Orfeo's Tale

Famed for his harp-playing as well as for his just and loving nature, Orfeo reigned in Thrace, in northern Greece. His rule was a time of prosperity and peace for courtiers and commonfolk alike. But those halcyon days ended one afternoon in May when Orfeo's lovely Queen, Heurodis, was carried in from the palace garden, shaken and sobbing.

At length she told her story. That morning, birdsong and the gentle spring air had lulled her to sleep under an ymp tree - that is, a tree formed not by nature but by grafting. Perhaps because these trees were a kind of disordering of natural processes, they often marked borders between the mortal and the Faerie realms, and Heurodis had been careless indeed to linger near one. At noon, a border line of time, she had awakened with a start.

Heurodis had dreamed that she would soon be parted from Orfeo and from the whole bright world. A Fairy King, tall and gleaming and wearing a crown ablaze with gems, had approached and wordlessly gathered her in his arms. He had carried her through darkness to his own land, where he showed her turreted castles and flowery meadows and soaring flocks of white birds. Then the King set her down beneath the ymp tree again and, on pain of dreadful punishment, ordered her to wait for him there the next day. She dared not defy him, she told Orfeo.

The next morning, Orfeo mustered his knights and surrounded the tree where Heurodis waited, pale and silent. As they stood gazing around for some sign of a hostile force, only the clank of their armor and the jingle of bridles broke the midday calm. Suddenly, Orfeo, standing guard nearest the tree, gave a cry. Heurodis had disappeared from the very center of the ring of armed men.

Overcome by sorrow, Orfeo abandoned his throne and fled to the wilderness, taking with him only his harp. For ten years he stilled his hunger with roots, berries and bark. He pillowed his head at night on stones, under the stars when the weather was fair and in caves when it rained or snowed. He grew gaunt and shaggy, and his sole pleasure was in his music. When the harp's plangent notes floated through the forest, songbirds fell silent, and wild beasts rustled the undergrowth as they crept near to listen.

Orfeo met no other mortal during those long years of wandering, but on hot summer days, he saw glinting fairy cavalcades threading through the high grass of forest meadows and heard the distant blasts of their hunting horns. One day he awoke to the crack of sticks and the thump of hoofbeats on the forest floor. Emerging from the shadows was a procession of fairy huntresses, each mounted on a snowy horse, each with a silver-gray falcon resting on a gloved hand. One of the ladies turned to look at the poor minstrel that Orfeo had become, and that one was Heurodis. They gazed at each other and their eyes brimmed with tears. But before they could speak, the procession had moved on.

Casting aside all caution, Orfeo seized his harp and followed the huntresses into the forest. When a cliff loomed up before them, they wound through a cleft into the very rock. Orfeo kept close behind, guided through the blackness by the clatter of hoofs. He groped for hours along a tortuous corridor, then light stung his eyes, and he was dazzled by a white-towered castle that rose from a verdant plain.

All gates open for a wandering minstrel, and Orfeo soon gained entrance to the castle. Within its walls, he passed through gardens littered with sleeping mortals, all positioned just as they had been at the instant the fairies carried them off. here and there, like equestrian statues, were mounted knights, spirited away from the mortal world at the height of conflict. Orfeo found the Fairy King in the central courtyard - and there lay Heurodis, asleep under a tree that was the mirror of the one in her own palace garden.

Orfeo knelt before the Fairy King and offered to play. The fairy, raising his brows at the humble appearance of the minstrel, grudgingly agreed. But when a cascade of shimmering notes poured from the harp strings, the King's demeanor softened. Orfeo's melody quivered and died. And the mighty Fairy King offered any reward the minstrel might ask.

"Then give me," Orfeo answered, "that lady who sleeps under the ymp tree."
"An unseemly match," replied the Fairy King. "It would be a loathsome thing to see her in your company."
"It would be more loathsome still for you to have lied when you offered me any reward," answered Orfeo.

That was true, as the King knew. He gestured, and Heurodis stirred and wakened. Her gaze fell on her husband, and her pale face brightened. In an instant she was beside him. Orfeo took her hand and led her from the hall. And although some chroniclers claim that he lost her during th long, dark passage back through the wall of rock separating the fairy from the mortal realm, others say that Orfeo and Heurodis returned to the world of daylight in triumph and were crowned anew.