The Miscellaneous Writings of Clark Ashton Smith (30 page)

Treganneth was there, and so were the yokels. There were old skeletons, Treganneth’s brother and Polgate, the steward who had kicked about a lord playing with Emily.

And Emily was there, speared on the horn that reached from the skull of the monoceros. There had been such a creature. That skull was what kept me from saying I must have been hypnotized.

I had seen the ghost of a monster god that men had worshipped before King Arthur came to town; worshipped by Druids, worshipped by the ancestors of a woman who played for a lord, and lost. Now she belonged to a dead god. If it hadn’t been for that skull, I’d never have
known
that I had seen the ghost of a god, of his victims.

Maybe that’s why Diane and I stuck together, when it was all over. It’s kind of fun telling each other we did see it, that we weren’t wacky.

T
HE
D
EAD
W
ILL
C
UCKOLD
Y
OU

A Drama in Six Scenes

PERSONAE

Smaragad,
King of Yoros

Queen Somelis

Galeor,
a wandering poet and lute-player, guest of Smaragad

Natanasna,
a necromancer

Baltea,
tiring-woman to Somelis

Kalguth,
Natanasna’s negro assistant

Sargo,
the King’s treasurer

Boranga,
captain of the King’s guards

Waiting-women, court-ladies, courtiers, guards and chamberlains.

THE SCENE:

Faraad, capital of Yoros, in Zothique

SCENE I

A large chamber in the Queen’s suite, in the palace of Smaragad. Somelis sits on a high throne-like chair. Galeor stands before her, holding a lute. Baltea and several other women are seated on divans, at a distance. Two black chamberlains stand in attendance at the open door.

Galeor
(
playing on his lute and singing
):

Make haste, and tarry not, O ardent youth,

To find upon the night,

Outlined in fuming fire,

The footsteps of the goddess Ililot.

Her mouth and eyes make fair the bourns of sleep,

Between her brows a moon

Is seen. A magic lute

Foretells her with wild music everywhere.

Her opened arms, which are the ivory gates

Of some lost land of lote

Wherefrom charmed attars flow,

Will close upon you ’neath the crimson star.

Somelis:
I like the song. Tell me, why do you sing

So much of Ililot?

Galeor:

She is the goddess

Whom all men worship in the myrrh-sweet land

Where I was born. Do men in Yoros not

Adore her also? She is soft and kind,

Caring alone for love and lovers’ joy.

Somelis:

She is a darker goddess here, where blood

Mingles too often with delight’s warm foam….

But tell me more of that far land wherein

A gentler worship lingers.

Galeor:

By a sea

Of changing damaskeen it lies, and has

Bowers of cedar hollowed for love’s bed

And plighted with a vine vermilion-flowered.

There are moss-grown paths where roam white-fleecèd goats;

And sard-thick beaches lead to caves in which

The ebbing surge has left encrimsoned shells

Like lips by passion parted. From small havens

The fishers slant their tall, dulse-brown lateens

To island-eyries of the shrill sea-hawk;

And when with beaks low-dipping they return

Out of the sunset, fires are lit from beams

And spars of broken galleys on the sand,

Around whose nacreous flames the women dance

A morris old as ocean.

Somelis:

Would I had

Been born in such a land, and not in Yoros.

Galeor:

I wish that I might walk with you at evening

Beside the waters veined with languid foam,

And see Canopus kindle on cypressed crags

Like a far pharos.

Somelis:

Be you more tacit: there are ears

That listen, and mouths that babble amid these halls.

Smaragad is a jealous king—(
She breaks off, for at this moment King Smaragad enters the room.
)

Smaragad:

This is a pretty scene. Galeor, you seem at home

In ladies’ chambers. I am told you entertain

Somelis more than could a dull sad king

Grown old too soon with onerous royalty.

Galeor:

I would please, with my poor songs and sorry lute,

Both of your Majesties.

Smaragad:

Indeed, you sing

Right sweetly, as does the simorgh when it mates.

You have a voice to melt a woman’s vitals

And make them run to passion’s turgid sluice.

How long have you been here?

Galeor:

A month.

Smaragad:

It has been

A summer moon full-digited. How many

Of my hot court-ladies have you already bedded?

Or should I ask how many have bedded you?

Galeor:

None, and I swear it by the crescent horns

Of Ililot herself, who fosters love

And swells the pulse of lovers.

Smaragad:

By my troth,

I would confirm you in such continence,

It is rare in Yoros. Even I when young

Delved deep in whoring and adultery. (
Turning to the queen
)

Somelis, have you wine? I would we drank

To a chastity so rathe and admirable

In one whose years can hardly have chastened him.

(
The queen indicates a silver ewer standing on a taboret together with goblets of the same metal. Smaragad turns his back to the others and pours wine into three goblets, opening, as if casually, the palm of his free hand over one of them. This he gives to Galeor. He serves another to the queen, and raises the third to his lips.
)

See, I have served you with my royal hand,

Doing you honor, and we all must drink

To Galeor that he persevere in virtue,

And he must drink with us. (
He drinks deeply. The queen raises her goblet to her lips but barely tastes it. Galeor lifts the wine, then pauses, looking into it.
)

Galeor:

How strangely it foams.

Smaragad:
Indeed, such bubbles seem

To rise as if from lips of a drowning man

In some dark purple sea.

Somelis:

Your humor is strange,

Nor are there bubbles in the cup you gave me.

