![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneI continue slowly rereading my way through William Morris's ~mediæval romances, which I have read all of once before (of which more in this post).
The next one I finished was his fifth prose-only romance, 1896's .
The hero of this story is Ralph, the youngest of four sons of the King of Upmeads, a very small land in a setting like early medieval Britain (cut chalk figures on the downs nearby), though it isn't on an island. The three elder sons are given leave to go see the world, and assigned a servant and a bag of money each, with each of them pointed down each of the three safe roads that lead away from the kingdom, which I have to presume is like the size of an English county. King Peter the explains that that since there are no more safe roads, and he and his wife don't want to be sad, they will be keeping Ralph at home, since he is the youngest.
Ralph, however, sneaks away in the night with just his armor and horse to the nearest merchant town and the house of his godparents. His godfather, a wealthy merchant named Clement Chapman, gives him as much money as his brothers got, and his godmother gives him a magical amulet on a necklace, which she tells him will give him good luck on his way to the Well at the World's End (essentially the fountain of youth in this world, but everybody knows that it's at the edge of the continent in one particular direction, even though most people don't know exactly where) as long as he never takes it off.
He proceeds through Higham on the Way, a big walled city ruled by an abbot, but leaves the next morning, not wishing to become a guardsman or monk there, in spite of the urgings of Clement, a monk, and a guard he meets. On the main road away from Higham, he stops to eat at an inn kept by a beautiful but unhappy peasant maid named Ursula and her brother. She says that his route is through the Wood Perilous to the Burg of the Four Friths and that it's not safe to go there alone - her love rode off there on his horse 5 days ago, and should have been back 3 days ago, but all that came back was his horse with a bloody saddle. She says that Ralph should wait for an armed wagon train of merchants from Higham (the city he just left) and travel with them for safety, but he is undaunted.
In the Wood Perilous he has an ominous meeting with a sinister company of armed men from the Burg of the Four Friths with prisoners, who interrogate him but let him go. Shortly thereafter Ralph kills two armed horsemen who are leading a beautiful woman in a scanty dress by a rope around her neck, and the woman warns him against the Burg of the Four Friths as a place of robbers and murderers who will find out that he killed their guys and come after him. She advises him he should go to Hampton Under Scaur on the other side of the woods instead, and then she rides off.
Next Ralph meets Ursula on the road, now on a quest for the Well at the World's End, and she refuses to accept his escort because she says she can see that his heart is set on someone and something else (having been enchanted by the woman he rescued), so she proceeds towards Hampton Under Scaur on the advice Ralph passes on.
A lone man named Roger who shares his lunch with Ralph offers to be his guide. He persuades him to go to the Burg of the Four Friths first. However, it turns out that the Burg is an oppressive police state where anybody with weapons is documented at the gates and interrogated, where you can't purchase weapons in the market if you don't work for them, and where knights are regularly either arrested or forced at swordspoint to join their guard. Also he learns that the people on the street are eager to capture and put to death the Queen of Hampton, whom they have just heard was captured and then somehow escaped. Also the city is full of enslaved women, whom Roger tells him belong to a neighboring tribe of farmers, which the Burg habitually "wars" on (attacks and steals all their stuff while killing all the men and boys and enslaving all the women and girls). Through a conversation in the tavern he learns that there's a fully developed racism and complete acceptance of this chattel slavery through all the ordinary men of the place across classes, and that military service is nearly universal for these men. He only escapes being jailed or pressed into service by Roger waking him in the middle of the night and helping him sneak over the wall.
Roger then leads Ralph to the Valley of Abundance, a somewhat hidden pocket valley with a castle in the middle, and leaves him there (we later learn he was acting as an agent for the Burg trying to lure new armsmen there when he met Ralph, but he repented later). The valley is inhabited by happy peasants who don't know or care about the outside world and have been safe for generations. The male peasants worship the lady of this castle, who is also the lady of Hampton, as a goddess (she is apparently immortal), and the female peasants are visibly slightly dubious and seem to consider her possibly a fairy?? and possibly her use of magic sinister??? but don't say much about it. Ralph waits in this castle hoping the lady will come there to meet him and reads a book given him by the old lady about the Well at the World's End.
