Mistress of mistresses

by E R Eddison

  So came they at length to the castle of the Parrys and rode north-about to the gatehouse and up by the deep hewn passage way to the main gateway, high upon the northern verge, and there was the Vicar and his men to welcome Lessingham. The Vicar was in his brown velvet kirtle, with a belt about his middle of old silver. About his shoulders was his great robe or mantle of state, of red tartarine, and upon his brow a coronal of gold. With so much unexampled show of' honourable respect he received Lessingham, as offer to hold the bridle while he dismounted; then took his arms about him and kissed him. Then he made him go up with him to his private chamber in the tower above Hagsby's Entry. 'Nay,' he said, when they were private there, ‘I would hear no word from Gabriel. I would have it from your lips, cousin. And first, is it well?'

  ' 'Tis not altogether bad,' answered Lessingham, pouring out some wine. * 'Tis victory?'

  *My coming home should warrant you that. Did you ever know me put up my sword with the work half done?'

  'You did promise me Outer Meszria in the hollow of my hand: that in a month. 'Tis bare three weeks since then. I'm not Grizell Greedigut to ask aught past reason, but somewhat I hope you have brought me.'

  'Outer Meszria? Did I promise so little?' said Lessingham. 'If that should content you, cousin, you shall be more than content with this when you shall have understood it and considered of it;' and with that he pulled forth from his bosom a parchment and writing sealed with seals.

  ‘I can read,' said the Vicar, 'though none of the best,

  yet meanly,' reaching out his hand for it.

  'First I'll rehearse it to you at large,' said Lessingham.

  'Nay,' said the Vicar, and took it: 'if any words seem dark, you shall make it more open, cousin. I like 'em best naked: you shall put the frills and furbelows on it anon.' He read it, sitting back easily in his great chair. His face as he read was open as a book, with the light full on it from the high window beside them, and Lessingham watched it, sipping his wine. There was not, as he read, so much as a passing shadow ruffled the noble serenity of the Vicar's brow or stirred the repose of those lineaments about the eyes and nose and jowl that could, upon an ill wind's blowing, wake to so much bestial ferocity. Nor was there any new note in his voice when, having read and read it again, at last he spoke. 'These articles express a concordat made 'twixt me of the one part, acting within my sovereignty vicarial and as Lord Protector for the Queen, and of t'other part Duke Barganax and ('pon their by instrument accepting of it) those other scum of the world, Jeronimy, I mean, Roder, and Beroald?'

  'And in case any one of them shall not within fifteen days accept it,' said Lessingham, 'then falleth it to the ground, and our hands free of either part. That's why I hold the army still on the Zenner. But they'll accept, ne'er fear it.'

  'And 'tis execute in duplicate, cousin, by you in virtue of your full powers on my behalf? And Zayana hath my seal, as I have his?'

  'Yes,' said Lessingham.

  The Vicar let fall the parchment and clapped his hands. Six men-at-arms upon the instant leaped out upon Lessingham from behind and ere he could raise finger clamped chains upon him that shackled him, wrist and elbow, knee and foot. Lessingham saw that Gabriel Flores was come in with them and was beside his master. The Vicar started from his chair like a ravening tiger. He smote Lessingham across the face with the parchment. The countenance of Lessingham was for a moment transported with terrible anger: he neither spoke nor moved, but he became white as death. The Vicar, mastering, himself, sat down again. Under the clutch of his hands the arms of his chair shook and trembled. He glared with his eyes upon Lessingham who, of his right colour again, had now in his grey eyes the steadiness of levelled steel.

  The Vicar opened his mouth and said, and his words came thick and stumbling as a man's that is drunk with wine: 'Overmuch have I trusted you. Yet this showed little wit, to come tell me to my face of this betrayal, that stinks more ugly in the sight of God than do all the carrion of this world. But you shall see I have a short way with such checking buzzards. A guard upon him! In an hour's time, cut his neck. Chop his carcase for the dogs, but spike up the head upon the main gate. I'll look on it before supper.'

  Gabriel was shivering and twitching in all his body, like a little terrier dog at the edge of a duckpond. The Vicar looked around at him, then back at Lessingham who was stood up now, taller by a head than the soldiers that held him shackled. Even upon that brink of fate and death he stood with so good a grace and presence as if a soul of iron informed him; looking upon the Vicar as from above, and in his grey eyes, keen and speckled, something very like a smile, as if he knew something that was not true. *Well,' said the Vicar, 'have you nothing to say?'

