The Heritage

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Title:     The Heritage
Author: James Branch Cabell [More Titles by Cabell]

"Pour vous je suis en prison mise,
En ceste chambre a voulte grise,
Et traineray ma triste vie
Sans que jamais mon cueur varie,
Car toujours seray vostre amye."

ISABEL OF VALOIS, BEING
FORSAKEN BY ALL OTHERS, IS BEFRIENDED BY A PRIEST,
WHO, IN CHIEF THROUGH A CHILD'S INNOCENCE, CONTRIVES
AND EXECUTES A LAUDABLE IMPOSTURE, AND WINS
TO DEATH THEREBY.

In the year of grace 1399 (Nicolas begins) dwelt in a hut near Caer Dathyl in Arvon, as he had done for some five years, a gaunt hermit, notoriously consecrate, whom neighboring Welshmen revered as the Blessed Evrawc. There had been a time when people called him Edward Maudelain, but this period he dared not often remember.

For though in macerations of the flesh, in fasting, and in hour-long prayers he spent his days, this holy man was much troubled by devils. He got little rest because of them. Sometimes would come into his hut Belphegor in the likeness of a butler, and whisper, "Sire, had you been King, as was your right, you had drunk to-day not water but the wines of Spain and Hungary." Or Asmodeus saying, "Sire, had you been King, as was your right, you had lain now on cushions of silk."

One day in early spring came a more cunning devil, named Bembo, in the likeness of a fair woman with yellow hair and large blue eyes. She wore a massive crown which seemed too heavy for her frailness to sustain. Soft tranquil eyes had lifted from her book. "You are my cousin now, messire," this phantom had appeared to say.

[Illustration: "IN THE LIKENESS OF A FAIR WOMAN" _Painting by Howard Pyle_]

That was the worst, and Maudelain began to fear he was a little mad because even this he had resisted with many aves.

There came also to his hut, through a sullen snowstorm, upon the afternoon of All Soul's day, a horseman in a long cloak of black. He tethered his black horse without and strode softly through the door, and upon his breast and shoulders the snow was white as the bleached bones of those women that died in Merlin's youth.

"Greetings in God's name, Messire Edward Maudelain," the stranger said.

Since the new-comer spoke intrepidly of holy things a cheerier Maudelain knew that this at least was no demon. "Greetings!" he answered. "But I am Evrawc. You name a man long dead."

"But it is from a certain Bohemian woman I come. What matter, then, if the dead receive me?" And thus speaking, the stranger dropped his cloak.

In flame-colored satin he was clad, which shimmered with each movement like a high flame, and his countenance had throughout the color and the glow of amber. His eyes were dark and very tender, and the tears somehow had come to Maudelain's eyes because of a sudden and great love for this tall stranger. "Eh, from the dead to the dead I travel, as ever, with a message and a token. My message runs, _Time is, O fellow satrap!_ and my token is this."

And in this packet, wrapped with white parchment and tied with a golden cord, was only a lock of hair. It lay like a little yellow serpent in Maudelain's palm. "And yet five years ago," he mused, "this hair was turned to dust. God keep us all!" Then he saw the tall lean emissary puffed out like a candle-flame; and upon the floor he saw the huddled cloak waver and spread like ink, and the white parchment slowly dwindle, as snow melts under the open sun. But in his hand remained the lock of yellow hair.

"O my only friend," said Maudelain, "I may not comprehend, but I know that by no unhallowed art have you won back to me." Hair by hair he scattered what he held upon the floor. "_Time is!_ and I have not need of any token wherewith to spur my memory." He prized up a corner of the hearthstone, took out a small leather bag, and that day purchased a horse and a sword.

At dawn the Blessed Evrawc rode eastward in this novel guise. It was two weeks later when he came to Sunninghill; and it happened that the same morning the Earl of Salisbury, who had excellent reason to consider...

