Mistress of mistresses

by E R Eddison

  Lessingham lowered his sword. 'Who you are,' he said, ‘I know not. But I'll not fight with you.'

  *Nor I with you,' said the Duke, yet with thunder on his brow. 'Nor I with you.'

  With the look on the face of each of them that a man's face wears when he strives to remember some forgotten tune, each fell back yet another pace or two from the other, each staring at the other still. And so staring, both slowly put up their swords, and, with the double click of them going home in the scabbards, both turned as upon a common impulse towards Fiorinda.

  Like a man's beside himself, Barganax's eyes leapt from that other to Lessingham, from him to her, and his sword was jumped half-bare from the scabbard again. 'What mummery's this?' he said. 'Where is my lady? God's death! speak, you were best, man, and you, woman, whoever you be.'

  But Lessingham, looking too at that lady, and standing as if drunk, said, in a starved voice unlike his own, 'Give me her back:' then bit it in and set his jaw. Barganax, with a dazed look, passed his hand across his eyes.

  'My cloak, my lord,' she said, turning for the Duke to put it about her shoulders. He paused a moment. Her-presence, thus strangely snatched away and as strangely restored, and in so serene an unconcernment; the curve of neck and hair; her skin; the sweet smell of her: these things shook the fierce blood in him so that he scarce dared trust his hand upon her, even through the cloak. But Lessingham near her too, and more, face to face with her dark and alluring loveliness, bore himself with a cold formal courtesy.

  She thanked the Duke with a look: that slow, unblinking, unsmiling, suddenly opening and then fading, stare, with which upon his birthday she had promised herself in the garden. It mastered and then steadied his senses like wine. In that moment, so near the high climacteric, his eyes looking over her shoulder met the eyes of Lessingham in a profound recognition. In Les-singham's face, the masculine of hers by many particulars, he read a promise; not indeed, as in hers, the world-dissolving epithalamion of sense and spirit, but a promise of something scarcely less deep in the blood, albeit without arrows and without fire: of brotherhood beyond time and circumstance, not to be estranged, but riveted rather together, by mutual strife upon the great stage of the world and noble great contentions.

  'My Lady Fiorinda,' said Lessingham, 'and you my lord Duke: inconsiderate excuses are no better than accusations. I could not rest. I will say no more.'

  'In this world-without-end hour,' said the Duke, 'let us say but good night.'

  Fiorinda spoke: 'You go north, my Lord Lessingham?'

  To-morrow, madam.'

  To-day, then: it is past midnight. Ere you go, I would know a thing. Were you ever a painter of pictures?' 'No. But a doer of deeds.'

  'My lord the Duke painteth past admiration. Of me he hath painted forty pictures, but not yet one to's liking, and so burnt all.'

  There was a man I knew did so,' said Lessingham: *burnt all save one. Yet no,' he said, with a strange half-waked look at her. 'What was't I said?'

  'It is hard, I suppose,' said that lady, as if, in the enjoyment of her own thoughts' stoops and hoverings, she had no eye to note the lightless gaze with which he seemed to search inward in himself: 'It is hard, I suppose, for a lover, if he be a very lover, to paint his mistress. For then that which he would, paint, if he be a very lover, is not appearance, but the thing which is. How can he paint her? seeing that his picture, when it is painted, changeth then no more; but that which is, changeth unceasingly: and yet changeth not.'

  'And yet changeth not,' said Lessingham.

  "This ring of mine,' she said: 'see, it is wine-red tonight, but a-daytime sleepy green. And such, as Doctor Vandermast affirmeth, is beauty: ever changing, never changing. But truly it is an old prating man, and I think hardly knoweth what he prateth of.'

  'Ever changing, never changing,' said Lessingham, as if he felt his way in the dark. Once more his gaze met the Duke's.

  Her slanting green eyes, snakish, veiled with their silky darknesses, turned upon Barganax and then again upon Lessingham.

  Lessingham, after a little silence, said, 'Good night’ 'And yet' said she, as he bent to kiss her hand; and surely everything of that lady, the least turn of her finger, the least falling tone of her lazy voice, was as a stirring of mists ready to blow away and open upon wonder: 'what riddle was that you did ask me but now, my lord? A man's Self, said you? or his Love?'

  Lessingham, who had asked no riddle, made no answer.