  'Nothing but this,' answered he: 'that you were wont to act upon no great resolution without you first had slept upon it. It seems the Gods have infatuated your high subtle wisdom, if now you will do a wrong irrevocable both to yourself and me, and not e'en sleep upon it. Your matter hath not turned out so ill aforetime, following of my counsels.'

  The Vicar glowered motionless as a bull in granite; his eyes were fixed no longer on Lessingham's eyes, but below them, on his mouth or beard. The guard, obedient to a covert sign from Gabriel, made a motion to take Lessingham away. The Vicar turned suddenly and Gabriel's elbow shrank in his brazen grip. 'Stay,' he said. 'I'll not let truth go by, albeit she were pointed out to me by a dissembling tyke. To-morrow's as good as to-day. And to make sure, unto you, Gabriel, I commit him in charge; doubt not but that I shall call to you for a strict account of your dealing with him. For his life and safe keeping your life shall answer. Here are the keys,' and he threw them on the table.

  Gabriel took them with a beaten scowling look.

  xii

  Noble Kinsfnen in Laimak

  THE VICAR'S DREAM ARGUMENT OF MIDNIGHT ADAMANT GRINDS ADAMANT THE RIDER IN SADDLE AGAIN 'POLICY AND HER TRUE ASPECT' NUPTIAL FLIGHT OF THE PEREGRINES LESSINGHAM CAPTAIN-GENERAL CONCEITS OF A LORD PROTECTOR REVELRY; AND A MEETING AT DAWN NORTH.

  The Lord Horius Parry awoke between midnight and cock-crow, being troubled and vexed with a certain un-pleasing dream. And this was the beginning of his dream: that Gabriel sat at his knee reading in a book of the Iliad wherein was told the fate of the lady Simë that she was (and here Gabriel, not knowing the meaning of the Greek word, asked him the meaning.) And though upon waking he knew not the word, and knew besides that in the Iliad is no such tale and no such lady, it seemed to him in his dream that the word meant 'gutted like a dog.' Thereupon in his dream the Vicar was remembered of that old tale of Swanhild, Gudrun's daughter, wed in the old time to King Jormunrek, and by him, upon lying slanders of Bikki, adjudged to die and be trod with horses in the gate; but, for the loveliness of her eyes that looked upon them, the horses would not tread upon her, but still swerved and reared and spared her, until Bikki let do a sack about her head, hiding her eyes, and she was trodden so and so slain. And now was the dream troubled and made unclear, as a breeze ruffles water and does away the reflected shapes and colours; and when it cleared, there was a wide plain lay amid mountains, all in a summer's evening and pleasant sunshine air, and in the midst upon a little rise of ground a table, and before the table three thrones. And the Vicar thought he saw himself sitting upon the left-hand throne, and he thought he knew in his dream that he was a king; and the plain was filled with people assembled as for some occasion, and they waited there in silence in their multitude, innumerable as the sands of the sea. And the Vicar looked upon himself, upon the king, and saw that he was both in feature and in apparel like to the Assyrian kings in the great stone likenesses carved of them of old, and his beard long and tightly frizzed and curled, and his belted robe incrusted with every kind of precious stone, so that it glittered green and purple and with sparkles of fiery red; and he was cruel and fell to look upon, and with white glinting teeth. And behold there walked a woman before the thrones, fair as the moon, clothed in a like glittering garment as the king's; and he knew in his dream that this was th
at lady Sime, and when he beheld her steadfastly he saw (yet without mazement, as in dreams the singularest and superlative wonder, impossibilities and fictions beyond laughter, will seem but trivial and ordinary) that she was Lessingham. It seemed to him that this she Lessingham did obeisance to the king, and took her seat on the right-hand throne; and immediately upon the third throne he beheld the queen that sat there betwixt them, as it had been a queen of hell. She was attired in a like garment of precious stones; her hair was the colour of wet mud, her eyes like two hard pebbles, set near together, her nose straight and narrow, her lips thin and pale, her face a lean sneak-bill chitty-face; she had a waiting, triumphing look upon her face; and he loathed her. And now went men before the thrones, bearing on a great stand or easel a picture framed, and showed it to that bright lady; and it seemed to the Vicar that she gave a terrible cry and covered her eyes; and the men turned the picture that all might see, and he could not discern the picture to understand it; but only the writing upon it, in great letters: UT COMPRESSA PEREAT. And he thought the whole multitude in their thousands took up those words and howled them aloud with a howling like the howling of wolves. And he shouted and leapt awake, sitting up in the dark in his great canopied bed in Laimak, all shaking and sweating.

