Mistress of mistresses

by E R Eddison

  'And for mine, my lieutenant, Amaury. I'll send him, my lord, to speak with you.'

  The twenty-fourth day after these things just told of, a Utile past sunset, the Princess Zenianthe stood at that same window of the Queen's bedchamber. The room was all astir with lights and shadows of a log fire that blazed and sputtered on the hearth. To the left of the fire the deep-bayed window stood wide to the evening, which entered now with a tang of autumn and a tang of mountains and the sea. The roofs and towers of Mehisbon were a sharp screen of dark greenish violet against the west, where motes of a rosy radiance swam and shimmered suffusing the smoky blues and purples, and, for a last lighting to bed of day, the broad and tapering blade of the zodiacal light slanted up from the place of settle-gang. The beetle, winding his faint horn to Zenianthe as he travelled the paths of opening night beside that window, saw her as some titanic figure darkly fair against a background of fire. The firelight saw her as its own, spirit of its spirit, dream of its dream, that which itself would become, might it but be clothed upon with the divinity of flesh: a presence secure, protective, glad, warm, fancy-free; and so it made sure of her, touching with trembling sudden fingers now her breathing bosom, now a ringlet of brown hair that rested curled on her shoulder, now a ruby warm against her throat.

  She turned as the doors swung open in the middle of the side-wall to the left of the great bay of the window, and, with four ladies of the bedchamber to bear the candles before her and behind, the Queen entered, like a lily, from her bath. Surely her eyes outdanced the shining candles as Raviamne and Paphirrhoe lighted them, a dozen candles by the mirror that stood on the table to the right of the fire and another dozen by the tall mirror, framed in silver and white coral, to the right again, in the corner; surely the warmth of her presence hushed the encircling firelight and outglowed its glow. Zenochlide brought from a chair beside the fire, one by one, garments fine as the spider's web, fragrant, delicate as the butterfly's wing, and the Queen put them on. Anamnestra brought her coat-hardy of rich sarsenet, with a silver taint like a lily, yielding and clinging, wide-skirted downward from the hips: the Queen, pointing her white arms above her head, bowed and entered it like a diver, and like a diver came up laughing and shaking the hair from her eyes. The silken sleeves ended an inch or two below the shoulder, continuing thence with pale blue transparent gauze cut wide, shimmering with dust of gold, and gathered at the wrists to bracelets of fretted silver and margery-pearls. The skirt was purfled upon its lower edge, two spans deep, with flower-work in seed-pearls and the soft blue of turkey-stones and thread of gold, upon pale rose-coloured silk. Raviamne brought her shoes, sewn all over with pearls and amber.

  The Queen now, standing before the mirror, took out the pins and, with a shake of her head, let down her hair like a garment of netted sunlight falling nearly to the purfled flounce of her dress. Zenianthe came with the little white cat and held it out to be kissed: To salute your highness respectfully on your natal day, and ask you kindly admire my birthday collar Zenianthe gave me.' Antiope bent and kissed it between the blue eyes. 'And now,' she said, sitting down with it in her lap upon a long backless tapestry-cushioned seat of sandalwood before the table and mirror, 'you were best go and make ready yourselves. Zenianthe is dressed already: will help me do my hair.

  The peace of it!' she said, when they were alone, parting and combing the masses of her hair with a golden comb: hair that was like to the pallid soul of gold breathed into a mist at the foot of some waterfall. Tt is most strange calm weather, cousin: i' the court, I mean.'

  'Peace?' said Zenianthe, fingering the jewels on the table. 'Well, for a fortnight: since Lessingham's killing of those five, and the hubble-bubble that that made, and your making the whole pack of 'em lodge henceforth without Teremne; certainly it is more peacefuller now.'

  'Ah, but I meant from our own folk,' said Antiope. 'Bodenay; old Madam Tasmar; our vulpine friend Romyrus; they let me have my way now. Do they give me line, but the readlier to pluck me in? I know them too well, my puss,' she said, stroking it: 'twisty plots, but little sense. No, I am sure 'tis this: they are altogether carried by this man; and being by him taught sense, let me alone to go my ways. And for that,' she said, meeting Zenianthe's eyes in the glass with a most limpid, unconscious, and merry look, 'I am much beholden to him, and but wish he'd a come here sooner.'

  'Must this Derxis be at your festivities to-night?' Zenianthe asked. 'Planted near two months, he begins to take root I think in Rialmar. Will you wear your sapphire comb, cousin, or the turkey-stone to go with your gown? or will you have your hair low on the neck and no comb at all?'

