George MacDonald - "Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3"

Emma Leslie - "Kate's Ordeal"

Unknown - "The Defenders of Democracy"

Wilhelm Hauff - "Maerchen Almanach auf das Jahr 1826"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Forest Lovers

M >> Maurice Hewlett >> The Forest Lovers




He headed his troop for Hauterive, reached it before daylight, and
ended (as he thought) a signal chapter in his progress. As for
Prosper, he bided his time with a broken head in Peering Pool.




CHAPTER XXVII

GALORS RIDES HUNTING


On the morning after the storm at Goltres, July 18, Galors sat in the
hall of his stronghold habited as he had ridden in but a few hours
before. In came a red-haired peasant, asking to be made his man.

"Why so, fellow?" asked Galors.

"Lording," said Falve, "because my mother hath done me a wrong."

"Why, thou dog?" cried Galors. "Would'st thou cut thy mother's throat
under my flag?"

"Lording," Falve answered, "I would not cut my mother's throat under
the Pope's flag. But I know thee to be a great lord, master of all
these walks of Morgraunt. If I were made free of thy company I could
ask thee a mercy; and if I asked thee a mercy it would be that thou
should'st order my mother to give me back my wife."

"How, thy wife, rogue?" said Galors, who was weary of the man.

"Lording, she was to have been my wife this day. But she lay last
night with my mother, and by the show of a certain token, which
unknown to me she wore about her, prevailed upon my mother to let her
go. So now she has escaped into the forest, and I am beggared of her
without thy help."

By this Galors was awake. He leaned forward in his chair, put chin to
hand, and asked quietly--"How was she called, this wife of thine, my
knave?"

"Lording," replied the poor eager rogue, "she was a boy at first,
called Roy; then she revealed herself a maiden."

"I asked her maiden name, red fool."

"Her name, my lording, was Isoult la Desirous."

"Ah! At last!"

He got up from his chair, saying shortly, "Take me this instant to thy
mother."

"But lord--"

"Silence, lout, or I swing you sky-high. To your mother without a
word."

Poor Falve, in a cold sweat, obeyed. They found the old lady making
breathless preparations for departure.

"Mother," began Falve, "my Lord Galors--"

"Peace, fool!" broke in Galors. "Dame," he said civilly, "I must thank
you for the great charge you have been at with a certain lady much in
both our hearts. No doubt she has spoken to you of Messire Prosper le
Gai. Madam, I am he."

"As God is great," Falve cried, "I could have sworn the lord of this
town was Messire Galors de Born."

"And so he was but yesterday," said Galors. "But now I hold it for the
Countess Isabel."

The old woman was convinced at this name. She caught Galors by the
arm.

"And will you take back the lamb to the dam?" she bleated.

"That is all I ask," replied Galors, speaking the truth.

"You may catch her, Messire--you may catch her. Ah, if I could only
have known of you yester-e'en! She's had but seven hours' start of
you. Take the path for Thornyhold Brush, and you'll find her. Jesu
Christ! when I saw the bleeding bird again I could have died, had
there not been better work before me."

"The bleeding bird? Ah! the token, you would say."

"Yes, Messire, yes! The pelican in piety--the torn breast! The I and
F. Ah! blood enough shed, blood enough. Go quickly, Sir Prosper, and
testify for your name; 'tis of good omen and better report. And have
you killed that sick wolf Galors, Messire? There, there, God will
bless you for that, and prosper you as you have prospered us!"

Galors swallowed the pill and went out with no more ceremony. Falve
ran after him.

"Eh, eh, Messire!" he spluttered. Galors let him splutter till they
were within the courtyard. Then he called to a trooper.

"Take this man and flog him well," said he. Falve was seized.

"Ah, my lording," cried he, "what do you there? Must I be flogged
because I have lost my wife?"

"No, dog. But because you have married mine."

"Nay, nay, mercy, my lording! I have not yet married her."

