Mistress of mistresses

by E R Eddison

  'You have remembered me,' Derxis said, 'of that conceit of the three women and the lamprey. Or how went it? It was yours, Orynxis, ha?'

  Orynxis recounted that story. The king laid out his tongue and laughed till the tears started. 'Come, I am merry now,' said he, as they walked now westward beside the sunflowers. 'What's here? a toad? Give me a stone.'

  Alquemen picked one from the flower-bed. The king threw and missed. Kasmon proffered him another. The king's hand was up for the second throw, when Antiope entered and, seeing him, halted in the gate, fair in the line of aim.

  He dropped the stone and with a low leg wished her good morrow. 'I was not without hope, madam,' he said with great smoothness, as she came in with her ladies and some of her officers of state, 'to have had the happy fortune to have met you here. I see now 'tis a- most heavenly garden; and yet but now I thought it but ordinary. Nay, 'tis plain fact: give me leave but to tear up these flowers, throw down the carven bauble standeth in the water there, you should see, gentlemen, it should seem fairer yet: you, madam, the queen-rose to grace it, and these ladies brier-roses about you to pay you honour with their meaner sweets.'

  'Sir, I am infinitely full of business,' said the Queen. 'This is my summer council-chamber. I did send to let you know there was a hunt prepared for you this morning, but my gentleman of the horse told me you were not abroad yet.'

  'My chamberlain was at fault, then,' said Derxis. 'How came it, Orynxis, you gave me not the message?'

  Orynxis, that had given it punctually, excused himself that he ne'er heard of it till now: he would examine into it, and see him punished with whom the fault lay.

  'See to it,' Derxis said. 'Cropping of the ears were too little a punishment for such oversight. Yet, for I mind me of your compassionate nature, madam, ask me to pardon it, 'tis done, forgot, at your sweet asking.'

  'I pray report it to my justiciar, if aught's committed needeth correction. You are my guest, sir, in Rialmar, and I hold on the King my father's way (upon whom be peace); no private justice here.'

  'You speak high, madam. And that becomes you.'

  The Queen now espied at her feet the toad, where it cowered under the broad leaf of a saxifrage. She looked direct at Derxis, then at it, then again at Derxis.

  He laughed. 'You did offer me a boar-hunt, madam. Praise my simple tastes, I am content with throwing at a toad.'

  'At a toad?' said she, without smiling. 'Why?' 'For diversion, awaiting of you. It is a toad. I would kill it.'

  He met in her eye an Artemisian coldness and displeasure. Then, with a sudden little lovely grace picking up the toad, she made sure it was unhurt, made as if to kiss it, then put it back in a safe place on the flower-bed.

  Derxis followed her as she turned away. 'What a strange pitifulness is this of yours,' he said, walking at her side, 'that taketh compassion of malefactors and nasty paddocks, but not of him that most needeth your dear pity.' He spoke low, for her ear alone. Their people, his and hers, walked behind them.

  She came to a halt. 'I'm sorry, sir, but I must to business.'

  'Then my suit standeth first in the list, so hear it.'

  Antiope stood silent, with face averted. Alquemen was saying to the Princess Zenianthe, ‘I pray you then scent this flower: can speak to your ladyship plainer words than I durst.' Zenianthe moved away. Derxis noted the Queen's lips. He gritted his teeth and said, with a persuasive sweetness, 'Will you not show me your garden?'

  ‘I had thought you had seen it,' she said.

  'How could I see it,' said Derxis, 'but with your beauteous self to show it me?'

  Antiope turned to him. ‘I have bethought me of a game,' she said. ‘I will show you my garden, sir, for half an hour; in which time you shall not pay me no compliments. That will be a new thing indeed.'

  'And the wager?'

  'You may leave that to me.'

  'Ha!' said he, softly, and his eyes surveyed her with a slow appraising stare: 'that raiseth hopes.' 'Let them not rise too high,' she said. The lubricity that jumped pat upon Derxis's tongue he swallowed in again. He dropped a pace or so behind her for a moment, enough to say in the ear of Lord Alque-men, 'See to it you manage me some privacy.'

  But now came into the garden a gentleman-usher and brought a packet to the Queen's chamberlain, who, reading the direction, handed it unopened to the Queen. 'I pray you hold me excused, sir,' she said to Derxis, 'while I read it.'

