James Branch Cabell
The Witch-Woman Trilogy
James Branch Cabell
[1879–1958]
The Witch-Woman Trilogy
From the Biography of Manuel
Being the three stories of Ettare, the daughter of Manuel the Redeemer,
Consisting of:
The Music Behind The Moon,
The White Robe,
and
The Way Of Ebcen
together with the original
Colophon.
(The text conforms with the 1948 revisions by the author.)
Table of Contents
THE MUSIC FROM BEHIND THE MOON
PART ONE. OF MADOC IN HIS YOUTH
PART TWO. OF MADOC IN THIS WORLD
PART THREE. OF MADOC IN THE MOON
PART FOUR. OF MADOC IN THE OLD TIME
THE WHITE ROBE
1. OF HIS MANNER OF LIFE IN THE SECULAR
2. OF HIS ARDENT LOVE AND APPROACH TO MARTYRDOM
3. OF HIS CONFESSION AND CONVERSION
4. OF THE DIVINE CONDESCENSIONS SHOWN UNTO HIM
5. OF HIS YET FURTHER INCREASE IN GRACE
6. OF HIS CONTINUED ZEAL AND EFFICACY
7. OF THE SALUTARY POWER OF HIS PREACHING
8. OF THE KINDLY IMPULSES OF HIS PIETY
9. OF THE REWARD APPOINTED FOR HIM
10. OF HIS RIGHTEOUS ENDING
THE WAY OF ECBEN
Words for the Intending Reader
PART ONE: Of Alfgar in His kingdom
Chapter I. The Warring for Ettaine
Chapter II. Of Their Love-talk
Chapter III. A Dream Smites Him
Chapter IV. The Sending of the Swallow
Chapter V. The Way of Ulf
PART TWO: Of Alfgar in His Journeying
Chapter VI. We Come to Davan
Chapter VII. ‘The King Pays!’
Chapter VIII. We Approach Clioth
Chapter IX. The Way of Worship
Chapter X. The Last Giving
Chapter XI. How Time Passed
PART THREE: Of Alfgar in the Grayness
Chapter XII. The Way of All Women
Chapter XIII. What a Boy Thought
PART FOUR: Of Alfgar in a Garden
Chapter XIV. We Encounter Dawn
Chapter XV. How the King Triumphed
Chapter XVI. Contentment of a Chevalier
Chapter XVII. The Changing of Alfgar
Chapter XVIII. As to Another Marriage Feast
Chapter XIX. The Way It Ended
PART FIVE: Of Horvendile and Ettarre
Chapter XX. We Regard Other Wanderers
THE COLOPHON CALLED: “Hail and Farewell, Ettarre!”
Chapter I. Which Disposes of The Witch-Woman
Chapter II. Which Takes Up an Unprofitable Subject
Chapter III. Which Touches Youth and Uncrabbed Age
Chapter IV. Which Records a Strange Truism
Chapter V. Which Chronicles an Offset
Chapter VI. Which Becomes Reasonable
Chapter VII. Which Deals with the Deplorable
Chapter VIII. Which Slightly Anticipates
Chapter IX. Which Keeps a Long Standing Engagement
Chapter X. Which, at Long Last, Says All
THE MUSIC FROM BEHIND THE MOON
EPITOME OF A POET
“Judge thou the lips of those that rose up against me,
and their devices against me all the day.
Behold their sitting down, and their rising up;
I am their music.”
FOR
CARL VAN VECHTEN
Whatever hereinafter he may like
PART ONE. OF MADOC IN HIS YOUTH
—De grâce, belle dame, si je puis vous demander ce que fait a coeur de savoir, dites-moi pourquoi vous êtes assise ici toute seule?
—Je vais te le dire, man pauvre Madoc, avec franchise.
THE TEXT FROM GENESIS
To such as will to listen I plan here to tell the story of Madoc and some little part of the story of Ettarre.
Now this is a regrettably familiar tale. It may possibly have begun with Lamech, in the Book of Genesis,—who was, in any event, the first well-thought-of citizen upon known record to remark, “I have slain a young man to my hurt!” And poets tell us that many poets whose bodies had survived to middle age have repeated this glum observation, although probably not ever since then, when Lamech spoke without tact, to their co-partners alike in the homicide and in married life.
Moreover, this is a regrettably inconclusive tale, without any assured ending. Nor is there any assured prophesying, either, that the next thousand years or so will remedy that defect in this tale, because the story of Ettarre is not lightly to be ended by the death of any woman’s body which for a while Ettarre has been wearing.
And, lastly, this is a regrettably true tale such as no correct-thinking person ought to regard seriously.
1. FOUR VIEWS OF A POET
Lean red-haired Madoc was the youngest and the least promising of the poets about the cultured court of Netan, the High King of Marr and Kett. When it was Madoc’s turn to take out his bronze harp from its bag of otter-skin, and to play at a banquet, he assisted nobody’s digestion. And, as the art-loving King would put it, twisting half-fretfully at his long white beard, what else was the lad there for?
The best-thought-of connoisseurs declared the songs of Madoc to be essentially hollow and deficient in, as they phrased it in their technical way, red blood: to which verdict the wives and the sweethearts of these connoisseurs were only too apt to reply that, anyhow, the boy was quite nice-looking. The unthinking women thus confirmed the connoisseurs in their disapproval.
But the strangest matter of all, in a world where poets warm themselves mainly by self-esteem, was that not even to young Madoc did his songs appear miraculous beyond any description.
To Madoc’s hearing his songs ran confusedly; they strained toward a melody which stayed forever uncaptured; and they seemed to him to be thin parodies of an elvish music, not wholly of this earth, some part of which he had heard very long ago and had half forgotten, but the whole of which music remained unheard by any mortal ears.
2. THE WOMAN LIKE A MIST
Now, upon a May evening, when a plump amber-colored moon stayed as yet low behind the willows in the east, this same young Madoc bathed with an old ceremony. Thereafter he sat beside the fountain meditatively disposing of his allotted portion of thin wine and of two cheese sandwiches. A woman came to him, white-limbed and like a living mist in that twilight.
“Hail, friend!” said Madoc.
She replied, with hushed and very lovely laughter, “I am not your friend.”
He said, “Well, peace be with you, in any event!”
She answered, “There is for you, poor Madoc, no more peace, now that I have come to you all the long way from behind the moon.”
And then that woman did a queer thing, for she laid to her young breasts her hands, and from the flesh of her body she took out her red heart, and upon her heartstrings she made a music.
It was a strange and troubling music she made there in the twilight, and after that slender mistlike woman had ended her music-making, and had vanished as a white wave falters and is gone, then Madoc could not recall the theme or even one cadence of her music-making, nor could he put the skirling of it out of his mind. Moreover, there was upon him a loneliness and a hungering for what he could not name.