"Ha!" said Galors, "then you shall be flogged for jilting her."

And flogged he was. And the flogging cost Galors his prize.

Galors now bestirred himself. First he sat down and wrote a letter to
the Countess, thus conceived.

"To the high lady, the Lady Isabel de Forz, Countess of Hauterive,
Countess Dowager of March and Bellesme, Lady of Morgraunt--Galors de
Born, Lord of Hauterive, Goltres, and West Wan, sendeth greeting in
the Lord everlasting.

"That which your Serenity lost early is not too late found, and by us.
The crystal locket, having the pelican in the Crown of Thorns, when we
bring it upon the bosom where it hath ever slept waiting for the day
which shall reveal it to you, will testify whether we lie or lie not.
Know, however, that she shall assuredly come, and not unattended; but
as, befits her condition, under the hand of him who, having found her,
will provide that she be not lost again. It is not unknown to you,
High Mightiness, how our power and estate have grown in these days to
the threatening of your own. So it is, indeed, that now, in blood, in
fees, in renown, in power of life and member, we are near enough to
you to seek alliance still more close. And this is the last word of
Galors; let the wearer of the crystal locket come home as the
betrothed of the Lord Galors de Born, and heiress of High March and
Morgraunt, Countess of Hauterive in time to be, and she shall come
indeed. Otherwise she comes not; but Hauterive wears the crown which
High March looks to put on. Thus we commend you to the holy keeping of
God. From our tower of Hauterive, on the feast of Saint Arnulphus,
bishop and martyr, the 15th calends of August, in the first year of
our principality West of Wan."

This letter, sealed with the three wicket-gates and the circumscript,
_Entra per me_, he sent forward at once by a party of six riders,
one of whom carried a flag of truce. Then with but three to follow
him, he rode out of the town, taking the path for Thornyhold Brush.




CHAPTER XXVIII

MERCY WITH THE BEASTS


Isoult, so soon as she had seen the last of old Ursula, turned her
face to the south and the sun. She walked a mile through bush and
bramble with picked-up skirts; then she sat down and took off her
scarlet shoes and stockings, threw them aside, and went on with a
lighter tread. Not that she was above the glory of silk robes and red
slippers, or unconscious that they heightened the charm of her person
--the old woman's glass, the old woman's face had told her better than
that. Indeed, if she could have believed she would meet with Prosper
at the end of that day, she would have borne with them, hindrance or
none. But this was not to be. Her hair was yet a good six inches from
her knees. So now, bare-legged and bare-footed, her skirts pulled back
and pinned behind her, she felt the glad tune of the woods singing in
her veins, and ran against the stream of cool air deeper into the
fountain-heart whence it flowed, the great silence and shade of the
forest. The path showed barer, the stems more sparse, the roof above
her denser. Soon there was no more grass, neither any moss; nothing
but mast and the leaves of many autumns. Keeping always down the
slope, and a little in advance of the sun, by mid-day she had run
clear of the beech forest into places where there grew hornbeams, with
one or two sapling oaks. There was tall bracken here, and dewy grass
again for her feet. She rested herself, sat deep in shade listening to
the murmur of bees in the sunlight and the gentle complaining of wood-
pigeons in the tree-tops far toward the blue. She lay down luxuriously
in the fern, pillowed her cheek on her folded hands, closed her eyes,
and let all the forest peace fan her to happy dreaming. It was
impossible to be ill at ease in such a harbour. The alien faces and
brawl of the town, the grime, the sweat, the blows of the charcoal-
burners, her secret life there in the midst of them, the shame, the
hooting and the stunning of her last day at distant High March,
Maulfry, Galors, leering Falve--all these grim apparitions sank back
into the green woodland vistas; all the shocks and alarums of her
timid little soul were subdued by the rustling boughs and the crooning
voices of the doves. She saw bright country in her dreams. Prosper was
abroad on a spurred horse; his helmet gleamed in the sun; his enemies
fell at his onset. The deer browsed about her, from the branches a
squirrel peeped down, the woodbirds with kindly peering eyes hopped
within reach of her cradled arms. Soon, soon, soon, she should see
him! She would be sitting at his knees; her cheek would be on his
breast, his arm hold her close, his kind eyes read all her love story.
What a reward for what a little aching! She fell asleep in the fern
and smiled at her own dreams. When she awoke two girls sat sentinel
beside her.