  'I'll have the little half-moon crown of flower-delices, and do it the Greek way, and with those long strings of margarets you did give me, dear cousin.' She was silent a minute, a dimple coining and going near to her mouth's corner. Then, 'Must have been wormwood in his mouth, that business of Alquemen.'

  'These little margarets tangle in your hair, cousin, as if they were fain to wind cocoons in it and sleep themselves into fire-flies, or whatever 'tis margaret-chains turn to after their sleep.'

  'White moths,' said the Queen: 'owly faces and furry wings.'

  Zenianthe said, 'Methought I never saw so delicate playing as my Lord Lessingham's, when you did send for him after that affair, 'pon Derxis's complaint, and did confront them. So penitent and good as he bore himself toward the king, so's who could take exceptions at it? And yet never to leave you in doubt, cousin, that he knew your mind and purpose; as if he should look through his fingers and wink at it. Faith, I near gave away all by laughing, 'twas so pretty. So remorseful, cousin: "Yes, now 'twas put so, he did see indeed 'twas hardly to be pardoned: kill five of the king's men, and all in five minutes. And yet might he be indulged a little for ignorance sake; for truly he had not understood till now that Derxis, as a royal person, had free licence to set men in the dark under archways to kill and murder whom he pleased while guesting here in Rialmar."'

  Antiope smiled. 'And there the other walked so neatly into it.'

  'Yes,' said Zenianthe. ' "By my soul, madam, I had nought i' the world to do with it!" And then you, so sweet and harmless, "O I see, sir, then 'twas not upon your business they went then?" And while he felt about for firm ground then Lessingham again, most courtly and submissive, remembering Derxis of that former passage with Alquemen (I was the distressed lady there, cousin: the beast had laughed when Derxis did me that insolency). Precious heaven! I near burst myself keeping of my face, thinking (while Lessingham discoursed so formal and serious) of the true tale we had had of that encounter: of his snicking of the beastly fellow's wrist at the third pass and flicking the sword from his hand, contemptuous as dust away a fly: and this their notable great duellist with twenty men's deaths to's credit: and then,' she lowered her voice, that shook with suppressed merriment: 'and then making him put offs breeches, and slashing 'em to ribbons, and then bid him go in that pickle, and learn when and when not to laugh from henceforth—'

  'O Zenianthe!' said the Queen.

  'And then you,' said Zenianthe: ' "O, I'm sorry, sir. I understand. You are as blameless as I am in these mischances. This Alquemen of yours I see hath broke leash, run past your controlling, and 'twas he, not you, did fee these ruffians to sit for my officer to perform his death. Shall I punish him for you?" Cousin, I never saw man so angry, nor so checkmated. Worst of all, when, 'pon pretext to avoid such pothers from henceforth, you did decree them all lodging henceforth without Teremne.'

  Her hair being done, Antiope stood up now. 'What's good in Lessingham is right sense,' she said, 'and a wit so turnable for all things alike. What needs doing, this man doth it, and that often even before I knew I needed it. And best of all, a man that stands on's own feet in's own place. Not with your own self, cousin, was I ever more at ease; that I can talk to as 'twere my brother, and never shadow nor taint of that folly that ruineth all."

  The princess was silent. She fetched from the bed a girdle which Antiope now put on, of clouded p
ink tourmalines; and after that her outer dress of white crinkled silken gauze, transparent as an April shower. Little blue flowers of the squill and the blue-bell were worked on it here and there, and little specks of gold. Soft it was, fitting itself to every movement, even as loveliness itself. And about her delicate neck was a ruff, heart-shaped, open-cut, edged with pearls, going down to a point between her breasts where it was fastened with a flower-delice of little diamonds, so fine that it seemed to be made of mere light. 'As for this tedious king,' she said, ‘I have in mind a way to rid us of him tonight, if aught may rid him.'

  'What is that?'

  'O, a nice and courteous point of precedence I am minded to show him. You shall see.'

  'And but only this morning,' said Zenianthe behind her, setding the ruff, 'you did directly refuse, the third time, his offer of marriage. Poor king, he must be most pitifully fallen into your highness' toils.'

  "Poor king. Well, shall I take him after all, Zenianthe? For indeed I am sorry for him. And indeed I find him most displeasing. And indeed it is pitiful to consider of a person so lost in the world: pleasing of himself, but displeasing of all other. Well, then, shall I take him then?— 'Las, cousin, you must not prick me with that pin so!'

