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The Scabbard
by
“Now, were I to get as tipsy as that,” Richard enviously thought, midway in a return to his stolid sheep, “I would simply go to sleep and wake up with a headache. And were I to fall as many fathoms deep in love as this Gwyllem has blundered without any astonishment I would perform–I wonder, now, what miracle?”
For he was, though vaguely, discontent. This Gwyllem was so young, so earnest over every trifle, and above all so unvexed by any rational afterthought; and each desire controlled him as varying winds sport with a fallen leaf, whose frank submission to superior vagaries the boy appeared to emulate. Richard saw that in a fashion Gwyllem was superb. “And heigho!” said Richard, “I am attestedly a greater fool than he, but I begin to weary of a folly so thin-blooded.”.
The next morning came a ragged man, riding upon a mule. He claimed to be a tinker. He chatted out an hour with Richard, who perfectly recognized him as Sir Walter Blount; and then this tinker crossed over into England.
And Richard whistled. “Now will my cousin be quite sure, and now will my anxious cousin come to speak with Richard of Bordeaux. And now, by every saint in the calendar! I am as good as King of England.”
He sat down beneath a young oak and twisted four or five blades of grass between his fingers what while he meditated. Undoubtedly he would kill Henry of Lancaster with a clear conscience and even with a certain relish, much as one crushes the uglier sort of vermin, but, hand upon heart, he was unable to protest any particularly ardent desire for the scoundrel’s death. Thus crudely to demolish the knave’s adroit and year-long schemings savored of a tyranny a shade too gross. The spider was venomous, and his destruction laudable; granted, but in crushing him you ruined his web, a miracle of patient malevolence, which, despite yourself, compelled both admiration and envy. True, the process would recrown a certain Richard, but then, as he recalled it, being King was rather tedious. Richard was not now quite sure that he wanted to be King, and in consequence be daily plagued by a host of vexatious and ever-squabbling barons. “I shall miss the little huzzy, too,” he thought.
“Heigho!” said Richard, “I shall console myself with purchasing all beautiful things that can be touched and handled. Life is a flimsy vapor which passes and is not any more: presently is Branwen married to this Gwyllem and grown fat and old, and I am remarried to Dame Isabel of France, and am King of England: and a trifle later all four of us will be dead. Pending this deplorable consummation a wise man will endeavor to amuse himself.”
Next day he despatched Caradawc to Owain Glyndwyr to bid the latter send the promised implements to Caer Idion. Richard, returning to the hut the same evening, found Alundyne there, alone, and grovelling at the threshold. Her forehead was bloodied when she raised it and through tearless sobs told of the day’s happenings. A half-hour since, while she and Branwen were intent upon their milking, Gwyllem had ridden up, somewhat the worse for liquor. Branwen had called him sot, had bidden him go home. “That will I do,” said Gwyllem and suddenly caught up the girl. Alundyne sprang for him, and with clenched fist Gwyllem struck her twice full in the face, and laughing, rode away with Branwen.
Richard made no observation. In silence he fetched his horse, and did not pause to saddle it. Quickly he rode to Gwyllem’s house, and broke in the door. Against the farther wall stood lithe Branwen fighting silently in a hideous conflict; her breasts and shoulders were naked, where Gwyllem had torn away her garments. He wheedled, laughed, swore, and hiccoughed, turn by turn, but she was silent.