The book tells of a lady who was so beautiful that no man who saw her could help loving her (the physical description is that of Morris's wife Jane, famous as one of the most frequent models of the Pre-Raphaelite painters esp. Rossetti), that she lived alone in the woods but was found by a prince who married her and took her to his kingdom, then lost the kingdom because of men going to war over her, and she escaped and kept being captured and fought over, until eventually she found the Well and drank from it, becoming ageless and undying.
Ralph leaves the castle and meets the lady again being fought over by two knights, both of whom are apparently raving in erotomaniac obsession over her. One kills the other, and the lady promises the victor to become his lover to get him to spare Ralph, but she helps Ralph sneak away in the middle of the night. They travel together and she tells Ralph about her life, but also that she wants him to seek the Well at the World's End; and she talks about Ursula and says Ursula is suited to him and that he will love her in the future. After a few weeks, she is killed while Ralph is hunting one day by the knight they had run away from, who then kills himself. Ralph buries them both and sets out to find Ursula and the Well at the World's End. (Even though they lived together for several weeks at this point he didn't learn her name until later, when she visited him in dreams and told him it was Dorothea.)
At the port city of Whitwall he meets his brother Blaise, who has become a master trader and honored citizen and finally Mayor, holding the keys of the city; also his father's trusty old servant Richard, who was sent with Blaise. Richard helps Ralph learn about the Well and search for traces of Ursula. Clement Chapman arrives for his habitual trade journey, and Ralph travels with him and his large armed party.
The first they hear of Ursula is that she's been taken captive by one of the mountain men who kdinap travelers and sell them as slaves in the evil lands on the other side of the mountains. The next day they are attacked by a party of these on their way through the mountains and Ralph captures one named Bull Shockhead, who swears to serve him till death in exchange for his life. Bull Shockhead saw Ursula taken to sell by his kinsman Bull Nosy, and guides Ralph in pursuit of them.
In the next city of Cheaping Knowe, at Shockhead's advice Ralph asks the thrall merchant and learns that she wasn't sold because she refused to undress and said she'd kill anyone who tried to do anything to her; and that rather than acquiesce in the suggestion to beat her, Bull Nosy left with her again. Clement explains that the next town is under the influence of the evil Lord of Utterbol, a cruel tyrant, fond of war and conquest - though they are not yet to his lands. All the labour here is done by bound serfs instead of free peasants, a shocking concept to Ralph. At the next town of Whiteness they hear that Bull Nosy visited the slave auction with Ursula but left with her without trying to sell and that they surmise he was taking her directly to the Lord of Utterbol, who is famous for paying well for slaves, especially attractive women.
They leave for Goldburg, the next town on their route, and find the body of Bull Nosy on the way, but no trace of Ursula, who they deem has been taken captive. Bull Shockhead breaks down and reveals that Bull Nosy was his brother; they help him bury him. Clement tells that Goldburg was built by a wealthy visionary who intended to create a utopian society of plenty where everybody was equal, but that he died before it was finished, and Goldburg was now a place of extreme inequality, with a few very wealthy ruling over many impoverished labourers. The head of state is a queen who falls in love with Ralph at first sight and therefore listens to his entire life story and then helps him as much as she can, with a letter to the Lord of Utterbol that she says will ensure safety from him "if he heedeth aught my goodwill or enmity". A guide named Morfinn the Minstrel offers to take Ralph to Utterness and thence to Utterbol, and as he has a pass from the Lord of Utterbol, it's likely that he can do this. Clement and his merchants turn back as planned, and Ralph gives Shockhead money and frees him and they swear blood brotherhood, and Shockhead gives him a token that he can use to claim the kinship and help of the clan of the Bull.
Obviously Morfinn is evil; he is one of a group of people-catchers employed by the Lord of Utterbol to bring him travelers to enslave. He leads Ralph to within sight of the lord's pavilion and his knights chase down Ralph on his tired horse, drag him into the tent, and strip him to let an advisor examine his body like a piece of livestock. (He is deemed as goodly a piece of flesh as can be bought.) Ralph bides his time in captivity and gains some favor by being willing to fight and joust for the lord's entertainment, and gains the friendship of a captain of the lord's guard named Otter. They meet the Queen's party on the way back to Utterbol and she falls in love with Ralph at first sight and her clever handmaiden, Agatha, helps her concoct an insanely elaborate scheme to try to make Ralph fall in love with her, with body doubles and pretending to give Ralph back his freedom. However, when Agatha lures him away from the camp for the scheme she finds him not falling for it, then falls in love with him instead and tells him the whole truth. She offers to help him get away because, she says, the king and the queen between them are definitely going to kill him if he goes to Utterbol with their party. Ralph leaves, intending still to somehow sneak into Utterbol to rescue Ursula, but he soon meets Ursula camping in the woods in a man's armor.
