Mistress of mistresses

by E R Eddison

Their eyes met, a merry, humorous, feasting look. 'You are forgetting the good there is in change, I think,' she said after a silence. 'For my own part, I incline much to fair hair in women. Anthea, for instance.'

  The Duke winced.

  'I am resolved: good: dye my hair yellow.'

  'If you dared but even do your hair any way else but my ways—,' he spoke slowly, as lost in a contemplation, his mind on drawing, not on his words.

  'So, then I'll cut it off,' said she.

  His feeding gaze seemed to grow keener. He said on his breath, 'I'd kill you.'

  'I should make you some sport ere that,' said the lady, her mouth still hidden behind the lily smoothness of that indolent arm. 'Have you forgot our first assay, laying aside of ceremonies, a month after that first meeting, three years ago next summer? I showed you then, my friend: bit a piece of flesh off your bones.'

  'Two minutes, my heart-dear!' He suddenly fell to drawing, line by line in swift and firm decision. There was a stillness upon that lady, while line after line traced, true and aware, its predestined furrow on the polished copper, like the stillness of a sunshine evening upon some lake in which mountain and wood and sky hang mirrored in reverse, and nothing moves save (may be with the settlings of little winged creatures) the dancing gleams, one here, one there, seven or eight at a time, of liquid golden stars coming and going upon that glassy water.

  The Duke sprang up: went to the table to rub lampblack into the lines. When he turned again, she had put on again her bodice, as it were a sleeved mail-coat made of thousands of tiny orient pearls, close fitting like a glove, and sat with her back towards him, upright on the couch. He stood for a minute looking at his drawing, then came and sat down behind her, holding the plate for both to see it. The clock struck three.

  'As for painting, that was a true word you said that night to Lessingham.'

  'To Lessingham?' she said.

  'For a lover: hard to paint the thing which is.'

  'O I remember: by the dream-stone.'

  'The One, that I still was a-hunting of in the Many, till your day; and now the Many in you.' Her face was sideways towards him, looking at the dry-point. Her eyes were become Medusaean and, in its repose, her mouth snakish and cruel. 'Paintings,' he said: 'all trash. They give me but a barren One out of your Many, and never your One that breeds those Many, as the sun breeds colours.'

  'But this is better, you think?'

  'It is beyond comparison better; and my best.'

  'Of that which changeth ever, and yet, changeth not?'

  That lady's voice took on yet another quality of wonder, as if into the sun-warmed, cud-chewing, indolence of it were distilled all the warring elements of her divinity: fanged peril couched amid blood-red peonies: green of seawater, still and deep, above a bottom of white shell sand, or the lights in lionesses' eyes: the waved blackness of the Stygian flood in the ferrying across of some soul of sweetness untimely dead: coal, snow, moonlight, the light of burning cities, eclipse, prodigious comets, the benediction of the evening star; and behind these things, a presence as of some darkness that waited, awake, shawled, and still: gravid with things past and half remembered, and things present yet not apprehended well, and with things to come: or, may be, not to come, swaying betwixt birth and the unbeing of the void.

  'Of manifoldness: yes,' said he, after a minute. 'But of your Oneness, a shadow only: Persephone beneath the sod.'

  She considered the picture again. 'You have my mouth there, I see?'

  'Ah, you can see that? though your arm hides it?'

  'You have it in the eyes, and in the fingers.'

  'I am glad,' said he: 'for I meant it so.'

  'It came of itself I should say. I set much by mouths: especially my own.'

  He stood up, laid the plate on the table, turned and stood looking at her. 'Omne animal triste?' she said, the devil of provocation viperine in her mouth's corner.

  'I told you that was a lie,' Barganax said, his eyes on hers. She settled back a little, sitting there facing him, and her eyes seemed to grow darker and larger. 'It were not for every man's comfort,' he said: 'mate with you: a swan swimming with her wings expansed, then, whip, in a moment mew that white outward skin, soar against the sun, bring out your pounces, fly at fools and kill too. Nor for every man's capacity.'

  'And yet you will still be picture-making.'

  'O it is well,' he said: 'well that eagles do mate together: other else—'

  'Other else', said she, 'must Fiorinda have led apes in hell? or, worse, lived housewife in Reisma? Well, I like that a man should high himself even thus insufferably, so he have the pith to maintain it.'

  The Duke came a step towards her. 'There is no middle way with you,' he said: 'you are all night and day: dazzling night and intolerable day.'

  'And roses.' It was as if not she but the very stillness of her mouth had spoken. 'Some red, some pink-colour.'

  'And eyes that are the sea. I drown in them,' he said upon a sudden intake of the breath. 'When I kiss you, it is as if a lioness sucked my tongue.'

