Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/542

500 "How long, my lady? How long?" said I, leaning upon the parapet of my island tower, and my eyes, after their wont, stared out across the heaving sea through the far purple mist to Landévennec and what Landévennec sheltered. It was old Kabik who roused me.

"You called, Majesty?" said old Kabik, bowing and scraping upon the tower top. Did I say that it is the whim of my people of the Tévennec here to address me as if I were a king? It is a folly, if you like, and none of my choosing, but I shall never be able to break their habit.

"Eh?" said I, turning. "What is it, old one?"

"You beckoned, Majesty," said old Kabik, scraping.

"Ah!" said I, "it will have been about the supply-boats. Has the last of the corn been landed?"

"This morning early, Majesty," said Kabik, "and with it the blé noir." He laughed grimly in his wrinkled throat. "We could endure a year's siege now," he said.

"God be thanked that we shall not have to," said I, turning away again. "That is all. You may go." But old Kabik lingered by the stair entrance.

"She—she is not there, Majesty," he said, after I had quite forgotten him in my dreaming.

"Eh?" said I, blinking. "Who? Where is she not?"

Old Kabik nodded toward the purple haze in the bay of Douarnénez.

"She is not there, Majesty," he repeated.

I think I went very white.

"What do you mean?" said I. The old one jerked a thumb toward the northwest.

"She went to the Ile de Sein this morning," said he, chuckling again. "In a fine, great boat of two sails she went, and her cousin, the young Alann of Gwened, sailed with her. I saw them from my fishing-boat. They will be coming homeward with the tide this evening. The moon is full."

I stared past him over the reddened sea toward the northwest, but old Kabik moved a step nearer and dropped his voice. When I turned my gaze to him there was an odd look in his keen old eyes.

"Majesty," said he, in his cracking whisper, "how was your dead mother, who is with God and the Virgin this day, won to the Tévennec?"

"Carried off," said I, in a dull voice, not following his thought, "stolen from Carhaix between two days."

"Eh! Eh!" said old Kabik, nodding. "Yet she lived happy thereafter, Majesty."

"Of course!" said I. "What woman would not rather be seized than sighed for? 'Tis their nature. They all—" And then all at once as Kabik's sharp eyes held mine his thought flashed upon me, and my breath caught suddenly, hissing between my teeth.

"Mother of God!" said I, in a whisper.

"What woman," chuckled old Kabik, nodding his wise white head, "would not rather be seized than sighed for? The Tévennec has no mistress, Majesty."

It was as easy as that rescue on the Pointe du Raz a year gone by. They had no thought of attack. God was kind to us, for He drew a cloud across the moon's face, and while they sang songs, sitting at ease behind their filled sails, we laid our boat alongside and made it fast. They were too amazed to struggle—all of them, that is, save the Countess Aziliçz, who fought like a tigress, till I could have cheered to watch her.

It was near the Vieille we had made the attack—a bit to the eastward; and half an hour later, the wind holding fair and mild, we ran the two boats upon the bit of shelving beach at the Tévennec. Old Kabik had the Countess Aziliçz in care, I being as busy as a man may be with trussing up the Countess's men, and I fear that old Kabik before we reached port had occasion grievously to repent his counsel of the afternoon, for Aziliçz was no lifeless armful. I laughed in the dark as I went to take her from him, for I heard her voice crying out sharp and angry:

"Holy Virgin! is a woman a sack of corn? Hold me right end up, idiot! Up, fool! Oh, Mother of God, send this carven image the wits God begrudged him!"

"Take her!" cried old Kabik to me, resentfully. "Devils of land and sea!