Mistress of mistresses

by E R Eddison

  Lessingham took it and examined it well in the light of the moon. Then, with a noble look to Vandermast, he put it away like a jewel in his bosom.

  VIII

  Sferra Cavallo

  PURSUIT OF A NIGHT VISION FIORINDA ON THE DREAM-STONE WHIRLPOOL MISTRESS OF MISTRESSES 'NORTH, IN RIALMAR.'

  In the deep and dead time of the night there went forth a dream through the gate of horn, by permission of Her that is, and is to come. And the dream, treading the viewless ways, came down to the land of Meszria and to the citadel that overlooks Zayana town, and entered and stood in the fair guest-chamber at the foot of the golden bed, the posts whereof were fashioned in the likeness of hippogriffs, gold and with eyes of sapphire. And upon that bed was the Lord Lessingham but even now fallen into an uncertain slumber. And the dream put on beauty, and, to temper that beauty, the appearance of moonlight as a gown and of a girdle as of silvery moonlight upon snow mountains, and the appearance as of a bodice woven of those stars which men call Berenice's Hair: stars of so delicate a shimmering brightness that the gross direct look may ill perceive it, but is best gazed on askance or indirect. But by ordainment of the Gods, there was drawn about the head of that dream and across its face a veil of light, as darkness inscrutable, or as wonder overwritten upon wonder so as none might read. And the dream spake with the voice that a sleeper may hear, too fine for waking ears, (unless, indeed, for a moment they wake and dream at once), saying: I promised and I will perform.

  Lessingham, hearing these words, and knowing that voice, moved and opened his eyes and awoke to the night and the lonely chamber.

  It was not as if a dream had fled: rather truth, that had stood but a moment since ready to cast off her cloak. Like a man overtaken by swift-darkening night in a bog through which a path leads, hard to find even by day and now lost though but a moment since he trod it, he seemed to plunge and stagger without a guide. Betwixt sleeping and waking, he clad himself, girt on his sword, took from beneath the pillow that little leaf, and, filled with that vision, blundered towards the door. The great iron key stood in the lock where, upon going to bed, he had turned it. With the touch of that leaf the locked door swung open before him like a door that opens in a dream. As a dreamer with hastening undirected noiseless footsteps follows an unknown quest, Lessingham, not knowing well whether he dreamed or no, followed he knew not what, save that, may be, there was nought else in earth or heaven worth the following. And as he, strode or stumbled along dim corridors, up winding shadowy stairs, across moonlit courts, still there sprang open before him both lock and bolt in a suddenness of dream-like stillness. And ever as each door opened, it opened upon emptiness: quiet empty rooms of darkness or silent moonlight

  In the mean time, not Lessingham alone waked in Acrozayana. In the spacious throne-room the wings that lifted their glory above the dream-stone seemed to quiver a little. The blackness of the great twisted pillars, the poppied frieze, the walls, the very floor of marble, seemed to waver like the texture of a dream. It was as if, in that midnight hour, some deeper drowsiness of moonset, that held its breath to listen to its own stillness, hung in the perfumed air, circling, tending in slow eddies ever to one centre. And there, as it had been glamour's selfmade flesh for a season, to be queen of all scents and furry wings, dews, and silences, and star-shimmering depths, and of all wild hearts' desires that cry to the heart of summer night, Fiorinda sat throned upon the dream-stone.

  She had let fall her cloak, which lay tumbled in waves of sea-green velvet and silver about her feet and about the cushions where she sat. Her arms, bare to the shoulder, had an ivory pallour and an ivory smoothness: pillars at the temple door. Her finger-nails were as shells new-taken from some enchanted sea: the fingers as branched white coral from that sea's treasure-groves, marvellously transmuted from its native insensate elegance to be the ornament and living instrument of that lady's life and her inward thought, and wearing the livery of her own aching loveliness. Her gown was of gauzy silk coloured like moonlight, pleated with a hundred pleats and a-glitter with silver sequins and a maze of spiral tendrils made of little beads of jet. A girdle of corded silver lace curved low on her hips. Her bodice, of the like stuff save that here were diamonds instead of sequins amid the spirals, barely contained as with a double cup its warm and breathing treasures. Betwixt bodice and girdle the sweet bare interspace was a thing to shame all jewels, to make driven snow seem sullied, and magnolia petals coarse and common, beside the lily of its heavenly purity.