They were ruddy, handsome, cheerful girls, with scarcely a pin's point
of difference between them. They had brown eyes, brown loose hair, the
bloom of healthy blood on their skin. One was more fully formed, more
assured; perhaps she laughed rather less than the other; it was not
noticeable. Isoult, with sleepy eyes, regarded them languidly, half
awake. They sat on either side of her; each clasped a knee with her
two hands; both watched her. Then the elder with a little laugh shook
her hair back from her shoulders, stooped quickly forward, and kissed
her. Isoult sat up.

"Oh, who are you?" she wondered.

"I am Belvisee," said the kissing girl.

"I am Mellifont," said the laugher.

"Do you live here?"

"Yes."

"Is this Thornyhold?"

"Thornyhold Brush is very near."

"Will you take me? I am to wait there."

"Come, sister."

Belvisee helped her up by the hand. When she was afoot Mellifont
caught her other hand and kissed her in her turn--a glad and friendly
little embrace. Friends indeed they looked as they stood hand-linked
in the fern. All three were of a height, Isoult a shade shorter than
the sisters.

She contrasted her attire with theirs; her own so ceremonious, theirs,
what there was of it, simple in the extreme. A smock of coarse green
flax, cut at a slant, which left one shoulder and breast bare, was
looped on to the other shoulder, and caught at the waist by a leather
strap. It bagged over the belt, and below it fell to brush the knees.
Arms, legs, and feet were bare and brown. Visibly they wore nothing
else. Mellifont laughed to see the scrutiny.

"We must undress you," she said.

"Why?"

"You cannot run like that."

"No, that is quite true. But----"

"Oh," said Belvisee, "you are quite safe. No men come where the king
is."

"The king!"

"King of the herd."

"Ah, the deer are near by."

"All Thornhold is theirs. The great herd is here."

"Do you live with them?"

"Yes."

"And they feed you?"

"Yes."

"Ah," said Isoult, "then I shall be at peace till my lord comes, if
there are no men."

"Have you a lord, a lover?"

"Yes, he is my lord, and I love him dearly."

"We have none. What is your name?"

"I am called Isoult la Desirous."

"Because you are a lover?"

"Yes. I am a lover."

"I will never love a man," said Belvisee rather gravely. "All men are
cruel."

"I will never have a lover, nor be a lover, until men know what love
is," said Mellifont in her turn.

"And what is love, do you think?" Isoult asked her thrilling.

"Love! Love! It is service," said Belvisee.

"Service and giving," said Mellifont.

Isoult turned aside and kissed Mellifont's cheek.

They had reached the low ground, for they had been walking during this
colloquy. Oaks stood all about them, with bracken shoulder high. Into
this the three girls plunged, and held on till they were stopped by a
shallow brook. The sisters waded in, so did Isoult when she had picked
up her skirts and petticoats. After a little course up stream through
water joyfully cool they reached a place where the brook made a bend
round the roots of an enormous oak; turning this they opened on a pool
broad and deep.

"We will robe you here," said Belvisee, meaning rather to unrobe her.

The great gnarly roots of the oak were as pillars to a chamber which
ran far into the bank. Here the two girls undressed Isoult, and here
they folded and laid by her red silk gown. She became a pearly copy of
themselves in all but her hair. Her hair! They had never seen such
hair. Measuring it they found it almost to her knees.

"You cannot go with it loose," said they. "We must knot it up again;
but we will go first to the herd."

"Let us go now," added Mellifont on an impulse, and took Isoult by the
hand.