  The great Hall of the Sea-horses in the royal palace in Rialmar was shaped like a cross: a square central hall and four others, lower of roof, opening upon it: and each of these five was well thirty paces either way. The walls were panelled with green jasper between pillars of lapis lazuli. At the northern end, facing the main doors, was a staircase all of jasper; a broad flight leading down to the floor of the northern hall, and side-flights branching up right and left from it to the gallery. Windows, five times the height of a man, filled all the space upon the end walls east and west; in the west, the moon at this time looked in, three days old, a reaping-hook of silver fire. The main doors were in the southern side of the southern hall: doorways with pointed arches, and the doors all covered with leather of peacock blue, nailed all over with golden stars, and edged with rims of rose-pink crystal. The roofs of the side-halls were flat, of a dark stone full of fiery sparkles. Slender jasper columns, two rows down the middle of each hall, dividing it so into three aisles, bare up the ceilings. But of the main middle hall the roof was domed and exceeding high, and the whole floor of the middle hall empty and without pillars. Curtains or hangings of tapestry came down from the dome and, looped up at each corner at the level of the frieze, tumbled thence in billowy masses upon the floor: all of dusky stuff that showed blues or greens as the light moved or the eye that beheld them, and with streamed stripes of ultramarine, and roses worked in pink silk here and there, and at the converging of the stripes or streamers, bosses, broader than a man's arms might span, of cushioned black silk, sewn with vast sunflowers in gold thread. One enormous lamp swung high in the dome, of silver and topaz and yellow sapphires, shedding a radiance very warm and golden: and everywhere, suspended by iron chains, were censers of bronze hammered and damascened, some in green and white enamel, some dusky bronze, some lacquered red, and in the chains were flowers twined and the verdure of creeping plants and leaves and fruits. Alternating with the censers, scores of small hanging lamps burned with a rose-red light. The floor was of inlaid work of rare and sweet-smelling woods, divers-coloured, but with a general show of redness, bare in the main middle hall for dancing, but with crimson carpets in the four outer halls. And at the ends of the balustrades of that great staircase where it came upon the floor, (and from these had the hall its name), were two sea-horses rampant, with webbed feet and finny wings and scaly fish-like bodies with fishes' tails. Bigger they were than the biggest horse that ever went upon the earth, and were carved each from a single stone of sea-blue rock-crystal.

  Amid this magnificance hundreds of guests were now assembled to rejoice upon Queen Antiope's eighteenth birthday. And as they walked and mingled, it was as the shining forth of the sun after long and heavy rain, when the beams suck up from a wet hedge of box or yew a mist that shimmers with rainbow colours, and the drops upon the leaves change, as the wind shakes them, from emerald to amethyst, from that to ruby, from ruby to liquid gold. King Derxis, surveying the scene with the look of one that has yet in his mouth the taste of a sour mixture, stood with his folk in the main hall. Some saluted him with a formal respect as they passed by^ more went about some other way; none joined his company. Every while, the furrow betwixt his brows knit at the sight of some young lord of Fingiswold or some proper man among the company; but his eyes turned oftenest towards the stairs. 'Rialmar fashions,' he said under his breath at last. 'I am nigh sickened of these meant discourtesies. The bitch! am I her monkey to be led in a string? Esperveris!' he said, aloud.

  'Humbly to your highness' wish.'

  'Send in another messenger. Say the King of Akkama tarrieth, and 'tis not our custom to wait on women's leisures.

  'Hold thee. Send not.' Esperveris turned back. 'I've changed my mind.' Esperveris, bowing his obedience, had in his eyes that brightened cringing look (seen before in the little garden), of a man that has seen a sight behind the veil.

  And now, turning to look towards the eastern doors, Derxis set eye for the first time that evening upon Lessingham, where he talked with old Bodenay and the Lord Romyrus, Constable in Rialmar, and some young lords about him, Orvald, Venton, and Tyarchus, and ladies besides, the Countess Heterasmene, Myrilla, daughter to the^ lord Admiral Jeronimy, and others. Gay and easy seemed Lessingham, and it was plain how their conversation danced to his tune and opened under his presence as flowers to a warm sun. His attire was of great richness and darkness: blacks and deep indigo blues, with figurings of silver trefoils. He wore a narrow three-double ruff, and ruffs at the wrists besides, below cuffs of silver lace. But a single jewel he wore, of the kingly order of the hippogriff, about his neck; and upon his thumb a ring in the figure of that worm ouroboros, that eateth his own tail.