  'I think it is both,' Fiorinda said, looking steadily at him. He was ware of a settled quality of power in her face now, diamantine, older and surer than the primal crust, older than the stars: a quality that belonged most of all to her lips, and to her eyes: lips that seemed to close upon antique secrets, memories of flesh and spirit fused and transfigured in the dance of the daughters of the morning; and eyes yet blurred from looking upon the very bed of beauty, and delights unconceived by the mind of man. Those eyes and those lips Lessingham knew as a child knows its mother, or as the sunset knows the sea. In a dizziness of conflicting yeas and nays, he recognized in her the power that had drawn him but now up the hall, on to Barganax's sword-point. Yet she who had had that power so to draw him was strangely not this woman, but another. He bethought him then of their supper under the moon, and of her allegretto scherzando that had then so charmed his mind. The movement was changed now to adagio molto maestoso ed appassionato, but the charm remained; as if here were the lady and mistress of all, revealed, as his very sister, the feminine of his own self: a rare and sweet familiarity of friendship, but not of love; since no man can love and worship his own self.

  Again she spoke: 'Good night. And you are well advised to go north, my Lord Lessingham; for I think you will find there that which you seek. North, in Rialmar.'

  In a maze, Lessingham went from the hall.

  And now Barganax and Fiorinda, standing under the shadowing glory of those wings, for a minute regarded one another in silence. The Duke, too, knew that mouth. He, too, knew those upper lids with their upward slant that beaconed to ineffable sweets. He, too, knew those lower lids, of a straightness that seemed to rest upon the level infinitude of beauty, which is the laying and the consolation and the promise on which, like sleeping winds on a sleeping ocean, repose all unfulfilled desires. And now at the inner corners of those eyes, as she looked at him, something stirred, ruffling the even purity of that lower line as the first peep of the sun's bright limb at morning breaks the level horizon of the sea.

  'Yes,' she said: 'you have leave to resume our conversation where it was broke off, my friend. Yet this throne-room perhaps is not the most convenientest place for us, considering the lateness; considering too the subject, which, once thus raised between us, was never, as I remember, well laid again ere morning.'

  ix

  The Ings of Lorkan

  THE RUYAR PASS OWLDALE AND THE STRING-WAY THE VICAR PREPARES WAR; SO ALSO THE DUKE LESSINGHAM INVADES MESZRIA BURNING OF LIMISBA RODER MOVES BATTLE OF LORKAN FIELD BEROALD AND JERONIMY IN THE SALIMAT.

  Lessingham in the same hour, not to fail of his word, burnt up that leaf. On the morrow he rode north by way of Reisma Mere and Memison, going, as he had come south three weeks ago, but twenty in company, but so fast that now he was his own harbinger. So it was that the Duke's safe conduct procured him welcome of all men and speeding on his journey, while at less than a day's lag behind him was shearing up of the war-arrow and the countryside ablaze with rumours of war. So by great journeys he came at evening of the third day up through the defiles of the Ruyar to the windy stony flats that tail away north-westward between the glacier capped cliffs of the Hurun range on the right and Sherma on the left, and so to where, in the cleft of the Ruyar pass where it crosses the watershed to Outer Meszria and the north, the great work of Rumala leaves not so much as a goat's way between cliff and towering cliff.

  'This were a pretty mouse-trap,' said Amaury, as they drew rein in the cold shadow of the wall: 'if he had bethought him out of prudence, may hap, s
ay a Monday last, soon as you broke with him, to send a galloper whiles we dallied and gave him time for it: enjoin his seneschal of Rumala shut door upon us, hold us for's disposal upon further order. Had you thought on that?' ' 'I thought on't,' said Lessingham, 'when I took his offer.'

  'So I too,' said Amaury, and loosened his sword in its scabbard. 'And I think on't now.'

  'And yet I took his offer,' said Lessingham. 'And I had reason. You are prudent, Amaury, and I would have you so. Without my reason, my prudence were in you rashness. And indeed, my reason was a summer reason and would pass very ill in winter.'

  In Rumala they were well lodged and with good entertainment. They were up betimes. The seneschal, a gaunt man with yellow mustachios and a pale blue eye, brought them out, when they were ready after breakfast, by the northern gate to the little level saddle whence the road drops northwards into Rubalnardale.

  'The Gods take your lordship in Their hand. You are for Rerek?'

  'Ay, for Laimak,' answered Lessingham. ,

  'By the Salimat had been your easiest from Zayana.'