Crossing the brook below the pool, they climbed the bank and found
themselves in a sunny broad place. The light glanced in and out of the
slim grey trees. The bracken was thinner, the grass rich and dewy.
Here Isoult saw the great herd of red deer--hundreds of hundreds--
hinds and calves with some brockets and harts, busy feeding. Over all
that spacious glade the herd was spread out till there seemed no end
to it.

A sentinel stag left feeding as they came on. He looked up for a
moment, stamped his foot, and went back to grass. One or two others
copied him; but mostly the three girls could go among them without
notice. Imperceptibly, however, the herd followed them feeding on
their way to the king, so that by the time they reached him there was
a line of deer behind them, and deer at either flank.

The great hart also stamped his foot and stood at gaze, with towering
antlers and dewy nostrils very wide. Before him Belvisee and Mellifont
let go of Isoult's hand: she was to make her entry alone. She put them
behind her back, hardly knowing what was expected of her, shrank a
little into herself and waited timidly. Slowly then the great hart
advanced before his peering courtiers, pacing on with nodding head and
horns. Exactly in front of Isoult he planted his forefeet, thence he
looked down from his height upon her. She had always loved the deer,
and was not now afraid; but she covered herself with her hair.

The king stag smelt her over, beginning at her feet. He snuffed for a
long time at the nape of her neck, blew in her hair so as to spray it
out like a fountain scattered to the wind; then he fell to licking her
cheek. She, made bold, put a hand and laid it on his mane. Shyly she
stood thus, waiting events. The great beast lifted his head high and
gave a loud bellow; all the deer chorused him; the forest rang. So
Isoult was made free of the herd.

Belvisee and Mellifont lay beside her on the grass. Isoult lay on her
face, while Mellifont coiled and knotted up her hair.

"If love is giving, and you are a lover, Isoult," said she, "you would
give your hair."

"I have given it," said Isoult, and told them her story as they all
lay there together.

"And to think that you have endured all this from men, and yet love a
man!" cried flushed Mellifont, when she had made an end.

But Isoult smiled wisely at her.

"Ah, Mellifont," she said, "the more you saw of men, the more you
would find to love in him."

"Indeed, I should do no such thing," said Mellifont, firing up again.

"You could not help it. Everyone must love him."

"That might not suit you, Isoult," said Belvisee.

"Why should it not? Would it prevent my love to know him loved? I
should love him all the more."

"Hark!" cried Mellifont on a sudden. She laid her ear to the ground,
then jumped to her feet.

"Come to the herd, come to the herd," she whispered.

Belvisee was on her feet also in a trice. Both girls were hot and
bright.

"What disturbs you?" asked Isoult, who had heard nothing.

"Horsemen! quick, quick." They all ran between the trees to regain the
deer. Isoult could hear no horses; but the sisters had, and now she
saw that the deer had. Every head was up, every ear still, every
nostril on the stretch. Listening now intently, faint and far she did
hear a muffled knocking--it was like a beating heart, she thought.
Whatever it was, the deer guessed an enemy. Upon a sudden stamp, the
whole herd was in motion. Led by the hart-royal, they trotted
noiselessly down the wood, till in the thick fern they lay still. The
girls lay down with them.

The sound gained rapidly upon them. Soon they heard the crackling of
twigs, then the swish of swept brushwood, then the creaking of girths.
Isoult hid her face, lying prone on her breast.

Galors and his men came thundering through the wood. Their horses were
reeking, dripping from the flanks. The riders, four of them, looking
neither right nor left, past over the open ground, where a few minutes
before she whom they desperately sought had been lying at their mercy.
But Galors, fled by all things living in Morgraunt, scourged on like a
destroying wind and was gone. Isoult little knew how near she had been
to the unclean thing. If she had seen him she would have run straight
to him without a thought, for he bore the red feathers in his helmet,
and behind him, on the shield, danced in the glory of new gilt the
_fesse dancettee_.

