I remember it all
so well, though I was only eight, and it is eight years ago now as I am
writing it down, but the sky was a deep violet blue, and in the middle
of the brake where we were sitting there was a great elder tree covered
with blossoms, and on the other side there was a clump of meadowsweet,
and when I think of that day the smell of the meadowsweet and elder
blossom seems to fill the room, and if I shut my eyes I can see the
glaring blue sky, with little clouds very white floating across it, and
nurse who went away long ago sitting opposite me and looking like the
beautiful white lady in the wood. So we sat down and nurse took out the
clay doll from the secret place where she had hidden it, and she said we
must 'pay our respects,' and she would show me what to do, and I must
watch her all the time. So she did all sorts of queer things with the
little clay man, and I noticed she was all streaming with perspiration,
though we had walked so slowly, and then she told me to 'pay my
respects,' and I did everything she did because I liked her, and it was
such an odd game. And she said that if one loved very much, the clay man
was very good, if one did certain things with it, and if one hated very
much, it was just as good, only one had to do different things, and we
played with it a long time, and pretended all sorts of things. Nurse
said her great-grandmother had told her all about these images, but what
we did was no harm at all, only a game. But she told me a story about
these images that frightened me very much, and that was what I
remembered that night when I was lying awake in my room in the pale,
empty darkness, thinking of what I had seen and the secret wood. Nurse
said there was once a young lady of the high gentry, who lived in a
great castle. And she was so beautiful that all the gentlemen wanted to
marry her, because she was the loveliest lady that anybody had ever
seen, and she was kind to everybody, and everybody thought she was very
good. But though she was polite to all the gentlemen who wished to marry
her, she put them off, and said she couldn't make up her mind, and she
wasn't sure she wanted to marry anybody at all. And her father, who was
a very great lord, was angry, though he was so fond of her, and he asked
her why she wouldn't choose a bachelor out of all the handsome young men
who came to the castle. But she only said she didn't love any of them
very much, and she must wait, and if they pestered her, she said she
would go and be a nun in a nunnery. So all the gentlemen said they
would go away and wait for a year and a day, and when a year and a day
were gone, they would come back again and ask her to say which one she
would marry. So the day was appointed and they all went away; and the
lady had promised that in a year and a day it would be her wedding day
with one of them. But the truth was, that she was the queen of the
people who danced on the hill on summer nights, and on the proper nights
she would lock the door of her room, and she and her maid would steal
out of the castle by a secret passage that only they knew of, and go
away up to the hill in the wild land. And she knew more of the secret
things than any one else, and more than any one knew before or after,
because she would not tell anybody the most secret secrets. She knew how
to do all the awful things, how to destroy young men, and how to put a
curse on people, and other things that I could not understand. And her
real name was the Lady Avelin, but the dancing people called her Cassap,
which meant somebody very wise, in the old language. And she was whiter
than any of them and taller, and her eyes shone in the dark like burning
rubies; and she could sing songs that none of the others could sing, and
when she sang they all fell down on their faces and worshipped her. And
she could do what they called shib-show, which was a very wonderful
enchantment. She would tell the great lord, her father, that she wanted
to go into the woods to gather flowers, so he let her go, and she and
her maid went into the woods where nobody came, and the maid would keep
watch. Then the lady would lie down under the trees and begin to sing a
particular song, and she stretched out her arms, and from every part of
the wood great serpents would come, hissing and gliding in and out among
the trees, and shooting out their forked tongues as they crawled up to
the lady. And they all came to her, and twisted round her, round her
body, and her arms, and her neck, till she was covered with writhing
serpents, and there was only her head to be seen. And she whispered to
them, and she sang to them, and they writhed round and round, faster and
faster, till she told them to go. And they all went away directly, back
to their holes, and on the lady's breast there would be a most curious,
beautiful stone, shaped something like an egg, and coloured dark blue
and yellow, and red, and green, marked like a serpent's scales. It was
called a glame stone, and with it one could do all sorts of wonderful
things, and nurse said her great-grandmother had seen a glame stone with
her own eyes, and it was for all the world shiny and scaly like a snake. And the lady could do a lot of other things as well, but she was quite
fixed that she would not be married. And there were a great many
gentlemen who wanted to marry her, but there were five of them who were
chief, and their names were Sir Simon, Sir John, Sir Oliver, Sir
Richard, and Sir Rowland. All the others believed she spoke the truth,
and that she would choose one of them to be her man when a year and a
day was done; it was only Sir Simon, who was very crafty, who thought
she was deceiving them all, and he vowed he would watch and try if he
could find out anything. And though he was very wise he was very young,
and he had a smooth, soft face like a girl's, and he pretended, as the
rest did, that he would not come to the castle for a year and a day, and
he said he was going away beyond the sea to foreign parts. But he
really only went a very little way, and came back dressed like a servant
girl, and so he got a place in the castle to wash the dishes. And he
waited and watched, and he listened and said nothing, and he hid in dark
places, and woke up at night and looked out, and he heard things and he
saw things that he thought were very strange. And he was so sly that he
told the girl that waited on the lady that he was really a young man,
and that he had dressed up as a girl because he loved her so very much
and wanted to be in the same house with her, and the girl was so pleased
that she told him many things, and he was more than ever certain that
the Lady Avelin was deceiving him and the others. And he was so clever,
and told the servant so many lies, that one night he managed to hide in
the Lady Avelin's room behind the curtains. And he stayed quite still
and never moved, and at last the lady came.