  ‘I came that way south,' answered he; 'and now I was minded to look upon Rumala. 'Tis as they told me; I shall not come this way again.'

  Amaury smiled in himself.

  'You are bound by Kutarmish?' said the seneschal. 'Yes.'

  ‘I have despatches for the keeper there. If your lordship would do me the honour to carry them?'

  'Willingly,' said Lessingham. 'Yet, if they be not of urgency, I would counsel you keep 'em till to-morrow. You may have news then shall make these stale.'

  The seneschal looked curiously at him. 'Why what news should there be?' he said.

  'How can I tell?' said Lessingham.

  'You speak as knowing somewhat.'

  'To-morrow', said Lessingham, 'was always dark today. To-day, is clear: so enjoy it, seneschal. Give Amaury your letters: I'll see 'em delivered in Kutarmish.'

  They were come now to the edge of the cliff upon the face whereof the road winds in and out for two thousand feet or more before it comes out in the bottom of Rubalnardale, plumb below the brink they stood on as a man might spit. The seneschal said, 'You must walk and lead your horses, my lord, down the Curtain.'

  *Can a man not ride it?'

  'Nor ever did, nor ever will.'

  Lessingham looked over and considered. 'Maddalena hath carried me, and at a good racking pace, through the Hanging Corridors of the Greenbone ranges in nether Akkama: 'twas very like this.' He began to mount: 'Nay, touch her not: she will bite and strike with her forelegs at an unknown.'

  The seneschal backed away with a wry smile as Lessingham leapt astride of his dangerous-eyed red mare. With him barely in the saddle, she threw a capriole on the very verge of the precipice; tossed her mane; with a graceful turn of her head took her master's left foot daintily between her teeth; then in a sudden frozen stillness waited on his will.

  ‘I had heard tell,' said the seneschal, as the mare, treading delicately as an antelope, carried her rider down and out of sight, 'that this lord of yours was a mad fighting young fellow; but never saw I the like of this. Nay,' he said, as Amaury mounted and his men besides, 'then give me back my letters. As well send 'em later with the party must take up your corpses.'

  'We shall now show you a thing: safe as flies on a wall,' said Amaury.

  Lessingham shouted from the bend below, ' 'Tis a good road north by Rumala: a bad road south.' Amaury, smiling with himself, rode over the edge, and the rest followed him man by man. The seneschal stood for a while looking down the cliff when they were gone. There was nothing to be seen: only on the ear came a jangling of bits and the uneven clatter of horse-hooves fainter and fainter from the hollows of the crags. Far below, an eagle sailed past the face of that mountain wall, a level effortless sweep on still wings brazen in the sunshine.

  Dusk was confounding all distances, smoothing away all shadows, smudging with sleepy fingers the clear daylight verities of whinbush and briar and thorn, mole-hill and wayside stone, outcropping rock and grassy hummock, fern and bent, willow and oak and beech and silver birch-tree, all into a pallid oneness and immateriality of twilight, as Lessingham and Amaury came at a walking-pace over the last stretch of the long open moorland sparsely grown with trees that runs up north from Ristby, and took the road north-eastward for Owldale. The westermost outlying spur of the Forn impended in a precipitous gable on their right; beyond it, north and round to the west, gathered by the dusk into a single blue wall of crenelled and ruined towers, the Armarick peaks and the fells about Anderside and Latterdale were a vastness of peace against the windy sky. There had been showers of rain, and thunder among the hills. Great Armarick, topping the neighbouring peaks, had drawn about his frost-shattered head a coverlet of sluggish and slate-hued cloud.

  They had long outridden their company. Amaury's horse was blown. Even Maddalena had quieted her fiery paces to the unrelenting plod that draws on to corn and a sweet bed and sleep at night. Lessingham in a graceful idleness rode sideways, the slacked reins in his left hand, his right flat-palmed on the crupper. Turning his head, he met Amaury's eyes regarding him through the dusk. Something in their look made him smile. 'Well,' he said: 'grey silver aloft again, Amaury?'

  'There's more in't than that,' said Amaury. 'You are stark mad these five days I think, since we set out north from Zayana. I cannot fathom you.'

  Lessingham's eyes took on their veiled inward-dreaming look and his lips their smile that had first snared Barganax's fancy, holding a mirror as it were to Fiorinda's smile. 'I was never more sober in my life,' he said, his hand softly stroking Maddalena's back. There was a secret beat of music in his voice, like as had been in the Duke's when, upon Ambremerine to the singing of the faun, he had spoken that stave into his mistress's ear.