It may be doubted if the instincts of the earth-born can ever pierce
the trappings of a knight-at-arms. They trust in emotions which such
gear is designed to hide or transfigure. Isoult, observe, had caught
Prosper out of his harness, when before the face of the sky she had
thrilled him to pity. But when once he had stooped to her, for the
very fact, she made haste to set him up on high in her heart, and in
more seemly guise. There and thenceforward he stood on his pedestal
figured, not as a pitiful saviour (whom a girl must be taught to
worship), but as an armed god who suffered her homage. She was no
better (or no worse, if you will) than the rest of her sex in this,
that she loved to love, and was bewildered to be loved. So she would
never get him out of armour again. Her god might not stoop.




CHAPTER XXIX

WANMEETING CRIES, 'HA! SAINT JAMES!'


The story returns to Prosper le Gai and his broken head. The blow had
been sharp, but Peering Pool was sharper. It brought him to
consciousness, of a sort sufficient to give him a disrelish for
drowning. Lucky for him he was unarmed. He found himself swimming,
paddling, rolling at random; he swallowed quantities of water, and
liked drowning none the better. By the little light there was he could
make out the line of the dark hull of Goltres, by the little wit he
had he remembered that the water-gate was midway the building or
thereabouts. He turned his face to the wall and, half clinging, half
swimming, edged along it till he reached port. The last ebb of his
strength sufficed to drag him up the stair; then he floated off into
blankness again.

When he stirred he was stiff, and near blind with fever. A cold light
silvered the pool; it was not yet dawn. His plight was pitiable. He
ached and shivered and burned, he drowsed and muttered, dreamed
horribly, sweated and was cold, shuddered and was hot. One of his arms
he could not lift at all; at one of his sides, there was a great stiff
cake of cloth and blood and water. He became light-headed, sang,
shouted, raved, swore, prayed.

"To me, to me, Isoult! Ah, dogs of the devil, this to a young maid!
Yes, madam, the Lady Isoult, and my wife. Love her! O God, I love her
at last. Hounded, hounded, hounded out! Love of Christ, how I love
her! Bailiff, Galors will come--a white-faced, sullen dog. Cut him
down, bailiff, without mercy, for he hath shown no mercy. The man in
the wood--ha! dead--Salomon de Born. Green froth on his lips--fie,
poison! She has killed Galors' only son. Galors, she has poisoned him
--oh, mercy, mercy, Lord, must I die?" And then with tears, and the
whining of a child--"Isoult, Isoult, Isoult!"

In tears his delirium spent itself, and again he was still, in a
broken sleep. The sun rose, the sky warmed itself and glowed, the
crispy waves of Peering Pool glittered, the white burden it bore
floated face upwards, an object of interest and suspicion for the
coots; soon a ray of generous heat shot obliquely down upon the
sleeper on the stairs. Prosper woke again, stretched, and yawned. Most
of his pains seemed now to centre in the pit of his stomach, a
familiar grief. Prosper was hungry.

"Pest!" said the youth, "how hungry I am. I can do nothing till I have
eaten."

He tried to get up, and did succeed in raising himself on all fours.
But for the life of him he could do no more. He sat down again and
thought about eating. He remembered the bread and olives, the not
unkindly red wine of the night before. Then he remembered Spiridion,
dispenser of meat and many questions.

"That poor doubting rogue!" he laughed. But he sobered himself. "I do
ill to laugh, God knows! The man must be dead by now, and all his
doubts with him. I must go find him. But I must eat some of his bread
and olives first."

Once more he got on all fours, and this time he crawled to the stop of
the stairway. Clinging to the lintel and hoisting himself by degrees,
he at last stood fairly on his feet--but with a spinning head, and a
sickness as unto death. He tottered and flickered; but he stuck to his
door-post.

"Bread and olives!" he cried. "I am to die, it seems, but by the Lord
I will eat first."

