Tollo, the giant.

“Have at thee, scurrilous knave”, said Duke Umorfo, chasing a dwarf, his slave around his feasting hall with a whip.

The dwarf, whose name was Tollo, wept with terror as he scurried over the stone floor, ducking under chairs and running this way and that around the great oak banqueting table, knowing from sad experience that the Duke, even when he was not drunk or in a foul temper, could be cruel and violent to his slaves just for his own amusement.

“Sire! Please!”, whimpered the little man, falling with exhaustion upon his knees and cowering behind a stone pillar, “Please, do not strike me!”.

But the Duke’s eyes were wild with some terrible, evil thirst for violence and he would not heed his servants pleas for mercy; raising the whip and ready to crack it hard upon the crown of poor Tollo’s head.

Only the pleading of his lovely, young wife Astrabella saved the poor dwarf for, at that moment, she entered and, seizing the duke around his barrel-like midriff with a tender embrace, she bid him come away into her chamber and into her bed and whispered promises into his ear of all the carnal delights she would offer to him if only he would spare poor Tollo.

Sighing with relief as the duke departed to his chambers but with a look of pure, burning, boiling hatred towards the wicked duke in his eyes, Tollo picked himself up from the castle floor and dusted himself off, swearing in his heart that he would have revenge.

The day wore on and there was great feasting and merriment with dancing and music and games and Astrabella, who always sang like an angel, sang a sweet song about a lover who bested a tyrannical husband in a duel and won his wife.

And, at the end of it all, the duke got very drunk and, without even removing his boots, fell asleep upon his four poster bed and snored as loudly as a pig in a sty.

But, while the duke slept, he started to have a rather strange sort of dream. He dreamt that he was being lifted up, out of his bed by some strange force and then that he was floating through the air.

Crying out in terror and bewilderment, the duke awoke but, as he was awakening, he realized that he was no longer lying in his bed but upon the crenelated battlements of a tall black tower.

“What?”, asked the duke, his head still like a swirling cloud from the effects of too much mead and wine, “Where am I?”

Suddenly, high above the black tower, he heard the boom of a deafening thunder and, kneeling and cowering, he covered his head over with his velvet cloak and prayed that he would not be struck by lightning.

But then, the more the thunder rumbled and roared, the more the king thought that perhaps it sounded something like a voice, speaking to him, though harshly.

“Is it the voice of a god that speaks to me now?”, wondered the duke and, trembling, dared to look up above his head, peering with one eye from behind his cloak.

But it was not God that the duke saw, towering above, but the gigantic face of Tollo the dwarf, grinning down at him with teeth like ivory pillars.

“There are many things greater than your small head can imagine, my duke”, said the dwarf, now gigantic, “Like the power of the herbs that I poured into your drink before it was served to you at the feast and now they have made you the midget and not I. It was I who lifted you up in your sleep and carried you from your bed, placing you in a castle more fitting for a man of your present stature”.

Then, with the flick of an enormous index finger that felt, to the duke, like the force of a fired trebuchet , the dwarf toppled over the chess rook upon which the duke had been kneeling and the duke went tumbling down onto the chequered board below that seemed as vast as a castle courtyard.

Screaming and begging for mercy and with one of his miniscule, matchstick legs now broken, the duke crawled upon his belly over the board in a way that made him look like a worm to the titanic Tollo.

Only Astrabella saved the dukes life, bending down and picking up Tollo in her arms, just as he was about to flatten the duke beneath a white queen.

“Have you seen my lord, the Duke?”, she asked Tollo, “I left him sleeping upon his bed but now he is gone and none know where?”

“The duke is gone from our lives forever, my lady”, replied Tollo, “I have seen to that”.

“Then I am a widow. So come to bed my lover”, said Astrabella, smiling as she cradled the dwarf against her bosom and carried him to her chamber.