PEREGRINE: ALFLANDIA
Avram Davidson
The King of the Alves was taking his evening rest and leisure after a typical hard days work ferreting in the woods behind the donjeon-keep, which in Alfland was a goodish distance from the Big House. It was usual, of course, for the donjeon-keep to be kept as part and parcel of the Big House, but the Queen of Alfland had objected to the smell.
“It’s them drains, me dear,” her lord had pointed out to her more than once when she made these objections. “The High King isn’t due to make a Visitation this way for another half-a-luster, as well you know. And also as well you know what’d likely happen to me if I was to infringe upon the High Royal Monopoly and do my own plumbing on them drains, a mere pettiking like me.”
“I’d drains him, if I was a man,” said the Queen of Alfland.
“And the prices as he charges, too! ‘Tisn’t as if he was contented with three peppercorns and a stewed owl in a silver tassy, like his father before him; ah! there was a High King for you! Well, well, I see it can’t be helped, having wedded a mouse instead of a proper man; well, then move the wretched donjeon-keep, it doesn’t pay for itself no-how, and if it wasn’t as our position requires we have one, blessed if I’d put up with it.”
So the donjeon-keep had been laboriously taken down and laboriously removed and laboriously set up again just this side of the woods; and there, of a very late afternoon, the King of the Alves sat on a hummock with his guest, the King of Bertland. Several long grey ears protruded from a sack at their feet, and now and then a red-eyed ferret poked his snouzel out of a royal pocket and was gently poked back in. The Master of the Buckhounds sat a short ways aways, a teen-age boy who was picking the remnants of a scab off one leg and meditatively crunching the pieces between his teeth. He was Alfland’s son and heir; there were of course not really any buckhounds.
“Well, Alf, you hasn’t done too bad today,” the royal guest observed after a while.
“No, I hasn’t, Bert, and that’s a fact. Stew for the morrow, and one day at a time is all any man dare look for to attend to and haccomplish, way I look at it.” The day was getting set to depart in a sort of silver-gilt haze, throstles were singing twit-twit-thrush, and swallows were flitting back and forth pretending they were bats. The Master of the Buckhounds arose.
“Hey, Da, is there any bread and cheese more?.” he asked.
“No, they isn’t, Buck. Happen thee’ll get they dinner soon enough.”
The Master of the Buckhounds said that he was going to see could he find some berries or a musk-room and sauntered off into the thicket. His sire nudged the guest. “Gone to play with himself, I’ll be bound,” said he.
“Why don’t ‘ee marry ‘im off?” asked the King of Bertland, promptly. “There’s our Rose, has her hope chest all filled and still as chaste as the day the wise woman slapped her newborn bottom, ten year ago last Saturnalia, eh?”
The King of the Alves grunted moodily. “Hasn’t I sudggestered this to his dam?” he asked, rhetorically. “‘Here’s Bert come for to marry off his darter,’ says I, ‘for thee doesn’t think there’s such a shortage o’ rabbiting in Bertland he have to come here for it, whatever the formalities of it may be. And Princess Rose be of full age and can give thee a hand in the lurching,’ says I. But, no, says she. For why? Buck haven’t gone on no quest nor haven’t served no squire time at the High King’s court and ten-year-old is too old-fashioned young and he be but a boy hisself and she don’t need no hand in the kitching and if I doesn’t like the way me victuals be served, well, I can go and eat beans with the thralls, says she.
“Well, do she natter that Buck have pimples, twill serve she right, say I. Best be getten back. Ar, these damp edgerows will give me the rheum in me ips, so we sit ere more, eh?”
He hefted his sack of hares and they started back. The King of Bertland gestured to the donjeon-keep, where a thin smoke indicated the warder was cooking his evening gruel. “As yer ransomed off King Baldwin’s heir as got tooken in the humane man-trap last winter what time e sought to unt the tusky boar?”
The walls of Alftown came into sight, with the same three breeches and a rent which characterized the walls of every castle and capital town as insisted on by Wilfredoric Conqueror, the late great-uncle of the last High King but one. Since that time, Alfish (or Alvish, as some had it) royalty had been a-dwelling in a Big House, which was contained behind a stout stockade: this, too, was customary.
“What, didnt I notify you about that, Bert?” the Alf-king asked, with a slightly elaborate air of surprise. “Ah, many’s the good joke and jest we’ve had about that in the fambly, Da has tooken King Baldy’s hair, harharharhar!’ Yus, the old man finally paid up, three mimworms and a dragon’s egg. ‘Mustn’t call him King Baldy now he’s got his heir back, horhorhorhor!’ Ah, what’s life wiffart larfter? Or, looking hat it another way, wiffart hhonor: we was meaning to surprise you, Bert, afore you left, by putten them mimworms and that dragon’s hegg hinto a suitable container wif a nice red ribbon and say, ‘Ere you be, King o’ Bertland, hand be pleased to haccept this as your winnings for that time we played forfeits last time we played it.’ Surprise yer, yer see. But now yer’ve spoiled that helement of it; ah, well, must take the bitter wiv the sweet.”
That night after dinner the three mimworms and the dragon’s egg were lifted out from the royal hidey-hole and displayed for the last tune at Alf High-Table before being taken off to their new heme. Princess Pearl and Princess Ruby gave over their broidered-work, and young Buck (he was officially Prince Rufus but was never so-called) stopped feeding scruffles to his bird and dog - a rather mangy-looking mongrel with clipped claws - and Queen Clara came back out of the kitchen.
“Well, this is my last chance, I expect,” said Princess Pearl, a stout good-humored young girl, with rather large feet. “Da, give us they ring.”
“Ar, this time, our Pearl, happen thee’ll have luck,” her sire said, indulgently; and he took off his finger the Great Sigil-Stone Signet-Ring of the Realm, which he occasionally affixed to dog licenses and the minutes of the local wardmotes, and handed it to her. Whilest the elders chuckled indulgently and her brother snorted and her baby sister looked on with considerable envy, the elder princess began to make the first mystic sign - and then, breaking off, said, “Well, now, and since it is the last chance, do thee do it for me, our Ruby, as I’ve ad no luck a-doin it for meself so far”
Princess Ruby clapped her hands. “Oh, may I do it, oh, please, please, our Pearl? Oh, you are good to me! Ta ever so!” and she began the ancient game with her cheeks glowing with delight and expectation.
The childish voice and gruff chuckles were suddenly all drowned out by screams, shouts, cries of astonishment, and young Buck’s anguished wail; for where his bird had been, safely jessed, there suddenly appeared a young man as naked as the day of his birth.
Fortunately the table had already been cleared, and, nakedness not ever having been as fashionable in East Brythonia (the largest island in the Black Sea) as it had been in parts farther south and west, the young man was soon rendered as decent as the second-best tablecloth could make him.
“Our Pearl’s husband! Our Pearl’s husband! See, I did do it right, look! Our Mum and our Da, look!” and Princess Ruby clapped her hands together. King Alf and King Bert sat staring and muttering… perhaps charms, or countercharms… Buck, with tears in his eyes, demanded his bird back, but without much in his tone to indicate that he held high hopes… Princess Pearl had turned and remained a bright, bright red… and Queen Clara stood with her hands on her hips and her lips pressed together and a face - as her younger daughter put it later “O Lor! Wasn’t Mum’s face a study!”