If I May | Page 5

a
corruption of this or that word, meaning something which has never
laid an egg in its life. It may be so, but in that case you cannot blame
me for continuing to call it the castle which its shape proclaims it.
Knowing nothing of the origin of the game, I can tell myself stories
about it. That it was invented by a woman is obvious, for why else
should the queen be the most powerful piece of them all? She lived,
this woman, in a priest-ridden land, but she had no love for the Church.
Neither bland white bishop nor crooked-smiling black bishop did she
love; that is why she made them move sideways. Yet she could not
deny them their power. They were as powerful as the gallant young
knight who rode past her window singing to battle, where he swooped
upon the enemy impetuously from this side and that, heedless of the
obstacles in the way, or worked two of them into such a position that,
though one might escape, the other was doomed to bite the dust, Yet
the bishop, man of peace though he proclaimed himself, was as
powerful as he, but not so powerful as a baron in his well-fortified
castle. For sometimes there were places beyond the influence of the
Church, if one could reach them in safety; though when the Church
hunted in couples, the king's priest and the queen's priest out together,
then there was no certain refuge, and one must sally upon them bravely
and run the risk of being excommunicated.
No, she did not love the Church. Sometimes I think that she was herself
a queen, who had suffered at the hands of the bishops; and, just as you
or I put our enemies into a book, thereby gaining much private
satisfaction even though they do not recognize themselves, so she made
a game of her enemies and enjoyed her revenge in secret. But if she
were a queen, then she was a queen-mother, and the king was not her
husband but her little son. This would account for the perpetual
intrigues against him, and the fact that he was so powerless to aid
himself. Probably the enemy was too strong for him in the end, and he
and his mother were taken into captivity together. It was in prison that

she invented the royal game, the young king amused himself by carving
out the first rough pieces.
But was she a queen? Sometimes I think that I have the story wrong;
for what queen in those days would have assented to a proposition so
democratic as that a man-at-arms (a "pawn" in the language of the
unromantic) could rise by his own exertions to the dignity of Royalty
itself? But if she were a waiting-maid in love with the king's own
man-at-arms, then it would be natural that she should set no limit to her
ambitions for him. The man-at-arms crowned would be in keeping with
her most secret dreams.
These are the things of which I think when I push my king's
man-at-arms two leagues forward. A game of chess is a romance sport
when it is described in that dull official notation "P to K4 Kt to KB3"; a
story should be woven around it. One of these days, perhaps, I shall tell
the story of my latest defeat. Lewis Carroll had some such intention
when he began Alice Through the Looking Glass, but he went at it
half-heartedly. Besides, being a clergyman and writing as he did for
children, he was handicapped; he dared not introduce the bishops. I
shall have no such fears, and my story will be serious.
Consider for a moment the romance which underlies the most ordinary
game. You push out the king's pawn and your opponent does the same.
It is plain (is it not?) that these are the heralds, meeting at the
border-line between the two kingdoms--Ivoria and Ebonia, let us say.
There I have my first chapter: The history of the dispute, the challenge
by Ivoria, the acceptance of the challenge by Ebonia.
Chapter Two
describes the sallying forth of the knights--"Kt to KB3, Kt to QB3." In
the next chapter the bishop gains the queen's ear and suggests that he
should take the field. He is no fighter, but he has the knack of
excommunicating. The queen, a young and beautiful widow, with an
infant son, consents ("B to QB4"), and set about removing her child to
a place of safety. She invokes the aid of Roqueblanc, an independent

chieftain, who, spurred on by love for her, throws all his forces on to
her side, offering at the same time his well-guarded fastness as a
sanctuary for her boy. ("Castles.") Then the queen musters all her own
troops and