Mistress of mistresses

by E R Eddison

  'Mid lily-meadows of some isle Lethean:

  Barbaric, beastly, virginal, divine:

  Fierce feral loveliness: sweet secret fire:

  Last rest and bourne of every lovely line:

  —All these Thou art, that art the World's Desire.

  The deep tones of the Duke's voice, so speaking, were hushed to the quivering superficies of silence, beneath which the darkness stirred as with a rushing of arpeggios upon muted strings. In the corner of that lady's mouth, as she listened, the minor diabolus, dainty and seductive, seemed to turn and stretch in its sleep. Lessingham, not minded' to listen, yet heard. Darkly he tasted in his own flesh Barganax's secret mind: in what fashion this Duke lived in that seeming woman's life far sweetlier than in his own. He leaned back to look upon her, over the Duke's shoulder. He saw now that she had glow-worms in her hair. But when he would have beheld her face, it was as if spears of many-coloured light, such light as, like the halo about the moon, is near akin to darkness, swept in an endless shower outward from his vision's centre; and now when he would have looked upon her he saw but these outrushings, and in the fair line of vision not darkness indeed but the void: a solution of continuity: nothing.

  As a man that turns from the halcyon vision to safe verities, he turned to his Campaspe. Her lips invited sweetly: he bent to them. With a little ripple of laughter, they eluded him, and under his hand, with soft arched back warm and trembling, was the water-rat in very deed.

  About the north-western point of that island there was a garden shadowed with oaks ten generations old and starproof cedars and delicate-limbed close-tufted strawberry-trees. Out of its leafy darknesses nightingale answered nightingale, and nightflowers, sweet-mouthed like brides in their first sleep, mixed their sweetness with the breath of the dews of night. It was now upon the last hour before midnight. From the harbour to the southward rose the long slumbrous notes of a horn, swelling, drawing their heavy sweetness across the face of the night sky. Anthea stood up, slender as a moonbeam in those silent woods. 'The Duke's horn,' she said. 'We must go back; unless you are minded to lodge in this isle tonight, my Lord Lessingham.'

  Lessingham stood up and kissed her hand. For a minute she regarded him in silence from under her brow, her eyes burning steadily, her chin drawn down a little: an unsmiling lip-licking look. Then giving him her arm she said, as they turned to be gone, There is discontent in your eyes. You are dreaming on -somewhat without me and beyond.'

  'Incomparable lady,' answered he, 'call it a surfeit. If I am discontented, it is with the time, that draweth me from these high pleasures to where, as cinders raked up in ashes,—'

  'O no nice excuses,' she said. 'I and Campaspe are not womankind. Truly, 'tis but at Her bidding we durst not disobey we thus have dallied with such as you, my lord.'

  His mustachios stirred.

  'You think that a lie?' she said. The unfathomed pride of mortals!'

  Lessingham said, 'My memories are too fiery clear.'

  They walked now under the obscurity of crowding cypresses. 'It is true', said Anthea, 'that you and Barganax are not altogether as the common rout of men. This world is yours, yours and his, did you but know it. And did you know it, such is the folly of mortals, you would straight be out of conceit with it and desire another. But you are well made, not to know these things. See, I tell it you, yet you believe it not. And though I should tell you from now till dawn, yet you would not believe.' She laughed.

  'You are pleasantly plain with me,' said Lessingham after a pause. 'You can be fierce. So can I. I do love your fierceness, your bites and scratches, madam. Shall I be plain too?' He looked down; her face, level with his shoulder, wore a singular look of benign tranquillity. 'You,' he said, '(and I must not omit Mistress Campaspe, have let me taste this night such pleasures as the heroes in Elysium, I well think, taste nought sweeter. Yet would I have more; yet, what more, I know not.'

  Without looking at him, she made a little mow. 'In your erudite conversation, my lord, I have tasted this night such pleasures as I am by nature accustomed to. I desire no more. I am, even as always I am, contented.'

  'As always?' said he.

  'Is "always" a squeeze of crab-orange in your cup, my lord? 'Tis wholesome truth, howsoe'er. And now, in our sober voyaging back to Zayana, with the learn'd doctor conducting of us, I do look for no less bliss than—: but this you will think ungracious?'

  She looked up, with a little pressure of her arm on his. His eyes, when he turned his face to hers, were blurred and unseeing.

  The path came into the open now, as they crossed the low backbone of the island. They walked into a flood of moonlight; on their left, immeasurably far away, the great snow ranges stood like spirits in the moon-drenched air. Anthea said, 'Behold that mountain, my lord, falling away to the west in saw-toothed ridges a handbreadth leftward of the sycamore-tree. That is Ramosh Arkab; and I say to you, I have dwelt there 'twixt wood and snowfield ten million years.'