  Not with the flicker of muscle nor eyelash did the countenance of Derxis uncover his mind as he, for a full minute, steadfastly regarded Lessingham across the hall. Then in that chill unruffled lady-like voice he said to Orynxis, taking his arm, 'Behold yonder woman-server, come to ruffian it out in the company of his betters. A soldier of fortune: hireth out his sword, and body too, for trash. How call you such an one, Orynxis?'

  'So please your grace, how but shortly thus?' answered Orynxis: 'a male harlot.'

  'O sweet and excellent!' said Derxis. 'Go, tell him so, from me.'

  His eyes, like pebbles, rested upon Orynxis, noting how the blood shrank, leaving the brutal face white and pappy, then rushed to it once more as under the lash of shame: noting the fumbling of irresolute fingers for the sword-hilt that was not there, for no man was admitted armed to that presence. Squaring his shoulders, Orynxis began to go, as a condemned man towards the beheading-block. The king stayed him with his hand. "Thou fool,' he said, and there was a muted evil music of laughter in his voice that cut like the east wind: 'shall I unfeather me of all my friends, aids, and helps, because you are like pilled rabbits when't cometh to facing this bloody bully? Alquemen could eat up two such as thou: yet did not this fellow whip him? As I'll whip this puling girl, might I but come at her i' the happy occasion and where I would. Whip her flesh till the blood spurt.'

  Almost in manner of a royal progress was Lessingham's passage among the guests: not by his doing, for he seemed ever as a man whose thoughts and looks went outwards, not busied with his own self. But, as the lily of the compass is turned always towards the pole, so of that throng of great court-men and ladies in their summer beauty and others of worship from up and down the land, were eyes turned towards him. 'So you live not always upon gondolas or islands?' said a light bantering voice at his elbow. He looked down into beady eyes whose strange shy gaze captured the gaze that looked on them, allowing it no liberty to look well at the face that owned them.

  'My pleasure is my power to please my mistress My power is my pleasure in that power.—

  Are
you still so roundabout in your philosophy, my Lord Lessingham?'

  'I had thought, madam,' said he, bowing over her small hand, gloved to above the elbow in velvet-soft brown leather that had the sharp sweet smell of summer evenings amid rush-grown sleepy waters, 'that I had demonstrated to you that 'twas a philosophy agreeable to extreme directness of practice. May I have the honour to tread a measure with you when the music shall begin?'

  'Please you, I'll be asked rather when that time shall come,' she replied. ‘I know not yet what orders have gone forth for to-night. Care not, my lord: once had, you cannot lose me.' As she spoke, the brown paw had slipped from his fingers, and she in her brown fur-trimmed gown was lost among the press, as if she had slid noiselessly into water, and no ripple left behind.

  Lessingham, under a singular unseizable exhilaration of spirit, looked round for her awhile in vain, then went on his way. It was as if the bright lights of that hall burned brighter, and as if secret eyes watched from the lamps themselves, and from the hangings and from the golden chapiters of the pillars, and from the walls themselves: a thousand eyes, unseen, that watched and waited on some event. Lessingham, stroking his black beard, bethought him that he had drunk no wine: bethought him then that wine has no effects like these. For now a tranquillity possessed him, and a clarity of thought and vision; wherein, as he looked round upon all that company, he was aware of a new grandeur come upon them. Zenianthe, passing through the hall, acknowledged his salutation: it seemed to him that he beheld for the first time her beauty, of her that he had thought but a princess among princesses, but clothed now with the perfection of the ancient earth, as on the hills shepherds trample the hyacinth under foot, and the, flower darkens on the ground. A change, not of the like quality yet of like measure, was come upon a hundred fair women that he now gazed on, so that they seemed like Galateas in marble quickened to a cold stately movement of life and breathing: statuesque presences of nymphs, or of persons half divine, brqught back to the visitations of the common earth, and that September evening, and the young moon setting. Yet had this alteration no character of dream nor vision: it was a hardening rather of sensual solid fact, as if some breath had passed, blowing away all dissembling mists and exhalations and leaving naked the verity of things. Lessingham now, without surprise, met, levelled at him from the re-entrant corner of the southern hall to the right of the seahorse staircase, the unblinking, cat-like, stare of his oread lady, Anthea. In her, as flame held in flame remains flame still, he beheld no change. Making his way towards her, he walked across that very place where Derxis and his gentlemen were standing: walked indeed through the midst of them, knowing not that he did so, nor that they in angry astonishment gave back right and left to let him pass. For they, under that alteration, were become so unremarkable that he did not, for the while, perceive their presence.