Reunited, they tell each other everything that has happened to them, including that Bull Nosy died honorably trying to save her from the Lord of Utterbol after changing his mind on the way. Ursula was prepared for the quest by Dorothea at Hampton, and she is therefore looking for a hermit called the Sage of Swevenham. They find the Sage quickly, and he agrees to teach and guide them. They learn his lore from a special holy book, in a special holy clearing with an ancient stone altar, and they have to dress in special purified garments and learn this book by heart. That takes two days. (...?!)
The first night of travel, they camp in a valley that has big wildcats and have to make a fire to keep them away. When a slave patrol comes the Sage casts a spell that renders them, their horses, and their fire invisible. He then leads them through a barren sea of hardened lava rock to a mountain pass, and they continue alone through a series of valleys throughout the autumn. They stop and overwinter in a big cave which is marked with the way sign carved in the rock, and there's a long passage about making the cave into a home and hunting and making clothes out of animal skins and stuff.
In the springtime a patrol comes to check the cave, some guys from the tribe that has inherited the task of helping questers for the Well, and these guys make a wedding hut from spring branches for them and the oldest one marries them and they have a wedding feast according to those guys's culture, and then they lead them out of the mountains on the other side into a peaceful pastoral land, where the people know the way to the Well but have no desire to go there because they live a life without war or strife already and they don't want to introduce inequality into their society by some people living longer. Sounds fake but okay!
They journey on alone through a wild forest and then an uninhabited desert, continually finding the long-dead and mummified corpses of other people who died on the way. The coolest part of the quest is when they reach the Dry Tree, which has been mentioned before as the arms of Hampton Under Scaur: they come to valley in the desert shaped like an amphitheater, the sides lined with mummified corpses sitting as if on natural benches in their clothes and armor and facing down into the center. At the bottom is an enormous dead tree, so tall that its highest branches clear the top of the valley, standing in a mirror-smooth pool of water, with shields and weapons hung all over its branches. They both sheathe their swords and walk down, finding the path is hewn into steps, and seeing that all the mummies have the same facial expression, a frozen grimace of pain. Ralph wants to drink because the water is clear, and starts to bend down to do so, but Ursula stops him because there is no carven way sign to show it safe, and also the surface of the water doesn't stir in the wind. And just after that a crow comes down, drinks, and then freezes and dies in midair as it's trying to fly away. Ralph is frozen to the spot and seems hypnotized, but Ursula wakes him by saying she sees helmets and weapons with their horses, so they run out of the valley. He asks where the enemy is and she says she just said that to wake him up; but he is still disoriented and falls on the ground. She splashes him with water from her canteen and feeds him some cordial, and when he opens his eyes again he has no memory of the valley, and lets her lead him away.
On the other side of the desert they find a deserted woodland and follow their signs to a tall cliff above the sea, with stairs cut into it. At low tide they are able to go down the stairs and find a sort of altar cut into the rock of the cliff face, with a fountain, and some carven words and the way symbols, and a golden goblet in a little carved stone cabinet with a stone door. Drinking the water heals all the old scars on their bodies. They turn around and journey back home at once, picking up the Sage of Swevenham with them on the way (he's all white-bearded but apparently, he drank of the Well a long time ago and now that he has pals, he's ready to go out into the world again). Everyone they meet, whether they know of the Well or not, can see the difference in them; apparently they seem more impressive and slightly godlike and beautiful.
On their journey home, they first learn that Bull Shockhead, with the help of Ralph's friend Otter, is the new king of Utterbol, and he's a great king and the land is already healing. Also he married the old lord's queen who has decided to not be ambiguously sorta evil anymore. Cool.
