The Well at the World's End: A Tale

  CHAPTER 2

  They Hear New Tidings of Utterbol

  It was on a fair evening of later autumn-tide that they won their wayout of the Gates of the Mountains, and came under the rock of theFighting Man. There they kissed and comforted each other in memory ofthe terror and loneliness wherewith they had entered the Mountains thatother time; though, sooth to say, it was to them now like the readingof sorrow in a book.

  But when they came out with joyful hearts into the green plain betwixtthe mountains and the River of Lava, they looked westward, and beheldno great way off a little bower or cot, builded of boughs and rushes bya blackthorn copse; and as they rode toward it they saw a man comeforth therefrom, and presently saw that he was hoary, a man with a longwhite beard. Then Ralph gave a glad cry, and set spurs to his horseand galloped over the plain; for he deemed that it could be none otherthan the Sage of Swevenham; and Ursula came pricking after him laughingfor joy. The old man abode their coming, and Ralph leapt off his horseat once, and kissed and embraced him; but the Sage said: "There is noneed to ask thee of tidings; for thine eyes and thine whole body tellme that thou hast drunk of the Well at the World's End. And that shallbe better for thee belike than it has been for me; though for me alsothe world has not gone ill after my fashion since I drank of thatwater."

  Then was Ursula come up, and she also lighted down and made much of theSage. But he said: "Hail, daughter! It is sweet to see thee so, andto wot that thou art in the hands of a mighty man: for I know thatRalph thy man is minded for his Father's House, and the deeds thatabide him there; and I think we may journey a little way together; foras for me, I would go back to Swevenham to end my days there, whetherthey be long or short."

  But Ralph said: "As for that, thou mayst go further than Swevenham,and as far as Upmeads, where there will be as many to love and cherishthee as at Swevenham."

  The old man laughed a little, and reddened withal, but answered nothing.

  Then they untrussed their sumpter-beast, and took meat and drink fromhis burden, and they ate and drank together, sitting on the green grassthere; and the twain made great joy of the Sage, and told him the wholetale; and he told them that he had been abiding there since thespring-tide, lest they might have turned back without accomplishingtheir quest, and then may-happen he should have been at hand to comfortthem, or the one of them left, if so it had befallen. "But," quoth he,"since ye have verily drunk of the Well at the World's End, ye havecome back no later than I looked for you."

  That night they slept in the bower there, and on the morrow betimes,the Sage drove together three or four milch goats that he pasturedthere, and went their ways over the plain, and so in due time enteredinto the lava-sea. But the first night that they lay there, though itwas moonless and somewhat cloudy, they saw no glare of the distantearth-fires which they had looked for; and when on the morrow theyquestioned the Sage thereof, he said: "The Earth-fires ceased about theend of last year, as I have heard tell. But sooth it is that theforeboding of the Giant's Candle was not for naught. For there hathverily been a change of masters at Utterbol."

  "Yea," said Ralph, "for better or worse?"

  Said the Sage: "It could scarce have been for worse; but if rumourrunneth right it is much for the better. Hearken how I learnedthereof. One fair even of late March, a little before I set offhither, as I was sitting before the door of my house, I saw the glintof steel through the wood, and presently rode up a sort of knights andmen-at-arms, about a score; and at the head of them a man on a bigred-roan horse, with his surcoat blazoned with a white bull on a greenfield: he was a man black-haired, but blue-eyed; not very big, but wellknit and strong, and looked both doughty and knightly; and he wore agold coronet about his basnet: so not knowing his blazonry, I wonderedwho it was that durst be so bold as to ride in the lands of the Lord ofUtterbol. Now he rode up to me and craved a drink of milk, for he hadseen my goats; so I milked two goats for him, and brought whey for theothers, whereas I had no more goats in milk at that season. So thebull-knight spake to me about the woodland, and wherefore I dwelt thereapart from others; somewhat rough in his speech he was, yet ratherjolly than fierce; and he thanked me for the bever kindly enough, andsaid: "I deem that it will not avail to give thee money; but I shallgive thee what may be of avail to thee. Ho, Gervaise! give me one ofthose scrolls!" So a squire hands him a parchment and he gave it me,and it was a safe-conduct to the bearer from the Lord of Utterbol; butwhereas I saw that the seal bore not the Bear on the Castle-wall, butthe Bull, and that the superscription was unknown to me, I held thesaid scroll in my hand and wondered; and the knight said to me: "Yea,look long at it; but so it is, though thou trow it not, that I amverily Lord of Utterbol, and that by conquest; so that belike I ammightier than he was, for that mighty runagate have I slain. And manythere be who deem that no mishap, heathen though I be. Come thou toUtterbol and see for thyself if the days be not changed there; and thoushalt have a belly-full of meat and drink, and honour after thydeserving." So they rested a while, and then went their ways. ToUtterbol I went not, but ere I departed to come hither two or threecarles strayed my way, as whiles they will, who told me that this whichthe knight had said was naught but the sooth, and that great was thechange of days at Utterbol, whereas all men there, both bond and free,were as merry as they deserved to be, or belike merrier."

  Ralph pondered this tale, and was not so sure but that this new lordwas not Bull Shockhead, his wartaken thrall; natheless he held hispeace; but Ursula said: "I marvel not much at the tale, for sure I am,that had Gandolf of the Bear been slain when I was at Utterbol, neitherman nor woman had stirred a finger to avenge him. But all feared him,I scarce know why; and, moreover, there was none to be master if hewere gone."

  Thereafter she told more tales of the miseries of Utterbol than Ralphhad yet heard, as though this tale of the end of that evil rule had sether free to utter them; and they fell to talking of others matters.