Tiphaine’s Kingdom lay on the Scottish border, not far from the romantic and lonely Eskdalemuir Observatory (erected in 1908). Her castle of Elfhame—a steep-sided grassy hill, round as a pudding basin—had great purity of style. A small lake on its summit—still known as the Fairy Loch; and local babies with croup51 are still dipped in its icy, weedless water—had a crystal floor, which served as a skylight. A door in the hillside, operated by legerdemain, opened into a complex of branching corridors, one of which, broadening into a set of anterooms, led to the Throne Room, which was wainscotted52 in silver and lit by candles in crystal sconces. It was a circular room, and round it, like the ambulatory of a cathedral—and like the ambulatory of a cathedral fenced off by pillars and a light latticing—ran a wide gallery where the courtiers strolled, conversed, and amused themselves with dice, bouts­rimés53, news from other Kingdoms and the outer world, needlework, flirtations, conjectural scandal and tarot. The hum of conversation was like the hum of bees54. But at the time of which I write, no one mentioned the five black swans, and the word ‘death’ was not spoken, though it lay, compact as a pebble, in every heart.

Dying is not an aristocratic activity like fencing, yachting, patronizing the arts: it is enforced—a willy-nilly affair. Though no one at Elfhame was so superstitious as to suppose Tiphaine would live forever, they were too well-mannered to admit openly that she would come to her end by dying. In the same way, though everyone knew that she had wings, it would have been lèse-majesté55 to think she might use them. Flying was a servile activity: cooks, grooms, laundresses flew about their work, and to be strong on the wing was a merit in a footman. But however speedily he flew to the banqueting room with a soup tureen, at the threshold he folded his wings and entered at a walk.

In these flying circles of Elfhame, Tiphaine’s dying was discussed as openly and with as much animation as if the swans were outriders of a circus. A kitchen boy, flying out with a bucket of swill for the palace pigs, had been the first to see them. On his report, there was a swirl of servants, streaming like a flock of starlings from the back door to see for themselves. The head gardener, a venerable fairy, swore he could distinguish Queen Maharit in the swan with the long bridling neck: Maharit had just such a neck. Tiphaine’s servants were on easier terms with death than her courtiers were. They had plucked geese, drawn grouse and blackcock, skinned eels. They had more contact with the outer world where they picked up ballads and folk stories, flew over battlefields, and observed pestilences. The mortals among them, stolen from their cradles to be court pets and play­things, and who, failing in this, had drifted into kitchen society, seldom lived into their second century, even though on their importation they were injected with an elixir of longevity, as tom kittens are gelded for domestication. Thus death was at once more real to them and less imposing. Every day their loyalty grew more fervent. They said there would never again be such a queen as Tiphaine, and had a sweep-stake as to which lady (Elfindom inverts Salic law56) would be the next.