Next they learn that Redhead, the guardsman who helped the queen and Agatha trick Ralph out of the lord's encampment, is now married to Agatha and has been promoted; then they learn that the sad Queen of Goldburg ran away into the forest (which I think is meant to be a happy ending for her...???) and her cousin is the new charismatic king. They skirmish with the king of Cheaping Knowe, who is a big pro-slavery greedy and treacherous tyrant, who cringes and swears to serve Ralph in person but then makes plans to sneak around and capture him and his party. They escape with the help of the Sage's grandson who just happens to be in the king's council for some reason, and the king sends armed pursuit, and the Bull tribe comes down from the mountains and helps kill them, including the king, freeing yet another region from tyranny. Ralph shows the tribesmen his token and they have a campfire feast with the Bull tribe that night.
They go through Whitwell and pick up Richard, who musters armed men to support them from the countryside while Ralph goes to Hampton for the first time, and learns that the Burg has been conquered by the people they were constantly enslaving in alliance with the Robin Hood guys in the forest, and the slavers who survived have been driven out. They are now a roving band of awfulness in the region but probably heading for Upmeads. Ralph swears brotherhood to the fellowship there, and tells them a little bit about what happened to their lady; and they all come to help as well.
When they reach Higham by the Way, Ralph finds his brother Hugh captain of the guard, and their third brother, Gregory, is a monk in the same city. Hugh brings a host from Higham along with them. Also a bunch of the shepherds from the surrounding downs come. When they reach Clement Chapman's house in Wulstead and find Ralph's mother and father staying with him, all the noncombatants having already evacuated Upmeads before the Burg outlaws reached it. They overcome them easily with a much smaller force, partly because when Ralph leads the charge without his helmet all his side are supernaturally inspired and all the other side are supernaturally stricken with terror and run in disarray. Ralph ceremonially installs his father and mother back in their house and introduces Ursula as his bride and them both as Friends of the Well to their people. Then Ralph's father announces that he is retiring and Ralph is the new king.
And they live long enough to bring peace and prosperity and joy to all the regions near them, visiting Utterbol regularly, and watching four generations of their descendants grow up, before dying together on the same day and being buried in one tomb.
I accidentally waited a few months after I finished reading to make this post, meaning I had go to back and page through it to get all the events in the right order, and of course when I started doing that I spent like six hours making this post because summarizing and leaving out details is hard. Ugh. Oh well, I'm sure sometime in the future I will be glad I have this summary to refer back to.
The next one I finished was his fifth prose-only romance, 1896's .
The hero of this story is Ralph, the youngest of four sons of the King of Upmeads, a very small land in a setting like early medieval Britain (cut chalk figures on the downs nearby), though it isn't on an island. The three elder sons are given leave to go see the world, and assigned a servant and a bag of money each, with each of them pointed down each of the three safe roads that lead away from the kingdom, which I have to presume is like the size of an English county. King Peter the explains that that since there are no more safe roads, and he and his wife don't want to be sad, they will be keeping Ralph at home, since he is the youngest.
Ralph, however, sneaks away in the night with just his armor and horse to the nearest merchant town and the house of his godparents. His godfather, a wealthy merchant named Clement Chapman, gives him as much money as his brothers got, and his godmother gives him a magical amulet on a necklace, which she tells him will give him good luck on his way to the Well at the World's End (essentially the fountain of youth in this world, but everybody knows that it's at the edge of the continent in one particular direction, even though most people don't know exactly where) as long as he never takes it off.
He proceeds through Higham on the Way, a big walled city ruled by an abbot, but leaves the next morning, not wishing to become a guardsman or monk there, in spite of the urgings of Clement, a monk, and a guard he meets. On the main road away from Higham, he stops to eat at an inn kept by a beautiful but unhappy peasant maid named Ursula and her brother. She says that his route is through the Wood Perilous to the Burg of the Four Friths and that it's not safe to go there alone - her love rode off there on his horse 5 days ago, and should have been back 3 days ago, but all that came back was his horse with a bloody saddle. She says that Ralph should wait for an armed wagon train of merchants from Higham (the city he just left) and travel with them for safety, but he is undaunted.
In the Wood Perilous he has an ominous meeting with a sinister company of armed men from the Burg of the Four Friths with prisoners, who interrogate him but let him go. Shortly thereafter Ralph kills two armed horsemen who are leading a beautiful woman in a scanty dress by a rope around her neck, and the woman warns him against the Burg of the Four Friths as a place of robbers and murderers who will find out that he killed their guys and come after him. She advises him he should go to Hampton Under Scaur on the other side of the woods instead, and then she rides off.