  They were now come down to the harbour. The cypress-shadowed glade lay empty: the tables taken up where their banquet had been: the torches and the feasters gone. Far away on the water the lights of the gondolas showed where they took their course homeward to Zayana. Under an utter silence and loneliness of moonlight the lawns sloped gently to the lake. One gondola only lay by the landing-stage. Beside it waited that aged man. With a grave obeisance he greeted Lessingham; they went aboard all three, loosed, and put out. There was no gondolier. Doctor Vandermast would have taken the paddle, but Lessingham made him sit beside Anthea in the seat of honour, and himself, sitting on the fore-deck with his feet in the boat's bottom, paddled her stern-foremost. So they had passage over those waters that were full of drowned stars and secret unsounded deeps of darkness. Something broke the smoothness on the starboard bow; Lessingham saw, as they neared it, that it was the round head of an otter, swimming towards Ambremerine. It looked at them with its little face and hissed. In a minute it was out of eyeshot astern.

  'My beard was black once,' said Vandermast. 'Black as yours, my lord.' Lessingham saw that the face of that old man was blanched in the moonlight, and his eyes hidden as in ocean caves or deep archways of some prison-house, so that only with looking upon him a man might not have known for sure whether there were eyes in truth within those shadows or but void eye-sockets and eclipsing darkness. Anthea sat beside him in a languorous grace. She trailed a finger in the water, making a little rippling noise, pleasant to the ear. Her face, too, was white under the moon, her hair a charmed labyrinth of moonbeams, her eyes pits of fire.

  'Dryads', said Vandermast, after a little, 'are in two kinds, whereof the one is more nearly consanguineous with the more madefied and waterish natures, naiads namely and nereids; but the other kind, having their habitation nearer to the meteoric houses and the cold upper borders of woods appropinquate to the snows and the gelid ice-streams of the heights, do derive therefrom some qualities of the oreads or mountain nymphs. I have indulged my self-complacency so far as to entertain hopes, my lord, that, by supplying for your entertainment one of either sort, and discoursing so by turns two musics to your ear, andante piacevole e lussurioso and then allegro appassionato, I may have opened a more easier way to your lordship's perfect satisfaction and profitable enjoyment of this night's revelries.'

  That old man's talk, droning slow, made curious harmonies with the drowsy body of night; the dip and swirl and dip again of Lessingham's paddle; the drip of water from the blade between the strokes.

  'Where did your lordship forsake my little water-rat?' he asked in a while.

  'She was turned willow-wren at the last,' answered Lessingham.

  'Such natures', said Vandermast, 'do commonly suck much gratification out of change and the variety of perceptible form and corporeity. But I doubt not your lordship, with your more settled preferences and trained appetites, found her most acceptable in form and guise of a woman?'

  'She did me the courtesy', answered Lessingham, to maintain that shape for the mor
e part of our time together.'

  They proceeded in silence. Vandermast spoke again. 'You find satisfaction, then, in women, my lord?'

  'I find in their society', Lessingham answered, 'a pleasurable interlude.'

  That', said that learned man, 'agreeth with the con-elusion whereunto, by process of ratiocination, I was led upon consideration of that stave or versicule recited by your lordship about one hour since, and composed, if I mistake not, by your lordship. Went it not thus?

  Anthea, wooed with flatteries, To please her lover's fantasies, Unlocks her bosom's treasuries.— Ah! silver apples like to these Ne'er grew, save on those holy trees Tended by nymphs Hesperides.'

  'What's this?' said Lessingham, and there was danger in his voice.

  'You must not take it ill', said Vandermast, 'that this trifle, spoke for her ear only and the jealous ear of night, was known to me without o'erhearing. Yourself are witness that neither you nor she did tell it me, and indeed I was half a mile away, so scarce could a heard it A little cold: a little detached, methought, for a love-poem. But indeed I do think your lordship is a man of deeds. Do you find satisfaction, then, in deeds?'

  'Yes,' answered he.

  'Power,' said that learned doctor: 'power; which maketh change. Yea, but have you considered the power that is in Time, young man? to change the black hairs of your beard to blanched hairs, like as mine: and the last change of Death? that, but with waiting and expecting and standing still, overcometh all by drawing of all to its own likeness. Dare your power face that power, to go like a bridegroom to annihilation's bed? Let me look at your eyes.'

  Lessingham, whose eyes had all this while been fixed upon Vandermast's, said, 'Look then.'