  For a minute he sat so, listening to the darkness, which was as if some vast body had been flung into the pool of night and made waves upon it that were his own blood-beats. Then with an obscene and blasphemous oath he felt for tinder, struck a light, and lighted the candles on the table by his bed in the silver candlesticks that stood there, and his sword beside them, and a goblet, and wine in a great-bellied bottle of green glass with a stopper of gold. As the new-kindled candleflames shrank dim kuthe moment before the melting of the tallow, questionable shadows crouched in the recesses of the walls and vaulted ceiling. A puff of wind stirred the curtain by the window. Then the candles burned up. Pyewacket, waked by his shout, was come from the foot of the bed and laid her chin on his thigh, looking up at him with great speaking eyes in the bright beams of the candles. The Vicar poured out wine, a brimming goblet, and guzzled it down at one gulp. Then he stood up and abode for a while staring at the candleflames and as if listening. At length he clad himself in breeches and gown, buckled on his sword, took and lighted a lantern, and unbolted the door. Gabriel was in his place without, asleep on his bed made up upon the floor across the threshold. The Vicar woke him with his foot and bade him give him the keys. He gave them in silence and would have come with him, but the Vicar with a kind of snarl bade him remain. Gabriel, considering this, and his disordered looks, and the sword at his thigh, watched him go with his bitch at his heel, through the ante-room and through the further door, that led to his private chamber, and when he was gone sat down on his pallet bed again, licking his lips.

  The Vicar went down by a privy passage of his own to the prison where Lessingham was mewed up; went in by means of his private key, and locked the door behind him. He held up the lantern. Lessingham lay in the far corner, with his ankles shackled to a ball of lead great as a man's two fists. His left arm was free, but the other wrist locked in a manacle with a long chain from that to his foot. His cloak of costly silken stuff was rolled for a pillow for his cheek. The Vicar came nearer. With his dream still upon him, he stood looking upon Lessingham and listening, as upon some horrid sudden doubt, for the sound of his breathing. In a deep stillness he lay there on the cobblestones, and with so much lithe strength and splendour of limb and chest and shoulder that the mould and dank of that place and the sweating walls, with trickles of wet that glistered in the lantern-light, seemed to take on an infection from his presence and put on a kind of beauty. Yet so still and without sound as he slept, had he been dead he could scarce have lain more still. Pyewacket gave a low growl. The Vicar caught her by the collar and flashed the lantern near Lessingham's face. Upon that, he sat up wide awake, and with great coolness looked upon the Vicar.

  They kept silence, each waiting on the other. Lessingham's patience outstayed the Vicar's in that game, and the Vicar spoke. ‘I have bethought me, cousin, and if there's aught you can say may extenuate the thing, I'll hear it'

  'Extenuate?' Lessingham said, and his voice was chilling as the first streak of a winter's dawn on a frozen sea. As the Vicar held the lantern, so his own face was shaa-owed, but the eye of Lessingham in full light: the eye of such a man that a prince would rather be afraid of than ashamed of, so much awfulness and ascendancy it lent to his aspect over other mortals. 'Is it morning then, outside of this hole you have thrust me in?'

  'Two hours past midnight'

  'It shall at least be set down to you for a courtesy,* said Lessingham, 'that at this time of night you are gotten up out of your bed to make me amends. Pray you unlock.' He held out his right wrist, chained: ' 'Tis a kind of gewgaw I ne'er put on till now and not greatly to my liking.'

  'There's time to talk on that,' said the Vicar. 'I'll first hear if there be any good face you can put on this ill trick you have played me.'

  Lessingham's eye flashed. He held out his wrist, as might a queen to her tiring-woman. 'An ill trick you', he said, 'have played me! By heavens, you shall unlock me first, cousin. We'll talk outside.'

  The Vicar paused and there was a cloud in his face. 'You were a more persuasive pleader for your safety but now, cousin, when you lay sleeping. Be advised, for I have cause against you enough and beyond enough; and be sure you satisfy me. For except you do, be certain you shall never go from this place alive.'

