r, waiting for the
king, speaking no word, only thinking drearily; and under the pavement of
the great church Cissela lay, and by the side of her tomb stood two men,
old men both, Valdemar the king, and Siur.

So the king, after that he had gazed awhile on the carven face of her he
had loved well, said at last:

'And now, Sir Carver, must you carve me also to lie there.' And he
pointed to the vacant space by the side of the fair alabaster figure.

'O king,' said Siur, 'except for a very few strokes on steel, I have done
work now, having carved the queen there; I cannot do this thing for you.'

What was it sent a sharp pang of bitterest suspicion through the very
heart of the poor old man? he looked steadfastly at him for a moment or
two, as if he would know all secrets; he could not, he had not strength
of life enough to get to the bottom of things; doubt vanished soon from
his heart and his face under Siur's pitying gaze; he said, 'Then perhaps
I shall be my own statue,' and therewithal he sat down on the edge of the
low marble tomb, and laid his right arm across her breast; he fixed his
eyes on the eastern belt of windows, and sat quite motionless and silent;
and he never knew that she loved him not.

But Siur, when he had gazed at him for awhile, stole away quietly, as we
do when we fear to waken a sleeper; and the king never turned his head,
but still sat there, never moving, scarce breathing, it seemed.

Siur stood in his own great hall (for his house was large), he stood
before the dais, and saw a fair sight, the work of his own hands.

For, fronting him, against the wall were seven thrones, and behind them a
cloth of samite of purple wrought with golden stars, and barred across
from right to left with long bars of silver and crimson, and edged below
with melancholy, fading green, like a September sunset; and opposite each
throne was a glittering suit of armour wrought wonderfully in bright
steel, except that on the breast of each suit was a face worked
marvellously in enamel, the face of Cissela in a glory of golden hair;
and the glory of that gold spread away from the breast on all sides, and
ran cunningly along with the steel rings, in such a way as it is hard
even to imagine: moreover, on the crest of each helm was wrought the
phoenix, the never-dying bird, the only creature that knows the sun; and
by each suit lay a gleaming sword terrible to look at, steel from pommel
to point, but wrought along the b