  The face of the night was altered now. A cool drizzle of rain dimmed the moon: the gondola seemed to drift a-beam, cut off from all the world else upon desolate waters. Vandermast's voice came like the soughing of a distant wind: 'The hairless, bloodless, juiceless, power of silence,' he said, 'that consumeth and abateth and swalloweth up lordship and subjection, favour and foulness, lust and satiety, youth and eld, into the dark and slub-bery mess of nothingness.' Lessingham saw that the face of that old man was become now as a shrivelled death's-head, and his eyes but windows opening inwards upon the horror of .an empty skull. And that lynx-eyed mountain nymph, fiercely glaring, crouching sleek and spotted beside him, was become now a lynx indeed, with her tufted slender ears erect and the whiskers moving nervously right and left of her snarling mouth. And Vandermast spake loud and hoarse, crying out and saying, 'You shall die young, my Lord Lessingham. Two years, a year, may be, and you shall die. And then what help shall it be that you with your high gifts of nature did o'ersway great ones upon earth (as here but to-day you did in Acrozayana), and did ride the great Vicar of Rerek, your curst and untamed horse, till he did fling you to break your neck, and die at the last? What is fame to the deaf dust that shall then be your delicate ear, my lord? What shall it avail you then that you had fair women? What shall it matter though they contented you never? seeing there is no discontent whither you go down, my lord, neither yet content, but the empty belly of darkness enclosing eternity upon eternity. Or what shall even that vision beyond the veil profit you (if you saw it indeed tonight, then ere folk rose from table), since that is but impossibility, fiction and vanity, and shall then be less than vanity itself: less than the dust of you in the worm's blind mouth? For all departeth, all breaketh and perisheth away, all is hollowness and nothing worth ere it sink to very nothing at last.'

  'I saw nought,' said Lessingham. 'What is that Lady Fiorinda then?' His voice was level; only the strokes of his paddle came with a more steadier resolution, may be, of settled strength as that old man spoke.

  The gondola lurched sideways. Lessingham turned swiftly from his outstaring of that aged man to bring her safe through a sudden turmoil of the waters that rose now and opened downward again to bottomless engulfings. Pale cliffs superimpended in the mist and the darkness, and fires burned there, with the semblance as of corpse-fires. And above those cliffs was the semblance of icy mountains, and streams that rolled burning down them of lava, making a sizzling in the water that was heard high above the voice of the waves; and Lessingham beheld walking shrouded upon the cliffs faceless figures, beyond the stature of human kind, that seemed to despair and lament, lifting up skinny hands to the earless heaven. And while he beheld these things, there was torn a ragged rift in the clouds, and there fled there a bearded star, baleful in the abyss of night. And now there was thunder, and the noise as of a desolate sea roaring upon the coasts of death. Then, as a thought steps over the threshold of oblivion, all was gone; the cloudless summer night held its breath in the presence of its own inward blessedness: the waters purred in their sleep under the touch of Anthea's idly trailing finger.

  Lessingham laid down his paddle and clapped his right hand to his hip; but they had gone unweaponed to that feast. Without more ado he with an easy swiftness, scarcely to rock the boat, had gotten in his left hand the two wrists of Vandermast: his right hand slid up beneath the long white beard, and fumbled the doctor's skinny throat. 4Scritch-owl,' he said, *you would unman me, ha? with your sickly bodings? You have done it, I think: but you shall die for't.' The iron strength of his fingers toyed delicately about that old man's weasand.

  Very still sat Doctor Vandermast. He said, 'Suffer me yet to speak.'

  'Speak and be sudden,' said Lessingham.

  Surely that old man's eyes looked now into his with a brightness that was as the lifting up of day. 'My Lord Lessingham,' he said, 'per realitatem et perfectionem idem intelligo: in my conceit, reality and perfection are one. If therefore your lordship have suffered an inconvenience, you are not to revenge it upon me: your disorder proceedeth but from partial apprehension.'

  'Ha! but did not you frame and present me, with fantasticoes? did not you spit your poison?' said Lessingham. 'Do not mistake me: I am not afeared of my death. But I do feel within me somewhat, such as I ne'er did meet with its like aforrow, and I know not what it is, if it be not some despair. Wherefore, teach me to apprehend fully, you were best, and that presently. Or like a filthy fly I'll finger you off to hell.' Upon which very word, he strangely took his fingers from the lean weasand of that old man and let go the lean wrists.

  Vandermast said, as if to himself, 'Cum mens suam impotentiam imaginatur, eo ipso contristatur: when the mind imagineth its own impotence, it by that only circumstance falleth into a deep sadness. My lord,' he said, raising his head to look Lessingham in the face, 'I did think you had seen. Had you so seen, these later sights I did present you, and these prognostications of decay, could not have cankered so your mind: they had been then but as fumadoes, hot and burning spices, to awake your appetite the more and prepare you for that cup whereof he that drinketh shall for ever thirst and for ever be satisfied; yea, and without it there is no power but destroyeth and murdereth itself at last, nor no pleasure but disgusteth in the end, like the stench of the dead.'