  Upon her left, below her, a pace or so removed, Barganax sat sideways on the steps of the throne, whence he might behold all at a look her beauty: strange, complex, discordant in its elements, yet in the living whole satisfying and perfect.

  'More,' he said.

  'I am tired of talking,' answered she.

  'Look at me, then,' said the Duke.

  She did so, with a little finical inclination of the head, as a rose might take notice of a butterfly, and looked away again.

  'Were it not that I do suspect 'twas your own devilish device to trip me up, the better to flaunt your power upon me, I should be sorry,' said the Duke, after a minute's silence.

  'Repentance,' said Fiorinda, 'is a thing not easy to forgive, in a great man.'

  'Will you forgive the deed?' he said. 'For your forgiveness, may be, shall be a sunshine to drink up these mists.'

  'I'll have it named first,' she said.

  'I'll not name it,' said the Duke. 'It was an abomination, a woe, a miscreative dream.'

  'A nameless abomination! I must pursue this.' There was in her voice a voluptuous lazy languor. 'And it befell —when?'

  'Upon Friday of last week.'

  'And this is Monday!' she said. A whole masque of little gadflies of unseizable conscient comedy danced forth in her eyes and were gone. 'And yet,' she said: 'Anthea: one of my most happiest devisements. And yet: was it fit indeed to sup a falcon with straw?'

  Barganax looked at her, and as he looked his brow lightened and his eyes grew dark. 'O, you are beyond soundings,' he said. 'Do you laugh? or do your nurse it against me? Well, there it is: and I swear to you, there was not an instant in it but my thought and my sense were nailed to you: but only to prove for the thousandth time your power, that outparagons all.

  'Well,' he said: 'do you know that?'

  Her eyebrows, like brooding wings beyond nature long and slender of some far-flown bird, informed the serene purity of her brow with an air of permanent soft surprise touched sometimes with contemplation, and now with a faint mockery. 'Yes,' she said.

  'Will you forgive me?'

  'Yes,' she said.

  'I would give much,' said Barganax, 'but to see your mind. Do you understand, that every road I tread leads to you?'

  ‘I have heard you say so,' she said. 'No doubt your grace will accept the same comforting assurance from me.'

  'It is true I am a proud man,' said Barganax then; 'yet I doubt my pride for this. For this, I must know in myself perfection.'

  Fiorinda smiled. It was as if the termlessness of some divinity, clear, secure, pitiless, taking its easeful pleasure in the contemplation of its own self, lay veiled in that faint Olympian smile.

  'But with you,' said the Duke: 'no such matter. You are perfect. You know it. Most devilishly you know it.'

  He stood up and paced back and forth upon the carpet, then came to a stop beside her. 'But no. Jealousy', he said, 'is a distemper of little men. Puff! 'tis gone. 1 play even, madonna. And,—well, I hold my own.'

  Slowly, after a minute, she turned her head: gave him her green eyes. As she looked they widened, and it was as if fire leapt in their deeps and then flickered down to quiet embers. She turned away, giving him now, from black hair to silver shoulder, the virginal sweet line of her bended neck; the side view of her chin, firm and proud, and of lips, where her thought seemed to rest like a lily on still water.