  They rode the next league in silence, up the deep ravine of Scandergill above which the valley spreads out into wide flats, and the road strikes across to the north side through oak-woods that turned with their overarching shade the cloudy May night to inky darkness. A drizzling rain was falling when they came out of the forest and followed the left bank of Owlswater up to the bridge above the waters-meet at Storby, where Stordale opens a gateway into the hills to the north and the Stordale Beck tumbles into Owldale white over a staircase of waterfalls. The keeper of the bridge-house took the password and came down to offer his duty to Lessingham: he flew an owl to carry tidings of their approach to the Vicar in Laimak, and another, because of the darkness, to Anguring that they should have lights to light them over the Stringway. Two hours above Storby they halted half an hour for their company,-left behind in their wild riding beyond Ristby. Now the road narrowed and steepened, climbing in zig-zags under the cliffs at the base of Little Armarick and tapering at last to a four-foot ledge with the jutting rock of Anguring Combust above it and the under-cut wall of the gorge below. At the bottom of that gorge, two hundred feet beneath the road, Owlswater whitened in foam and thunder over the ruins of old Anguring castle, that twenty years ago the Lord Horius Parry had flung down there from its rock, when after a long siege he had by stratagem won it and burnt it up along with his brother and his brother's wife and their sons and daughters and all their folk, glad to have rooted out at last this tree that had stood as a shadow against the sun to mar the fair growth of his own lordship in Laimak. Then had he let build, over against it on the left bank of the gorge, his own new fortalice of Anguring, upon a backward and upward running crest, to command at close range both the road below the former castle, and the Stringway. Upon this Stringway Mnddalena now delicately stepped, her soul calm, amid the flurry of winds and unseen furious waters and flare-lit darknesses, with the comfort of a familiar master-mind speaking to her through pressure of knee and through sensitive touch of bit upon lips and tongue. The gorge was here barely twenty paces broad, and a huge slab, fallen in ancient times from the mountain face above, was jammed like a platter or meat-dish caught and gripped there up on edge: one edge of the platter jammed where
the road ended under old Anguring, and the other jammed against the gorge's brink where new Anguring sat perched like a preying bird. Along that slab's upturned edge ran the road: an arched footway of rock, too narrow for two horses meeting to pass one another: the inexpugnable gateway from the south into upper Owldale and the pasture lands of Laimak. Lessingham rode it unconcerned, giving Maddalena her head and letting her take her time, in the smoky glare of a dozen torches brought down to the cliff's edge out of Anguring. Amaury and the rest were fain to lead their horses across.

  A little before midnight Lessingham blew horn under Laimak.

  The Vicar received Lessingham by torchlight in the great main gate above the gatehouse. He advanced three steps to meet Lessingham, and embraced and kissed him on both cheeks. Lessingham said, 'Your highness is to thank me indeed. I have set 'em all by the ears, and in that suspectuous squabbling insecurity declared war upon them. It resteth now but to raise force and crush them ere they run together again. I'll tell you all at large, but first I would bathe and shift me; and indeed I have not eat these eight hours, since dinner-time at Ketterby.'

  ' 'Tis provided,' said the Vicar. 'Let's hold more chat over the supper table.'

  Half an hour past midnight supper was set in the great banquet-hall which was shapen like an L, the main member forty cubits in length and the shorter twenty-five. Amaury and they of Lessingham's company had place at the far end of the long table by the door at the end of the main body of the hall that opened on the great court. The Vicar sat with Lessingham at a little round table at the northern corner whence they might see everywhere in the hall both ways, left and right, and be out of earshot of the rest and talk at ease. The hall was of black obsidian-stone, with deep mullioned windows along its north-western wall. Devilish heads, five cubits in bigness from brow to chin, were carven in high relief along the five other walls: thirteen heads in all, very deformed and uglisome, laying out their tongues; and on the end of each tongue was stood a lamp brightly burning, and the eyes of the great faces were looking-glasses nicely cut up with facets to throw back the rays of the lamps, so that the whole banquet-room was lit with a brilliance of lamplight. It was mizzly weather, very cold for the time of year; the Vicar bade light a fire of logs in the great hearth that stood on the inner angle opposite their table.