  She leaned back with hands clasped behind her head, Valkyrie breasts breathing under that pearl-woven byrny, and above it her throat's lithe splendour and strength. 'Seas are for who can swim,' she said, and a sweeping of lyres was in the lazy voice of her. 'White noon is for the eagle to kindle his eyes upon: the sweetness of the red rose is to be weighed down upon, to be crushed, to be scented: the wonder of darkness is lest you should despair and, numbering perfections, say, It is the sum: it is all. For am not I all, my friend? I am more than all. And when all is told and numbered and multiplied and told over again, I say to you, In my darknesses I have more. Come. Prove it again. Come.'

  Upon the chimes of four Doctor Vandermast knocked at the topaz-studded cedar doors of the painting-room and entered to the Duke's 'Come in.' The Duke, wearing no more that brocaded fur-purfled gown, but fully dressed in doublet, ruff, and hose, apprised of Medor's importunities for audience, went out to him in the gallery. The Lady Fiorinda, yet in some disarray and with her hair unbound, reclined upon the couch fanning herself with a fan of white peacock feathers twined with silver wires and set with apple-green chrysoprases in the ribs.

  'Small advance, it is to be feared,' she said as Vandermast surveyed the picture on the easel. 'But what will you have, if two hours must be expended but in settling of my pose?' There stirred in the accents of her speech a self-mocking, self-preening, sleepy grace which, to the attentive and philosophic ear, carried some note of that silver laughter that the ageless remembering waters yet dream of, foaming disconsolate in Paphian sea-shallows.

  The doctor smiled, looking on the painting but half begun; then, seeing the dry-point on the table, took it up and considered it awhile in silence. ‘I judge from this,' he said at last, 'that your ladyship has been teaching some lessons in philosophy. It is better. Nay, confine it but within its limit of purpose defined and propounded for it, there is no more to do: it is perfect.'

  'You will say "Othello's occupation's gone," then? A melancholy conclusion.'

  ‘I will not say that, save after your ladyship,' answered that learned man.

  'Well, you must do maid-service first (these ill-appointed ways we live 'in): bring me the looking-glass to do my hair. Thanks, reverend sir;' she sat up, putting off in an instant her grace of languorous ease for a grace of wakefulness and speed of action, with deft sure fingers pinning into a formal court elegance her hair's braided lovelinesses, night-black, smooth-waved, with blue gleams where the light struck, like the steel-blue gleaming of certain stars, as of Vega in a moonless night in autumn. Her hands yet busied upon a last pranking of her ruff, she turned to meet Barganax's face as he strode into that room like a man that contains within his breast the whirlwind. Medor, with flushed countenance, followed at his heel.

  'Here's news, and hell's fires in the tail of it,' said the Duke, making with great strides towards the window and flinging himself down in his chair. 'The hennardly knaves: yes, I mean
your strutting stately brother, madam, with's prims and provisoes,' he said, rocking from side to side: 'he hath accepted Sail Aninma bestowed of him by the thundering tyrant, slick as was Mandricard to take Alzulma 'pon like offer. And Jeronimy with's cringing in the hams, licking the hand of the king-killer: if there be a badder man than that Beroald 'tis this back-starting Admiral with his thin wispy beard, ever eats with the jackals and weeps with the shepherd: now sworn new entire allegiance and obedience: given out all's o'er 'twixt them and me, our late confirmed league, 'cause of slaying of Mandricard. Damn them! after a month's digesting of it, now the meat bolketh up again. Damn them!' he said, springing up and stalking, like a beast caged, about the room: 'they're all habs and nabs, foul means or fair: hearts in their hose when they catch a breath from Rerek. I almost enrage!' He caught Fiorinda's eye. 'Well, will not your ladyship go join your brother in Sail Aninma? Will you not be i' the fashion, all of you, and down with me now I'm going?'

  Fiorinda, in a statuesque immobility, followed him with her gaze. 'What means your grace to do now?' she asked. 'Paint, and let the wide world wind?'

  The Duke checked and swung round upon her as if bitten. Little comfort there was in that lady's eye or in the stony curve of her lip. Yet as he looked upon her, meeting stare with outfacing stare, it was as if, like fiery molten metal in a furnace, his rage ran into some mould and cooling took shape and purpose. His jaw set. His eyes, leaving their flashes, burned steady into hers. Then there came upon all his pose and carriage that easy magnificence which best became him; and in his voice that was right antiphone for hers, bantering, careless, proud, 'I'll tell you,' he said: 'secret, within these walls,' and he looked round upon Medor and Vandermast. 'Within three days I'll be man or mouse.'

  With a feline elegance the Lady Fiorinda rose, gathering with one white hand, not to trail them on the floor, the black shimmering flounces of her skirt, and walked to the window. There she stood, one knee upon the window-seat, her back to the room; but the Duke's eyes, as the mariner's on the cynosure amid flying cloud-rack, were fixed on her.