  The king bowed assent. With a jealous sidelong look he watched her face light up as she read. 'But who's the carrier?' she said, looking up: 'of these letters, I mean?'

  'Serene highness,' answered he that brought them: his lordship's self that writ it bare it, and waiteth on your disposals.'

  'O entertain him hither straight,' said Antiope. Derxis's face grew dark. 'It is my great kinsman's kinsman, the great Lord Lessingham, come from the south upon some matters extraordinary,' she said, turning with a lovely courtly favour to Derxis. 'I have your leave, sir, to bid him join our company?'

  The king stood silent. Then said the knight marshal Bodenay, 'Your serenity may be sure he had rather you gave him breathing-time to prepare himself: not come all clagged with mire and clay into your grace's presence.'

  Antiope laughed. 'O court ceremonies! have we seen ne'er a man yet in riding-gear? No, he shall come now.'

  'Cry you mercy, madam,' said the king; ‘I value not a courtesy hangeth long betwixt the fingers. You did engage to show me your garden. Surely this what's-his-name can wait our pleasure while you perform your engagement to me.'

  ‘I must not', she said, *be gracious with one hand and ungracious with the other. This is a stranger, not in reputation, yet in person ne'er yet known to us. That your royal estate doth outgo his rank and place, 'tis more reason I use him honourably. No, you shall see the garden, sir, and he shall see it with us. Carry him hither straight,' she said, and the messenger went forth immediately.

  Derxis said nothing, neither did the Queen look at him.

  And truly to have looked in that moment upon that young king, even so little crossed, had been no sight of comfort.

  'What's that Lessingham?' asked the Count Orynxis, privately in Alquemen's ear.

  'Cousin to the Vicar of Rerek,' answered he.

  'Why, 'tis that same spruce youth, is't not,' said Kasmon, 'captained Mezentius's horse six years ago? catched you napping when all hung in hazard at the battle of Elsmo: broke up your squadrons and beat you round your own camp? was't not Lessingham?'

  'O hold your clack,' said Alquemen. 'You came not too well out of those doings.'

  'Came as fast as his horse could carry him,' said Orynxis. 'Kasmon's ride they call it now: home through the outer Corridor, and near broke his neck i' the end. You two were best hold together, lest this fellow trounce you again. Nay, but sadly, know you aught else of him, Alquemen? The Parry is a hard man, I've heard tell.'

  Alquemen answered, 'They are two notable knaves together: both of a hair, and both cousin germans to the Devil.'

  The Queen sat now in her ivory chair: Zenianthe to right of her, and upon her left, standing, Bodenay. Raviamne, Paphirrhoe, and Anamnestra, ladies of honour, with half a dozen more, court-men and lords of Fingiswold, made a half circle behind her. Derxis and his troop of gentry stood a little apart upon her right. The Queen, looking round, noted how he, with an uncivil insolence, stood now with his back towards her. As moved by some sudden toy taking her in the head, she whispered Zenianthe to sit in the siege royal while she herself, spite of all protests of the old Lord Bodenay and other grave persons about her, took place among her girls behind it.

  Lessingham, ushered in by the north-western gate, walked between the sunflowers and the sun, that even at cloudless mid-day made but a temperate heat in that mountain country of the north. He was bare-headed, in his mail-coat of black iron and gold, black silk hosen and black leather riding-boots, dusty from the journey. So came he towards them, with clanking silver spurs. And as he came, he gathered with the sweep of his eye
s, resting with no inconvenient intensity upon this person or that, all the posture of their company: the staid elders that curiously regarded him; Derxis and his, haughty and uneasy like cattle when the dog comes towards them; Zenianthe in the chair and her companions, who lent to that stone-walled garden a delicacy, as of tender feet trampling the fine soft bloom of grass.

  Now were greetings given and taken. Lessingham said, 'You must pardon me, noble ladies and you my lords of Fingiswold, to a come without all ceremony and even in my riding-clothes. But the message was, the Queen was here, and did desire me come instantly to present my service.'

  'Well, sir,' said Zenianthe, 'and will you not present it? This is the siege royal.'

  Lessingham bowed. 'You become it most excellent well, madam.'

  'That is strangely spoken,' said she. 'Or did you look then to find some rustic girl, should know not how to draw the skirt about her ankles?'