  'Words,' said Lessingham. The mouth jangleth, as lewd as a lamp that no light is in. I tell you, I saw nought: nought but outrushing lights and dazzles. And now, I feel my hand upon a latch, and you, in some manner I understand not, by some damned sleight, withholding me. Teach me, as you said but now, to apprehend fully. But if not, whether you be devil or demigod or old drivelling disard as I am apt to think you: by the blessed Gods, I will tear you into pieces.'

  Anthea widened her lips and laughed. 'Now you are in a good vein, my lord. Shall I bite his throat out?' She seemed to slaver at the mouth. 'You are a lynx, go,' said Lessingham. It was as if the passion of his anger was burnt out, like a fire of dead leaves kindled upon a bed of snow.

  Vandermast's lean hands twisted and unclasped their fingers together in his lap. 'I had thought', he said, to himself aloud, in the manner of old men, 'her ladyship would have told me. O inexorable folly to think so! Innumerable laughter of the sea: ever changing: shall I never learn?'

  'What is that l
ady?' said Lessingham.

  Vandermast said, 'You did command me, my lord, to learn you to apprehend fully. But here, in limine demonstrationis, upon the very threshold, appeareth a difficulty beyond solution, in that your lordship is instructed already in things contingent and apparent, affectiones, actiones, phenomenal actualities rei politico; et militaris, the council chamber and the camp, puella-puellae and matters conducive thereunto. But in things substantial I find you less well grounded, and here it is beyond my art to, carry you further seeing my art is the doctor's practice of reason; because things substantial are not known by reason but by perception: perceptio per solam suam essentiam; and omnis substantia est necessario infinita: all substance, in its essence, infinite.'

  'Leave this discourse,' said Lessingham, 'which, did I understand its drift, should make me, I doubt not, as wise as a capon. Answer me: of what substantia or essentia is that lady?'

  Doctor Vandermast lowered his eyes. 'She is my Mistress,' he said.

  'That, to use your gibberish, old sir, is per accidens,' said Lessingham. 'I had supposed her the Duke's mistress: the Devil's mistress too, belike. But per essence, what is she? Why did my eyes dazzle when I would have looked upon her but at that moment to-night? since many a time ere then I easily enough beheld her. And why should aught lie on it, that they did so dazzle? Come, we have dealt with seeming women to-night that be nymphs of the lakes and mountains, taking at their will bird-like shapes and beastly. What is she? Is she such an one? Tell me, for I will know.'

  'No,' said Vandermast, shaking his head. 'She is not such as these.'

  Eastward, ahead, Lessingham saw how, with the dancings of summer lightnings, the sky was opened on a sudden behind the towers and rampires of Acrozayana. For that instant it was as if a veil had been torn to show where, built of starbeams and empyreal light, waited, over all, the house of heart's desire.

  That learned man was searching now beneath the folds of his gaberdine, and now he drew forth a little somewhat and, holding it carefully in his fingers, scanned it this way and that and raised it to view its shape against the moon. Then, giving it carefully to Lessingham, 'My lord,' he said, 'take this, and tender it as you would a precious stone; for indeed albeit but a little withered leaf, there be few jewels so hard to come by or of such curious virtue. Because I have unwittingly done your lordship an ill service to-night, and because not wisdom itself could conduct you to that apprehension you do stand in need of, I would every deal I may to serve and further you. And because I know (both of my own judgement and by certain weightier confirmations of my art) the proud integrity of your lordship's mind and certain conditions of your inward being, whereby I may, without harm to my own fealty, trust you thus, albeit to-morrow again our enemy: therefore, my Lord Lessingham, behold a thing for your peace. For the name of this leaf is called sferra cavallo, and this virtue it hath, to break and open all locks of steel and iron. Take it then to your bed, my lord, now in the fair guest-chamber prepared for you in Acrozayana. And if, for the things you saw and for the things you saw not to-night, your heart shall be troubled, and sleep stand iron-eyed willing not to lie down with you and fold her plumes about your eyelids, then if you will, my lord, taking this leaf, you may rise and seek. What I may, that do I, my lord, giving you this. There shall, at least, no door be shut against you. But when night is done and day cometh you must by all means, (and this lieth upon your honour), burn the leaf. It is to do you good I give it unto you, and for your peace. Not for a weapon against my own sovereign lord.'