great lords, each one of whom is great as any king; and if all these
suffice not to prove the madness of your quest, know that in the heart
of the city a mighty castle stands; four stories high is the castle, and
on the fourth and topmost dwells your Blanchefleur, together with four
other noble damsels in a fair chamber, whose windows are cased in wood
of the sweet-scented myrtle tree, while its doors are formed of ebony
that never yields to fire, and this ebony is overlaid with beaten gold,
on which are graven strange devices of words and scroll and flower-work,
and, because none but maidens dwell there, this tower is called the
Maidens' Tower. In its midst stands a crystal pillar, and from the
pillar gushes forth a fountain, whose waters are led on arches into
every room, and so back into the pillar; and from the maidens' chamber a
winding stair leads to that wherein dwells the Admiral himself, and
whither, for fourteen days' service at a time, two maidens must wait
morning and evening on their Lord, one with a fair linen towel, the
other with water in a golden bowl. Fierce and cruel beyond words is the
watchman of this tower, and any man who, without good and lawful cause,
approaches it, he slays. Besides all this, the tower day and night is
guarded by sixteen furious men, who never close their eyes in sleep;
and there is yet another strange thing which you shall hear.

[Illustration]

'Every springtide the Admiral takes to him a wife; and when the year is
out, he calls to him all the lords, kings, and princes of his realm, and
in their presence casts off his wife, and causes a knight to behead her,
that no man may wed her after him; thus with the bitterness of an early
death does she pay for the fleeting honour of royal wedlock; and when
his wife is dead, the Admiral, with intent to replace her with another,
summons the maidens who are within the tower to appear before him in a