  One foot upon the highest step of the throne, he stood looking down at her. ‘I have a mind', said he, 'to t
urn sculptor: chryselephantine work: no, jet and ivory: ivory and black diamonds, rather: or the old man shall conjure up from the treasure-beds of Tartarus some new such thing, since earth hath nought precious enough. And I will fashion therein the likeness of each particular hair. Listen,' (bending a little nearer): ‘I made this for you last week.' And he began to speak the lines, it was as though her dark troublous beauty was turned to music in his voice. As in secret antiphone to that music, her bosom mounted and fell with a quickened breathing.

  Some love the lily, some the rose

  Which in the summer garden blows;

  Some daisies shy, some mignonette,

  Some the sweet-breathed violet.

  But I a statelier Flower do owe,

  Doth in a heav'nlier garden grow:

  The Lily of sphinxian mystery,

  Too fair, too perilous-sweet to see,

  With curious work of filigree

  Trac'd in a thousand crimps and rings

  On her softly spreading wings.

  Upon the mountain of delight

  Bloometh my wild Flower, black like night.

  Her petals, curl'd luxuriously,

  Ravish the live soul forth of me.

  Her perfum'd darkness sets, like wine,

  My veins a-throb with fire divine.—

  Fate, take all: yet leave me this:

  The Flower of Flowers, my Flower-Delice.

  She made no sign, but remained with her downward, listening look. ‘I wonder?' Barganax said: 'did I ask you, no matter what, would you give it me? Were I bid you do, no matter what, would you do it?'

  She nodded twice or thrice, without turning her head. 'All of me,' she answered softly. 'What you will.'

  'Ah, then you shall swear this. For there is a favour you have till now refused me.'

  'O,' said she, and the thing that dwelt in the corner of her mouth was awake and ready; 'if you must chaffer with me for oaths and blind bargains, I'll take back my words. We'll start fair.'

  'No, no,' said the Duke. *No oaths, then. I'll not cheapen the sweet bounty of your word already spoken.'

  'But I've taken it back,' said she.

  'Then,' he said, 'we begin again. First: will you not smile me a thank for to-day's proceedings?'

  'I'll think on't,' she said. ‘I might. But I'll be besought more prettily for it ere I do it.'

  ' 'Twas but to pleasure you, so I will at least be thanked,' said the Duke. 'For myself, why, I'd see the Admiral and my silly sister and the whole bunch of cards drowned together in the Styx ere I'd a stirred a foot in it. And so, for my payment—'

  'You will unthank yourself with such talk,' she said. 'And besides, it is all lies.'

  Barganax laughed. Then, looking in hers, his eyes became dark and masterful. 'It is lies,' he said. 'But only because of this, that I cannot do without you. You have taken it back?' He was suddenly kneeled at her feet: his hands shut like shackles upon her ankles, prisoning them. 'I have never bended knee to man or woman,' he said; 'and now I will have my way. At this hundredth time of asking, will you be my Duchess in Zayana?'

  She made as if to rise, but his grip tightened. He said in a low fierce voice, 'Answer.' In his hands he felt her answer before she spoke: 'Never that.'

  'That is an old stale answer,' he said. 'Try again.'

  Fiorinda threw up her head with a little silent laugh. 'If you have your hour,' she said, 'to begin or to refuse, so have I mine.'

  'But why?' said the Duke fiercely. She looked stonily down upon him. 'Why?' he said again.

  'Because I had rather be my own mistress,' she said. 'And yours.'

  'Ha! and I must starve still, save at the horning of the moon? And then oft but live on supposings; and every handwhile the chance you may forsake me? By heavens, but I will have more of you, madam.'

  She shook her head. The Duke, letting go her feet now, clasped his arms about her below the knees. ‘I know you care not a rush for the ducal crown. You are not dissevered by places, nor altered by times, nor subject unto to and fro. Do it for my sake. For indeed I am most venomously in love with you,' (here he buried his forehead in her lap): 'were I lose you, as well tear out my heart roots.'

  She sat very still. Then her fingers softly stroked, the wrong way, the thick, short-cropped, coppery, curling hair at the back of his head. 'O folly of men!' she whispered. 'How often, my lord, have you not exclaimed against safety and enduring goods? And now will you, like a peevish boy, provoke me to dwindle into your Duchess, and poison all our bliss? I'll sit in a shed with madge howlet and catch mice first.'