  Antiope, with a hand on Raviamne's arm, watched him very demurely.

  'Your ladyship shall not find me so flat nor so stupid,' answered he. 'No, but I can tell 'twixt the dusky lily and the white. I am not colour-blind.'

  Zenianthe laughed. 'You have seen my picture? May be the paint had faded.'

  The eye-tricks and signs they bandied amongst them did not escape Lessingham. 'No, madam,' he answered, 'I have not seen her highness's picture. But I have heard.'

  'Was "dusky lily" to say, uncomely?'

  'Had your ladyship hearkened more carefully, you would have noted I stressed the "lily".'

  Antiope spoke: 'It is a wonder you will not know the Queen, sir, when you see her.'

  He looked at them in turn: Antiope, Paphirrhoe, Zenianthe, Anamnestra, Raviamne, Antiope again. 'Ah,' he said, 'not till she tell me I may. That were too unmannerly, find her out sooner than she meant.'

  They fell a-laughing, and Zenianthe, catching Antiope's eye, stood up. 'The fox was near driven, your highness, when he took this muse,' she said.

  'A most good and courtly answer, sir,' said the Queen. 'And cometh from the south: none here could have turned it so. And you'll not be angry with us for this game of play?'

  'Serenissime princess and my sovereign lady,' said Lessingham, 'humbled on my knee I kiss your grace's hand.'

  King Derxis, being turned about now, looked upon these actions. With an insolent stare he went over Lessingham from brow to boots and so back and so down to boots again. And now he came to them. 'Pray you present to me this gentleman, madam. I were loth to lose aught of his discourse, so pleasant as it seemeth.'

  'Sir,' said the Queen, 'this is my cousin Lord Lessingham, he that must be my captain of war against my enemies. Your highness knows him by repute?'

  'In my conscience, not I,' said Derxis. 'Yet, being your cousin, madam, should recommend a^very cuckoo: by how much more a person of so much fame and nobility as my Lord—I've forgot your name, sir?'

  'It is not yet so renowned,' said Lessingham, 'as that ignorance need disgrace your highness.'

  They turned to walk now, looking on the garden and the flowers that were there. Derxis held close at the Queen's elbow, and spoke to her in undertones. Lessingham by and by fell behind, and walked now with the knight marshal and the old Countess of Tasmar and four or five others, talking of his journey north from Rerek and of matters indifferent. And first they looked askance and coldly, and cold was their talk; and then that coldness began to melt to him as morning frosts in autumn to the mounting sun, that makes warm the air, and the clouds disperse and mists are drunk up and the rime on a myriad twigs and grass-blades runs together to jewels. With so expert a touch he handled them, as one that himself at ease breathes ease into all the air about him.

  And yet carried he little ease within him. To have fed in his thought these three months so many lusts and longings: to have come up to this much thought-on city of Rialmar, thus strangely held out that night to his desire: to have approved it but so, a plain walled hold, cold among northern mountains under ordinary daylight, and the dwellers in it, even to the Queen's self and her maidens, but ordinary: these things were an outshedding in his mind of wormwood and darkness. In the Queen indeed, he saw a girl gay and high-hearted, and one in whom, as they talked together, he thought he touched a mind his own rode in step with, laughing at things his laughed at, leaping where his leapt. But in this was neither recompense nor echo of that which with so much wonder had been permitted to stand for a little moment and with so much aching loss had been taken and gone, upon that midnight under the winged glory in Barganax's jewelled mansion of delights. Moreover, until now he had remembered and might feed on the memory of that moment; but now, from his first looking on very Rialmar, the memory was become as the thin lost perfume dreamed in a dream, that a man knows would restore him all, might he but breathe it again, but natural present walls him from it, as day is a wall to shut out the star-shine.

  The Queen now, walking with Derxis, stopped at a bed of the yellow mountain-lily with spotted flower. 'Poor little lilies,' said she. ‘I cannot please them.'

  Derxis shrugged and, catching the sound of Lessingham's voice, would have walked on. But the Queen waited, so that, if with no good will, he must needs retrace his step.

  'My Lord Lessingham,' said she: 'are you a gardener? What is it hurts my lilies?'

  Lessingham viewed them. His eyes and ears were opened to the estate of more than lilies in that garden. 'Not the aspect,' answered he. 'Your grace hath given them sun for their faces, and these little mezereon bushes to shade their feet, and sheltered them from the winds.'