_Follows a lacuna of fourteen pages. Maudelain's successful imposture of Richard the Second, so strangely favored by their physical resemblance, and the subsequent fiasco at Circencester, are now, however, tolerably notorious. It would seem evident, from the Argument of the story in hand, that Nicolas attributes a large part of this mysterious business to the co-operancy of Isabel of Valois, King Richard's infant wife. And (should one have a taste for the deductive) the foregoing mention of Bembo, when compared with_ "THE STORY OF THE SCABBARD," _would certainly hint that Owain Glyndwyr had a finger in the affair_.

_It is impossible to divine by what method, according to Nicolas, this Edward Maudelain was eventually substituted for his younger brother. Nicolas, if you are to believe his_ "EPILOGUE," _had the best of reasons for knowing that the prisoner locked up in Pontefract Castle in the February of_ 1400 _was not Richard Plantagenet: and this contention is strikingly attested, also, by the remaining fragment of this same_ "STORY OF THE HERITAGE."

... and eight men-at-arms followed him.

Quickly Maudelain rose from the table, pushing his tall chair aside, and in the act one fellow closed the door securely. "Nay, eat your fill, Sire Richard," said Piers Exton, "since you will not ever eat again."

"Is it so?" the trapped man answered quietly. "Then indeed you come in a good hour." Once only he smote upon his breast. "_Mea culpa!_ O Eternal Father, do Thou shrive me very quickly of all those sins I have committed, both in thought and deed, for now the time is very short."

And Exton spat upon the dusty floor. "Foh, they had told me I would find a king here. I discover only a cat that whines."

"Then 'ware his claws!" As a viper leaps Maudelain sprang upon the nearest fellow and wrested away his halberd. "Then 'ware his claws, my men! For I come of an accursed race. And now let some of you lament that fearful hour wherein Foulques the Querulous held traffic with a demon and on her begot the first of us Plantagenets! For of ice and of lust and of hell-fire are all we sprung; old records attest it; and fickle and cold and ravenous and without fear are all we Plantagenets until the end. Ay, until the end! O God of Gods!" this Maudelain cried, with a great voice, "wilt Thou dare bid a man die patiently, having aforetime filled his veins with such a venom! Nay, I lack the grace to die as all Thy saints, without one carnal blow struck in my own defence. I lack the grace, my Father, for even at the last the devil's blood You gave me is not quelled. I dare atone for that old sin done by my father in the flesh, but yet I must atone as a Plantagenet!"

Then it was he and not they who pressed to the attack. Their meeting was a bloody business, for in that dark and crowded room Maudelain raged among his nine antagonists as an angered lion among wolves.

They struck at random and cursed shrilly, for they were now half-afraid of this prey they had entrapped; so that presently he was all hacked and bleeding, though as yet he had no mortal wound. Four of these men he had killed by this, and Piers Exton also lay at his feet.

Then the other four drew back a little. "Are ye tired so soon?" said Maudelain, and he laughed terribly. "What, even you! Why, look ye, my bold veterans, I never killed before to-day, and I am not breathed as yet."

Thus he boasted, exultant in his strength. But the other men saw that behind him Piers Exton had crawled into the chair from which (they thought) King Richard had just risen, and stood erect upon the cushions of it. They saw this Exton strike the King with his pole-axe, from behind, and once only, and they knew no more was needed.

"By God!" said one of them in the ensuing stillness, and it was he who bled the most, "that was a felon's blow."

But the dying man who lay before them made as though to smile. "I charge you all to witness," he faintly said, "how willingly I render to Caesar's daughter that which was ever hers."

Then Exton fretted, as with a little trace of shame: "Who would have thought the rascal had remembered that first wife of his so long? Caesar's daughter, saith he! and dares _in extremis_ to pervert Holy Scripture like any Wycliffite! Well, he is as dead as that first Caesar now, and our gracious King, I think, will sleep the better for it. And yet--God only knows! for they are an odd race, even as he said--these Plantagenets."

[The end]
James Branch Cabell's short story: The Heritage

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