  It was as if he had not heard her. The grip of his arms was tenser about her knees. His face, when he now looked up at her, had the look of a man dazzled from sleep. He said, 'I am sick with love of you.'

  Fiorinda met his eyes for a minute in silence. Then she trembled: her laughter-loving imperial lips parted a little: the long black eyelashes half veiled her eyes: her eyelids quivered. With a little sudden catch of her breath, she bent forward; her chin lifted a little; her throat and bosom became in that instant the pure benediction of beauty, the opening of heaven, the coming down. 'Love me, then,' she answered. ‘I am here to be loved.'

  The Duke, now upon that throne beside her, had her now in his arms. As a sweet in the goblet, as pearls when the silken thread is broken, all her fierce lithe pride and queenship was unstrung: fallen loose: melted away. In the nape of her neck, where her hair was done in a knot that nestled there black and sleek like a sleeping leopard, he kissed, a dozen times, the last lowest little hairs, too young to be commanded, which, finer than gossamer-spiders' silk, shadowed the white skin with their delicately ordered growth: little hairs prophetic of all perfections. And now his bee-winged kiss, hovering below her ear, under the earring's smouldering of garnet, passed thence to where neck and shoulder join, and so to the warm throat, and so by the chin to that mocking spirit's place of slumber and provocation; until, like the bee into the honeyed oblivion of some deep flower incarnadine, it was entertained at last into the consuming heaven of that lady's lips.

  Now opened the last door of all before that leaf of virtue, the high double door that led from the main staircase to the throne-room, and Lessingham, striding out of darkness into the very presence, checked in the threshold. In the first bright glimpsing, indeed, he beheld the Lady Fiorinda thus in Duke Barganax's arms; but, ere foot or hand might act on his will, shut doors and be gone, she had stood up and turned her eyes upon him: and with that he was like a man ensorcelled.

  For now in her, so facing him from beside the dream-stone, he beheld no longer that lady, but another. In her hair, too pale for gold, too golden for silver, braided with strings of pearls, light itself seemed fallen a-dreaming, caught and stung asleep by the thousand little twisting tendrils that floated, hovered, vanished, and glinted again, with every stir of the quiet air. Feature by feature so might have been Barganax had he been bora woman: a golden girl, in the sweet holiday spring-time of her awakening beauty. Her grey eyes drew to far spaces, like the sea. On her cool lips, full, clean cut, pure of curve, everything desirable on earth or heaven seemed delicately to slumber: As a man out of the deathlike sleep of some drug comes to his senses at first with a disordered perception, wherein familiar things stand new, with no root in time, no perfume, no promise, no echo: so Lessingham beheld her but as a vision un-curdled from the phantasmagoria of some dream: a thing which the awakening sense, making as yet no question of perduration or possession, or of a world beyond the charmed present, accepts without surprise. Then on the sudden he noted the fashion of her dress, strange, fitter for a lover's eye than for the common gaze of the court, and knew it, with a knowledge that seemed to shut fingers about his naked soul, for that very dress and garb / which that dream had worn, standing but a half hour since at his bed's foot.

  Up the empty hall he came to her, slowly, not to frighten away this wonder, but resolute. The Duke sprang up, his eyes shining like a lion's surprised. But Lessingham, as marking him not,
was come now within ten paces of them, still with that unwavering noiseless stride, and now his foot was even upon the carpet. He halted with the prick of Barganax's sword against his chest. He stepped back a pace, and drew. For the second time in a day and a night they stood as opposites; and this time in a witched kind of stillness, wherein each leaned towards other across the kindling instant that should let them together, point and edge, like two great strokes of lightning and thunder. And for the second time, and now strangelier still, for the hotter occasion that was now than in the council chamber for bloody rages, the moment passed.