  Derxis said apart to Alquemen, in such a whisper as all might hear, 'Hast not wit to keep the fellow away, but must be thrust still into my company? Go draw him apart.'

  'But how of the soil?' said Lessingham. 'They have very particular likes. Mould of old oak-leaves, and—'

  'A word with you,' said Alquemen, close to his ear.

  Lessingham's eyes crossed with the Queen's. 'Or if your grace should be troubled with land-mice, little rude beasts that gnaw your lilies underground? I know a way with such.'

  His back was turned upon Alquemen, and he gave no sign that he had heard him or was ware of his presence.

  Derxis, looking at Lessingham's riding-boots, said to the Queen, 'Belike I understand not the right ceremony of your grace's court. It is custom, is't, to come into the presence in disarray?'

  Again her eyes crossed with Lessingham's: a look sudden and gone like a kingfisher's flight between gliding water and overshadowing trees. He turned to Derxis with a grave courtesy. 'My lord the king of Akkama, I am a soldier. And it is custom, with a soldier, to obey his sovereign's command.'

  The Queen had moved onwards a step or two. 'A soldier?' said Derxis. 'Go, and 'tis said women will love a soldier better than all other men?'

  Lessingham lifted an eyebrow. 'I know not that. But this have I known,' said he, as if talking to the flowers: 'in many countries of the world I have known ladies plagued with uncivil persons have found a soldier excellent good as doorkeeper.'

  With so little conscience and so leisurable a gravity had he spoken these words, the king was unready how to take it; and ere he was resolved, Lessingham was some paces from him walking with the Queen and them of her household. The Princess Zenianthe alone was left: she had turned aside suddenly, handkercher to mouth, to contemplate a bunch of water gladiole in the near corner of the pond. Derxis turned colour, the more at the sight of Zenianthe's shaking shoulders. With a hasty glance he satisfied himself that, save his own folk's, no eye was on him. Then with two steps he was at her side, took her about the neck from behind, bent back her head and kissed her upon the lips, well and strong. Al-quemen flung up his chin with a great laugh. Lessingham looked round. She, freeing herself, took Derxis a box on the ear that he heard bells.

  The Queen and her folk waited now by the sunflowers for the king to come up. He came, twirling his walking-stick idly as he walked, his gentlemen in his wake, his features well composed. A poisonsome look was in his
eyes. 'And now, sir,' said the Queen, 'is my half-hour ended; and now must I be private in this garden to confer with my council 'pon matters of state.'

  'Madam,' Derxis said: 'of all cruel ladies are not you the cruellest? Is not sunlight a darkness, and every minute a year of prison, out of sight of your life-giving eyes? Well, I am your slave to obey, then; asking but that your sweet lips that speak the sentence shall give me yet some promise of more private conference; haply this afternoon?'

  ‘I pray you give us leave. And perhaps my huntsmen may find you the means to make life bearable.'

  Zenianthe said with a levelled malice, 'And you, my Lord Lessingham, care not: we can offer you some sport here in the garden: a toad-hunt!' Derxis, kissing the Queen's hand, turned colour again at those words. Laughter sat in the Queen's eyes, but discretion locked it there.

  As they of the king's company moved off now towards the gate, Lessingham overtook them, came beside Alquemen, who walked last, and touched him on the arm. 'My Lord Alquemen: this time, a word with you. Is it as it seemed to me but now, that you laughed, when a lady was put to an inconvenience?'

  'Well, and if I did?' replied he, swinging round upon his heel and thrusting his face, with its full popping eyes, into Lessingham's. ' 'Shall need a better than thee to check me.'

  King Derxis, ware of this jangling, paused in the gate and looked back. At a word from him, Kasmon, Orynxis, and Esperveris, advanced menacingly towards Lessingham and stood scowling about him. Lessingham gathered their eyes with his and folded his arms. 'Let us make no jarring in this presence, my lords,' he said; and, to Alque-men, 'can you use a sword?' Amid their great burst of laughter Alquemen answered, with a bloody look, 'It hath been thought so.'

  'Good,' said Lessingham. 'This then, and no more: You are a mannerless swine, and shall account to me for your unmannerly dealing.'

  Alquemen said, 'A word is as good as a blow. I take you very well. My Lord Orynxis will take order for my part.'