490
THE PLAYER QUEEN
him out to the churchyard he never left that bed. All tried him—parson tried him, priest tried him, doctor tried him, and all he'd say was, "Life is a vale of tears." It's too snug he was in his bed, and believe me, that ever since she has had no father to rout her out of a morning she has been in her bed and small blame to her maybe.
THE BIG COUNTRYMAN: But that's the very sort that are witches. They know where to find their own friends in the lonely hours of the night. There was a witch in my own district that I strangled last Candlemas twelvemonth. She had an imp in the shape of a red cat that sucked three drops of blood from her poll every night a little before the cock crew. It's with their blood they feed them; until they have been fed with the blood they are images and shadows; but when they have it drunk they can be for a while stronger than you or me.
THIRD COUNTRYMAN: The man I knew was no witch, he was no way active. "Life is a vale of tears," he said. Parson tried him, doctor tried him, priest tried him—but that was all he'd say.
FIRST CITIZEN: We'd have no man go beyond evidence and reason, but hear the Tapster out, and when you have you'll say that we cannot leave her alive this day—no, not for one day longer.
TAPSTER: It's not a story that I like to be telling, but you are all married men. Another night that boy climbed up after his goat and it was an hour earlier by his clock and no light in the sky, and when he came to the Castle wall he clambered along the wall among the rocks and bushes till he saw a light from a little window over his head. It was an old wall full of holes, where mortar had fallen out, and he climbed up putting his toes into the holes, till he could look in through the window; and when he looked in, what did he see but the Queen.
FIRST COUNTRYMAN: And did he say what she was like?
TAPSTER: He saw more than that. He saw her coupling with a great white unicorn. (Murmurs among the crowd.)
SECOND COUNTRYMAN: I will not have the son of the unicorn to reign over us, although you will tell me he would be no more than half a unicorn.
FIRST COUNTRYMAN: I'll not go against the people, but I'd let her live if the Prime Minister promised to rout her out of bed in the morning and to set a guard to drive off the unicorn.
THE BIG COUNTRYMAN: I have strangled an old witch with these two hands, and to-day I will strangle a young witch.
SEPTIMUS (who has slowly got up and climbed up on to the mounting-stone which the Tapster has left): Did I hear somebody say that the unicorn is not chaste? It is a most noble beast, a most religious beast. It has a milk-white skin and a milk-white horn, and milk-white hooves, but a mild blue eye, and it dances in the sun. I will have no one speak against it, not while I am still upon the earth. It is written in the great beastery of Paris that it is chaste, that it is the most chaste of all beasts in the world.
THE BIG COUNTRYMAN: Pull him out of that, he's drunk.
SEPTIMUS: Yes, I am drunk, I am very drunk, but that is no reason why I should permit any one to speak against the unicorn.
SECOND CITIZEN: Let's hear him out. We can do nothing till the sun's up.
SEPTIMUS: Nobody shall speak against the unicorn. No, my friends and poets, nobody. I will hunt it if you will, though it is a dangerous and