He made a rush for it, gained so the great hall, dizzied through it
somehow, and out into the corridor. He flung himself at the stone
stairs with the desperation of his last agony, half crawled, half
swarmed up to the top (dragging his legs after him at the end, like a
hare shot in the back), and finished his course to Spiridion's chamber
on hands and knees. He had probably never in his life before worked so
hard for a breakfast. He was dripping with sweat, shaking like
gossamer; but his fever had left him. Bread and a bottle of wine did
wonders for him. He felt very drunk when he had done, and was
conscious that pot-valiancy only gave him the heart to tear off his
clothes. A flask of sweet oil from Spiridion's shelf helped him here.
Next he probed the rents. He found a deepish wound in the groin, a
sword-cut in the fleshy part of his left arm; then there was his head!
He assured himself that the skull was whole.

"I never respected my ancestors before," he cried. "Such a headpiece
is worthy of a Crusader."

He kindled a fire, heated water, washed out his hurts, oiled them and
bound them up with one of Spiridion's bed-sheets.

"Now," he reflected, "by rights I should go and hunt for my poor host.
But I am still drunk unfortunately. Let me consider. Spiridion must
pass for a man. If he is dead he will wait for me. If he is not dead
he is no worse off than I am. Good. I will sleep." And he slept round
the clock.

Next morning when he awoke he was stiff and sore, but himself. He
finished the bread, drank another bottle of wine, and looked about for
his armour. It was not there. Instead, the white wicket-gates gleamed
at him from a black shield, white plumes from a black headpiece, and
the rest of a concatenation.

"_Entra per me_," he read. "Enter I will," said Prosper, "and by
you. This device," he went on, as he fitted the _cuisses_, "this
device is not very worthy of Dom Galors. It speaks of hurry. It
speaks, even, of precipitation, for if he must needs wear my harness,
at least he might have carried his own. Galors was flurried. If he was
flurried he must have had news. If, having news, he took my arms, it
must have been news of Isoult. He intended to deceive her by passing
for me. Good; I will deceive his allies by passing for himself. But
first I must find Spiridion."

He had too much respect for his enemy, as you will observe if I have
made anything of Galors. Galors was no refiner, not subtle; he was
direct. When he had to think he held his tongue, so that you should
believe him profound. When he got a thought he made haste to act upon
it, because it really embarrassed him. None of Prosper's imaginings
were correct. If the monk had been capable of harbouring two thoughts
at a time, there would not have been a shred of mail in the room.

That sodden thing lipped by the restless water was Spiridion. He lay
on his back, thinner and more peaked than ever in life; his yellow
hair made him an aureole. He looked like some martyred ascetic, with
his tightened smile and the gash half-way through his neck.

Prosper leaned upon his punt-pole looking sorrowfully at him.

"Alas, my brother," he said half whimsically, "do you smile? Even so I
think God should smile that He had let such a thing be made. And if,
as I believe, you know the truth at last, that is why you also smile.
But shut your eyes, my brother," he added, stooping to do the office,
"shut your eyes, for you wore them thin with searching and now can see
without them. Let them rest."

Very tenderly he pulled him out of the water, very reverently took
him to land. He buried him before his own gates, and over him set the
crucifix, which in the end he had found grace to see. He was too good
a Christian not to pray over the grave, and not sufficient of a hero
to be frank about his tears. At the end of all this business he found
his horse. Then he rode off at a canter for Hauterive.

* * * * *

It is one thing to kindle military fires in the breast of a High
Bailiff, quite another to bid them out. Prosper had overstepped his
authority. The High Bailiff of Wanmeeting held himself in check for
the better part of a week after his generalissimo's departure; at the
end of five days he could endure it no more. His harness clamoured,
his sword tarnished for blood; he had fifteen hundred men in steel.
That would mean fifteen hundred and one tarnishing blades, and the
unvoiced reproaches of fifteen hundred and one suits of mail. In a
word, the High Bailiff itched to try a fall with the redoubtable
Galors de Born.

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