  'Indeed then you might a spared your sleep and mine,’ said Lessingham then, shaking his cloak up as if to lie down again. The Vicar began pacing to and fro like a wolf. ' 'Tis simplicity or mere impudent malice to say I did betray you; and this an insolency past forgiveness, to use me so. So touching this concordat not a word will I say till I am loosed, and 'pon no conditions neither.'

  The Vicar stopped and stood for a minute. Then he gave a short laugh. 'Let me remember you', he said in a clear soft voice, glaring in Lessingham's face by the light of the lantern, 'of Prince Valero, him that betrayed Ar-gyanna a few years since to them of Ulba and led that revolt against me. The Gods delivered him into my hand. Know you the manner of his end, cousin? No: for none knew it but only I and my four deaf mutes you wot of, that were here at the doing on't, and I have told no man of it until now. Do you see that hook in the ceiling?' and he swung the light to show it. 'I'll not weary you with particulars, cousin. I fear 'twas not without some note and touch of cruelty. Such a pretty toying wit had I. But we've washed the flagstones since. 'Well?' he said, after a silence.

  'Well,' said Lessingham, and from now he held the Vicar constantly with his steel-cold eye: ‘I have listened to your story. Your manner of telling of it does you credit: not so greatly the substance of it.'

  *Be you ware,' said the Vicar with a loud sudden violence, and give him an ill look. 'The case you are in, this place you lie in, which is my hidden slaying-place in Laimak: think on't. And I can make that laughing face of yours turn serious.'

  ‘I laugh not', replied he. "Tis not a laughing matter. They looked one another in the eye without speaking. In that game too Lessingham outstayed the Vicar.

  Then Lessingham said: 'Do not mistake me. If I fear you not, I am not so foolish as hold you for a man not worthy to be feared. But to threaten me with death, 'tis as the little boy that sat on a bough and would cut away from the tree the bough he sat on. I think you have more wit than do that.'

  In a deadly stillness, with feet planted wide apart, the Vicar stood like a colossus looking down upon him. The Vicars' own face was now in shadow, so that when, after a long time, Lessingham spoke to him again, it was as a man might speak to an impending great darkness. ‘I know it is a hard choice for you, cousin. Upon this side, you have no true friend in the world but me; lose me, and you stand alone amidst a world of enemies, your back bare. And yet, against this, you have done me a gross injury, and you know me for a man who, albeit I have looked upon this world for
but half your span of years, have yet slain near as many men upon matter of honour alone, in single combats, as yourself have slain whether by murder or what not. I have slain a dozen, I think, in these eight years, since I was of years seventeen, not to reckon scores I have slain in battle. So, and to judge me by yourself, you must see great danger in it to release me. A hard choice. As if you must run hazard either way to lose me. And yet, my way you stand some chance of keeping me: your way, none.'

  There was a pause when he ended. Then said the Vicar with his face yet in darkness, 'You are a strange man. Doth not death then terrify you?'

  Lessingham answered, 'The horror and ugsomeness of death is worse than death itself.'

  The Vicar said, 'Is it one to you: live or die? Do you not care?"

  'O yes,' said Lessingham. ‘I care. But this choice, cousin, is in the hand of fate now: for you even as for me. And for my part, if the fall of the dice mean death: well, it was ever my way to make the best of things.'

  With the cadence of his voice falling away to silence, it was as if, in that quiet charnel under Laimak that knew not night nor day, scales were held and swung doubtful, now this way now that. Then the Vicar slowly, as if upon some resolution that came near to crumbling as he embraced it, turned to the door. Behind him his shadow as he went rushed up and stopped like a winged darkness shedding obscurity from wall and ceiling over half the chamber. Then he was gone, and the door locked, and all darkness; and in that darkness Lessingham saw Pyewacket's eyes, like two coals burning. He reached out a hand to her, open, palm downwards. He could not see her, save those eyes, but he felt her sniff cautiously and then touch the back of his hand lightly with her cold nose.

  The Vicar was mid-part up the stairs when he missed her. He called her by name: then stood listening. Cursing in his beard, he was about turning back; but after a few steps down, halted again, swinging his keys. Then, very slowly, he resumed his mounting of the stairs.