Page:The Atlantic Monthly, volume 97.djvu/561

 THE CLEVER NECROMANCER BY MARGARET SHERWOOD

ONCE, a long, long, long, long, long time ago, there was a city by the sea, and it was called Marmorante. Little gray mists floated down the gray streets, past the tall gray houses with carven windows and doors; pale, silvery fogs wrapped tower and spire, and oftentimes low, dark clouds hung sullenly for days together over gabled roofs and dull red chimneys; nor could the bravest winds that blew nor the swiftest golden sunbeams drive mist and cloud and fog away.

In Marmorante lived all manner of folk: a duke, a count, two marquises, and several squires; there were merchants many, with white-sailed ships that cut the waves; there were wool-combers and flax-beaters and haberdashers and marketmen; but most of all there were women : countesses, duchesses, and stately marchionesses; wives of merchants, wool -combers, haberdashers, flax-beaters, women, women, women, maidens innumerable, and hosts of little girls. There were little girls with flaxen ringlets, little girls with long braids of yellow hair; dark-haired, slender maidens, maidens with white arms, maidens with blue eyes, brown eyes, or gray, every kind of maiden that ever lived, in life or in story.

Life went on quietly in the city by the sea. In the gray mornings count and countess talked amicably together in their great hall, and wool-carder and his wife gossiped cheerily as they rolled and carded the white fleece; in the gray afternoons Sir Knight walked in the castle garden among the flowers with my lady, and the butcher's 'prentice met his maid by the postern door: by embroidery frame and spinning wheel, by tiring room and kitchen spit, all was gray peace.

Then one day, when the clouds hung low, a raven croaked above the castle wall; black rooks cawed dismally with hints of coming disaster; and bats, mistaking clouded noon for night, flew out with squeaks and gibberings at noonday, yet nothing happened. Peasants' carts came' creaking, as was their wont, to the city gate, with blue-smocked Jean or yellow-trousered Pierrot driving roan mare or piebald steed, and bringing bags of grain and great rolls of tanned skins to market. Old women with their flower baskets on their arms came nodding and courtesying, giving hollyhock or rose for toll to the porter, who would not say them nay because of their skinny arms and hungry faces. At last came one who was not of the line of sun-browned farmers, withered dames, or ruddy boys who drove in flocks of sheep.

It was a man tall and long, and thin of face, clad in doublet and hose of sober drab, and he had naught with him save three small, transparent bags or bladders, one rose-colored, one purple, and one yellow, which seemed to be filled with but empty air.

"What bringest hither?" asked the porter in a surly voice.

"Naught save my rattle," answered the tall man in drab; and with that he struck the bags together, so that there came out a tinkling sound wondrous cunning and small.

"Is danger therein ?" said the man at the gate, holding back. "Mayhap they go off, like powder, and do harm." Then the tall man smiled a strange, three-cornered smile, for his chin was long and protruding, and strained his lips that way.

"Ay," he confessed, "they go off, but they do no hurt;" then he paid his penny toll and went unmolested in. The 547