Next Ralph meets Ursula on the road, now on a quest for the Well at the World's End, and she refuses to accept his escort because she says she can see that his heart is set on someone and something else (having been enchanted by the woman he rescued), so she proceeds towards Hampton Under Scaur on the advice Ralph passes on.
A lone man named Roger who shares his lunch with Ralph offers to be his guide. He persuades him to go to the Burg of the Four Friths first. However, it turns out that the Burg is an oppressive police state where anybody with weapons is documented at the gates and interrogated, where you can't purchase weapons in the market if you don't work for them, and where knights are regularly either arrested or forced at swordspoint to join their guard. Also he learns that the people on the street are eager to capture and put to death the Queen of Hampton, whom they have just heard was captured and then somehow escaped. Also the city is full of enslaved women, whom Roger tells him belong to a neighboring tribe of farmers, which the Burg habitually "wars" on (attacks and steals all their stuff while killing all the men and boys and enslaving all the women and girls). Through a conversation in the tavern he learns that there's a fully developed racism and complete acceptance of this chattel slavery through all the ordinary men of the place across classes, and that military service is nearly universal for these men. He only escapes being jailed or pressed into service by Roger waking him in the middle of the night and helping him sneak over the wall.
Roger then leads Ralph to the Valley of Abundance, a somewhat hidden pocket valley with a castle in the middle, and leaves him there (we later learn he was acting as an agent for the Burg trying to lure new armsmen there when he met Ralph, but he repented later). The valley is inhabited by happy peasants who don't know or care about the outside world and have been safe for generations. The male peasants worship the lady of this castle, who is also the lady of Hampton, as a goddess (she is apparently immortal), and the female peasants are visibly slightly dubious and seem to consider her possibly a fairy?? and possibly her use of magic sinister??? but don't say much about it. Ralph waits in this castle hoping the lady will come there to meet him and reads a book given him by the old lady about the Well at the World's End.
The book tells of a lady who was so beautiful that no man who saw her could help loving her (the physical description is that of Morris's wife Jane, famous as one of the most frequent models of the Pre-Raphaelite painters esp. Rossetti), that she lived alone in the woods but was found by a prince who married her and took her to his kingdom, then lost the kingdom because of men going to war over her, and she escaped and kept being captured and fought over, until eventually she found the Well and drank from it, becoming ageless and undying.
Ralph leaves the castle and meets the lady again being fought over by two knights, both of whom are apparently raving in erotomaniac obsession over her. One kills the other, and the lady promises the victor to become his lover to get him to spare Ralph, but she helps Ralph sneak away in the middle of the night. They travel together and she tells Ralph about her life, but also that she wants him to seek the Well at the World's End; and she talks about Ursula and says Ursula is suited to him and that he will love her in the future. After a few weeks, she is killed while Ralph is hunting one day by the knight they had run away from, who then kills himself. Ralph buries them both and sets out to find Ursula and the Well at the World's End. (Even though they lived together for several weeks at this point he didn't learn her name until later, when she visited him in dreams and told him it was Dorothea.)
At the port city of Whitwall he meets his brother Blaise, who has become a master trader and honored citizen and finally Mayor, holding the keys of the city; also his father's trusty old servant Richard, who was sent with Blaise. Richard helps Ralph learn about the Well and search for traces of Ursula. Clement Chapman arrives for his habitual trade journey, and Ralph travels with him and his large armed party.
The first they hear of Ursula is that she's been taken captive by one of the mountain men who kdinap travelers and sell them as slaves in the evil lands on the other side of the mountains. The next day they are attacked by a party of these on their way through the mountains and Ralph captures one named Bull Shockhead, who swears to serve him till death in exchange for his life. Bull Shockhead saw Ursula taken to sell by his kinsman Bull Nosy, and guides Ralph in pursuit of them.
In the next city of Cheaping Knowe, at Shockhead's advice Ralph asks the thrall merchant and learns that she wasn't sold because she refused to undress and said she'd kill anyone who tried to do anything to her; and that rather than acquiesce in the suggestion to beat her, Bull Nosy left with her again. Clement explains that the next town is under the influence of the evil Lord of Utterbol, a cruel tyrant, fond of war and conquest - though they are not yet to his lands. All the labour here is done by bound serfs instead of free peasants, a shocking concept to Ralph. At the next town of Whiteness they hear that Bull Nosy visited the slave auction with Ursula but left with her without trying to sell and that they surmise he was taking her directly to the Lord of Utterbol, who is famous for paying well for slaves, especially attractive women.