Smaragad:

Perhaps it was poured more slowly. (
To Galeor
)

Drink the wine,

It is old and cordial, made by men long dead.

(
The poet still hesitates, then empties his goblet at one draught.
)

How does it taste to you?

Galeor:

It tastes as I have thought that love might taste,

Sweet on the lips, and bitter in the throat. (
He reels, then sinks to his knees, still clutching the empty goblet.
)

You have poisoned me, who never wronged you. Why

Have you done it?

Smaragad:

That you may never wrong me. You have drunk

A vintage that will quench all mortal thirst.

You will not look on queens nor they on you

When the thick maggots gather in your eyes,

And issue in lieu of love-songs from your lips,

And geld you by slow inches.

Somelis
(
descending from her seat and coming forward
):

Smaragad,

This deed will reek through Yoros and be blazed

Beyond the murky marches of the damned. (
She sinks to her knees beside Galeor, now prostrate on the floor and dying slowly. Tears fall from her eyes as she lays her hand on Galeor’s brow.
)

Smaragad:

Was he so much to you? Almost I have a mind

That the bowstring should straiten your soft throat,

But no, you are too beautiful. Go quickly,

And keep to your bed-chamber till I come.

Somelis:
I shall abhor you, and my burning heart

Consume with hate till only meatless cinders

Remain to guest the mausolean maggots. (
Exit Somelis, followed by Baltea and the other women. The two chamberlains remain.
)

Smaragad
(
beckoning to one of the chamberlains
):

Go call the sextons. I would have them drag

This carcass out and bury it privily. (
Exit the chamberlain. The king turns to Galeor, who still lives.
)

Think on your continence eternalized:

You had not fleshed as yet your rash desire,

And now you never will.

Galeor
(
in a faint but audible voice
):

I would pity you,

But there is no time for pity. In your heart

You bear the hells that I have never known,

To which the few brief pangs I suffer

Are less than the wasp-stings of an afternoon

Sweet with the season’s final fruit.

(Curtain)

SCENE II

The king’s audience hall. Smaragad sits on a double-daised throne, a guard bearing a trident standing at each hand. Guards are posted at each of the four entrances. A few women and chamberlains pass through the hall on errands. Sargo, the royal treasurer, stands in one corner. Baltea, passing by, pauses to chat with him.

Baltea:

Why sits the king in audience today?

Is it some matter touching on the state?

Still thunder loads his brow, and pard-like wrath

Waits leashed in his demeanor.

Sargo:

’Tis a wizard,

One Natanasna, whom he summons up

For practice of nefandous necromancy.

Baltea:

I’ve heard of him. Do you know him? What’s he like?

Sargo:

I cannot wholly tell you. It’s no theme

For a morning’s tattle.

Baltea:

You make me curious.

Sargo:

Well,

I’ll tell you this much. Some believe he is

A cambion, devil-sired though woman-whelped.

He is bold in every turpitude, as those

Hell-born are prone to be. His lineage

Leads him to paths forbanned and pits abhorred,

And traffic in stark nadir infamies

Not plumbed by common mages.

Baltea:

Is that all?

Sargo:

Such beings have a smell by which to know them,

As olden tomes attest. This Natanasna

Stinks like a witch’s after-birth, and evil

Exhales from him, lethal as that contagion

Which mounts from corpses mottled by the plague.

Baltea:

Well, that’s enough to tell me, for I never

Have liked ill-smelling men.

(Enter Natanasna through the front portals. He strides forward, bearing a staff on which he does not lean, and stands before Smaragad.)

Sargo:

I must go now.

Baltea:

And I’ll not linger, for the wind comes up

From an ill quarter. (
Exeunt Sargo and Baltea, in different directions.
)

Natanasna
(
without kneeling or even bowing
):

You have summoned me?

Smaragad:

Yes. I am told you practice arts forbid

And hold an interdicted commerce, calling

Ill demons and the dead to do you service.

Are these things true?

Natanasna:

It is true that I can call

Both lich and ka, though not the soul, which roams

In regions past my scope, and can constrain

The genii of the several elements

To toil my mandate.

Smaragad:

What! you dare avow it—

The thing both men and gods abominate?

Do you not know the ancient penalties

Decreed in Yoros for these crimes abhorred?—

The cauldron of asphaltum boiling-hot

To bathe men’s feet, and the nail-studded rack

On which to stretch their scalded stumps?

Natanasna:

Indeed

I know your laws, and also know that you

Have a law forbidding murder.

Smaragad:

What do you mean?

Natanasna:

I mean but this, that you the king have filled

More tombs than I the outlawed necromancer

Have ever emptied, and detest not idly

The raising of dead men. Would you have me summon

For witness here against you the grey shade

Of Famostan your father, in his bath

Slain by the toothed envenomed fish from Taur

Brought privily and installed by you? Or rather

Would you behold your brother Aladad,

Whose huntsmen left him with a splintered spear

At your instruction, to confront the fen-cat

That he had merely pricked? Yet these would be

Only the heralds of that long dark file

Which you have hurried into death.

Smaragad
(
half-rising from his seat
):

By all

The sooted hells, you dare such insolence?

Though you be man or devil, or be both,

I’ll flay you, and leave your hide to hang in strips

Like a kilt about you, and will have your guts

Drawn out and wound on a windlass.

Natanasna:

These be words