The Dryad

The Dryad: A Novel is a novel by the British writer, playwright, and politician Justin Huntly McCarthy (1860–1936), published in 1905 by Harper & Brothers of New York and London. The story is set in Greece of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries: an ancient land ruled by Frankish nobles, crossed by the principalities, knights, and mercenaries established after the Crusades, while the lingering presence of the ancient Greek gods still lurks deep in the sacred grove of Eleusis. The novel opens as Simon of Rouen, a dissolute mercenary, enters the forest with an old sword and a rusty lantern. Cynical and embittered, he encounters Argathona, the immortal dryad of the grove, and there also meets the young knight Rainouart. Out of jealousy and malice, Simon draws in a band of lurking brigands and then watches coldly; the dryad, using ancient magic, summons a storm to scatter the robbers and saves the wounded knight, and from this a love between mortal and immortal is born that can hardly be fulfilled. Thereafter, tournaments, the Theban court, the Catalan Company, hermits, and the "Rose of the World" unfold layer by layer, weaving loyalty and betrayal, idealism and worldliness, love and renunciation, until it all ends in a poignant reconciliation and letting go. With a light touch, McCarthy blends the adventure of chivalric romance with the fantasy of Greek myth; his language is ironic and poetic. He creates in Simon a figure at once detestable and ridiculous, yet one who retains a last glimmer of humanity as an observer, and he also portrays the futility and poignancy of mortal striving for immortal beauty. The book is long in the public domain and can be read for free on platforms such as Project Gutenberg; it is an intriguing sample of early twentieth-century English popular historical fantasy.