They leave for Goldburg, the next town on their route, and find the body of Bull Nosy on the way, but no trace of Ursula, who they deem has been taken captive. Bull Shockhead breaks down and reveals that Bull Nosy was his brother; they help him bury him. Clement tells that Goldburg was built by a wealthy visionary who intended to create a utopian society of plenty where everybody was equal, but that he died before it was finished, and Goldburg was now a place of extreme inequality, with a few very wealthy ruling over many impoverished labourers. The head of state is a queen who falls in love with Ralph at first sight and therefore listens to his entire life story and then helps him as much as she can, with a letter to the Lord of Utterbol that she says will ensure safety from him "if he heedeth aught my goodwill or enmity". A guide named Morfinn the Minstrel offers to take Ralph to Utterness and thence to Utterbol, and as he has a pass from the Lord of Utterbol, it's likely that he can do this. Clement and his merchants turn back as planned, and Ralph gives Shockhead money and frees him and they swear blood brotherhood, and Shockhead gives him a token that he can use to claim the kinship and help of the clan of the Bull.
Obviously Morfinn is evil; he is one of a group of people-catchers employed by the Lord of Utterbol to bring him travelers to enslave. He leads Ralph to within sight of the lord's pavilion and his knights chase down Ralph on his tired horse, drag him into the tent, and strip him to let an advisor examine his body like a piece of livestock. (He is deemed as goodly a piece of flesh as can be bought.) Ralph bides his time in captivity and gains some favor by being willing to fight and joust for the lord's entertainment, and gains the friendship of a captain of the lord's guard named Otter. They meet the Queen's party on the way back to Utterbol and she falls in love with Ralph at first sight and her clever handmaiden, Agatha, helps her concoct an insanely elaborate scheme to try to make Ralph fall in love with her, with body doubles and pretending to give Ralph back his freedom. However, when Agatha lures him away from the camp for the scheme she finds him not falling for it, then falls in love with him instead and tells him the whole truth. She offers to help him get away because, she says, the king and the queen between them are definitely going to kill him if he goes to Utterbol with their party. Ralph leaves, intending still to somehow sneak into Utterbol to rescue Ursula, but he soon meets Ursula camping in the woods in a man's armor.
Reunited, they tell each other everything that has happened to them, including that Bull Nosy died honorably trying to save her from the Lord of Utterbol after changing his mind on the way. Ursula was prepared for the quest by Dorothea at Hampton, and she is therefore looking for a hermit called the Sage of Swevenham. They find the Sage quickly, and he agrees to teach and guide them. They learn his lore from a special holy book, in a special holy clearing with an ancient stone altar, and they have to dress in special purified garments and learn this book by heart. That takes two days. (...?!)
The first night of travel, they camp in a valley that has big wildcats and have to make a fire to keep them away. When a slave patrol comes the Sage casts a spell that renders them, their horses, and their fire invisible. He then leads them through a barren sea of hardened lava rock to a mountain pass, and they continue alone through a series of valleys throughout the autumn. They stop and overwinter in a big cave which is marked with the way sign carved in the rock, and there's a long passage about making the cave into a home and hunting and making clothes out of animal skins and stuff.
In the springtime a patrol comes to check the cave, some guys from the tribe that has inherited the task of helping questers for the Well, and these guys make a wedding hut from spring branches for them and the oldest one marries them and they have a wedding feast according to those guys's culture, and then they lead them out of the mountains on the other side into a peaceful pastoral land, where the people know the way to the Well but have no desire to go there because they live a life without war or strife already and they don't want to introduce inequality into their society by some people living longer. Sounds fake but okay!
