort could be made to deny me admittance
. Within, the air seemed somewhat dark to my unaccustomed eyes, and for a moment I was not certain that I saw what I saw. But beyond question I did see it, just as it was. Behind me through the doorway was the sunlight and the green grass of the deli that cupped the cottage. But before me was no cottage-room, no cozy hearth and small kitchen: I stood in a huge high hall like the forecourt of an immense keep.
The ceiling was almost lost to sight above me, but even so I could see that its beams were as thick as the thickest trees of the Deep Forest. The floorspace before me was all of polished gray stone, and it was large enough to hold a dozen cottages such as the one I had just entered. A stone’s throw to my left, a stairway as wide as a road came down into the hall from levels above mine. And an equal distance to my right, a hearth deep enough to hold my smithy entire blazed with logs too great for any man to lift. The light came from this tire, and from tall windows high in the wall behind me. And all about these prodigious stone walls hung banners like battle-pennons.
Two of these held something familiar to me. Woven large in the center of one was the weft-mark of Paoul son of Pandeler the weaver. And displayed across the other was a great bright apple. At this I ground my teeth, for it was known in all the village that Forin son of Fimm the fruiterer took pride in his apples.
Now in truth there was no hesitation in me, though this high castle-hall sorely baffled all my reckoning. My hands ached to entwine themselves in the bronzen hair of the Lady, and my mouth was tight with kisses or curses. When my eyes were fully accustomed to the keeplight, I espied an arched entryway opposite me. It had the aspect of an entrance into the less public parts of this castle; and I strode toward it at once. As I moved, the air thronged with the echo of my bootsteps.