They journey on alone through a wild forest and then an uninhabited desert, continually finding the long-dead and mummified corpses of other people who died on the way. The coolest part of the quest is when they reach the Dry Tree, which has been mentioned before as the arms of Hampton Under Scaur: they come to valley in the desert shaped like an amphitheater, the sides lined with mummified corpses sitting as if on natural benches in their clothes and armor and facing down into the center. At the bottom is an enormous dead tree, so tall that its highest branches clear the top of the valley, standing in a mirror-smooth pool of water, with shields and weapons hung all over its branches. They both sheathe their swords and walk down, finding the path is hewn into steps, and seeing that all the mummies have the same facial expression, a frozen grimace of pain. Ralph wants to drink because the water is clear, and starts to bend down to do so, but Ursula stops him because there is no carven way sign to show it safe, and also the surface of the water doesn't stir in the wind. And just after that a crow comes down, drinks, and then freezes and dies in midair as it's trying to fly away. Ralph is frozen to the spot and seems hypnotized, but Ursula wakes him by saying she sees helmets and weapons with their horses, so they run out of the valley. He asks where the enemy is and she says she just said that to wake him up; but he is still disoriented and falls on the ground. She splashes him with water from her canteen and feeds him some cordial, and when he opens his eyes again he has no memory of the valley, and lets her lead him away.
On the other side of the desert they find a deserted woodland and follow their signs to a tall cliff above the sea, with stairs cut into it. At low tide they are able to go down the stairs and find a sort of altar cut into the rock of the cliff face, with a fountain, and some carven words and the way symbols, and a golden goblet in a little carved stone cabinet with a stone door. Drinking the water heals all the old scars on their bodies. They turn around and journey back home at once, picking up the Sage of Swevenham with them on the way (he's all white-bearded but apparently, he drank of the Well a long time ago and now that he has pals, he's ready to go out into the world again). Everyone they meet, whether they know of the Well or not, can see the difference in them; apparently they seem more impressive and slightly godlike and beautiful.
On their journey home, they first learn that Bull Shockhead, with the help of Ralph's friend Otter, is the new king of Utterbol, and he's a great king and the land is already healing. Also he married the old lord's queen who has decided to not be ambiguously sorta evil anymore. Cool.
Next they learn that Redhead, the guardsman who helped the queen and Agatha trick Ralph out of the lord's encampment, is now married to Agatha and has been promoted; then they learn that the sad Queen of Goldburg ran away into the forest (which I think is meant to be a happy ending for her...???) and her cousin is the new charismatic king. They skirmish with the king of Cheaping Knowe, who is a big pro-slavery greedy and treacherous tyrant, who cringes and swears to serve Ralph in person but then makes plans to sneak around and capture him and his party. They escape with the help of the Sage's grandson who just happens to be in the king's council for some reason, and the king sends armed pursuit, and the Bull tribe comes down from the mountains and helps kill them, including the king, freeing yet another region from tyranny. Ralph shows the tribesmen his token and they have a campfire feast with the Bull tribe that night.
They go through Whitwell and pick up Richard, who musters armed men to support them from the countryside while Ralph goes to Hampton for the first time, and learns that the Burg has been conquered by the people they were constantly enslaving in alliance with the Robin Hood guys in the forest, and the slavers who survived have been driven out. They are now a roving band of awfulness in the region but probably heading for Upmeads. Ralph swears brotherhood to the fellowship there, and tells them a little bit about what happened to their lady; and they all come to help as well.
When they reach Higham by the Way, Ralph finds his brother Hugh captain of the guard, and their third brother, Gregory, is a monk in the same city. Hugh brings a host from Higham along with them. Also a bunch of the shepherds from the surrounding downs come. When they reach Clement Chapman's house in Wulstead and find Ralph's mother and father staying with him, all the noncombatants having already evacuated Upmeads before the Burg outlaws reached it. They overcome them easily with a much smaller force, partly because when Ralph leads the charge without his helmet all his side are supernaturally inspired and all the other side are supernaturally stricken with terror and run in disarray. Ralph ceremonially installs his father and mother back in their house and introduces Ursula as his bride and them both as Friends of the Well to their people. Then Ralph's father announces that he is retiring and Ralph is the new king.
And they live long enough to bring peace and prosperity and joy to all the regions near them, visiting Utterbol regularly, and watching four generations of their descendants grow up, before dying together on the same day and being buried in one tomb.
I accidentally waited a few months after I finished reading to make this post, meaning I had go to back and page through it to get all the events in the right order, and of course when I started doing that I spent like six hours making this post because summarizing and leaving out details is hard. Ugh. Oh well, I'm sure sometime in the future I will be glad I have this summary to refer back to.
(no subject)
Date: 13 Mar 2025 12:49 pm (UTC)It does not actually sound like my type of thing, so thank you for the thorough summary. 🙏
(no subject)
Date: 13 Mar 2025 01:50 pm (UTC)