  'Medor,' he said, 'you are both a count of Meszria and captain of my bodyguard. You must now for a while be my lieutenant and commissioner of my dukedom in the south here, to do all in my name: what, I shall speedily command you. Write out the commission, Vandermast: I'll sign it. For you, Medor, you are to muster up an army suddenly: Melates, Zapheles, every lord i' the south here. High master in Meszria I yet will be. But it must be suddener than move an army: take the prey with a jolly quickness, before, like water cut with a sword, they have time to join together again. Roder holds Kutarmish: by the carriage away of that, all the de-fenced places of Outer Meszria, and may be o' the March too, will without resistance be yielded. This then sooner of my own self than by any other middlers. I'll take with me Dioneo, Bernabo, Ansaldo, him o' the wall-eye— Friscobaldo, Fontinell: choose me out the rest: twenty-five of the most outrageousest beseen and likely men we have in the guard. I'll ride to-morrow.'

  'Twenty-five men?' said Medor. 'Are you out of your princely wits?'

  'If the gear cotton, I need no more men for this dust. If not, more were useless.'

  Medor laughed bitterly. 'Falleth not for me to question your grace's orders. But if you are thus resolute to cast your life away, let mine be in the cast too; for indeed I care not for it a pudding-prick if you miscarry.'

  'No, Medor. If I must be had by the back, you shall avenge me. But I know at my fingers' ends what kind of men are in that city. I do esteem this a sport.' His eyes met Vandermast's. Surely the eyes of that old man were become as the thin pure radiance that suffuses the starless heavens eastward before the sun-spring of a windless dawn. Fiorinda turned. She held her head high, like a leopardess that scents the wind. 'I have been anvil long enough,' said the Duke: 'I will now be hammer. Let all be made ready; for I've bethought me, I'll not stay for to-morrow: I'll ride tonight.

  'And now, give us leave.'

  When they were alone there fell a stillness. At last Barganax spoke: 'So runneth the hare then. Well? and if it be farewell?' She reached out a jewelled hand: he took it in his, bowed over it, raised it to his lips, then, as with a sudden flaming of the blood, began to run with hungry kisses from palm to wrist, from wrist upwards, pushing back the sleeve till he reached the tender inner bend of the elbow, then with a stride forward seized her to him. 'No,' she said, withholding her mouth. 'When you come back.'

  'That may be never.' He mastered her, but her lips were lifeless under his kisses: all her body stiff and hard and unkind. 'Was there ever such a venomous tyrant?' he said, letting her go at last. 'All ice. And you have turned me to ice too.'

  'You are rightly served,' replied she, 'for being a glutton. The fuller fed, the greedier. This livelong morning: then more this afternoon. Well, marry Myrrh a, then, or Pantasilea: some obedient commodity to all your bidding. Me you shall not have o' these terms.' Leaning against the door-jamb, her hand upon the crystal knob, she watched him from under a drooped curtain of long black eyelashes while, like summer lightnings, there played about the dear beauties of hand and neck and cheek, and about the sweep of frills and ruffles and many-pleated gauzinesses of her skirt, glints of fang or claw. 'Indeed,' she said, 'I know not why my girdle should still be at your command. Unless if it be that in you too,' she said, 'for all your idle plaguy ways, there is no sit still, no rest, nothing predicable. And because of that:' she suddenly paused upon a miraculous softening of every line and contour; a breath, like the sudden filling of a sail, lifting the Grecian curve of her breasts; a slowing, as if it were honey with the bee's sting lost in it, of her voice; a quivering of eyelids; an exhalation of intoxicating sweets, zephyr-like, like dark roses, in all the air about her: 'because of that,—I love you.'

  Upon which most heavenly farewell, eluding a kiss or any touch or caress, she was gone.

  Barganax rode that same night. He sent up word to his mother in Memison castle as he passed next day that he intended a week's hunting of oryx and bears in the Huruns. So fast he rode that by Saturday midnight he was come up to Rumala. Here he rested horses and men till late evening of Sunday, and so at dusk came down the Curtain. They rode all night, avoiding the highway, and a mile or so south of Kutarmish, in a beech-wood of the spreading hills, waited for dawn. Twenty men, by driblets of twos and threes, he sent ahead to be ready outside the gates. At dawn the gates were opened, and there began to be coming and going of the day's traffic. The Duke with his five rode up openly; they had blue osset cloaks and common country bonnets to dissemble their warlike gear and quality. As they drew near the gates, those twenty joined them. In a moment they killed the guards and rode briskly into the town to Roder's house. Roder was upon coming forth with some men, and had but at the very instant swung himself into the saddle. Few folk were abroad, it being thus early, and the Duke and his fared swiftlier than the hue and cry at their heels. He took Roder by the hand: 'How fares it this morning with your excellence?' In his left hand he held a dagger, well placed, to let Roder's bare skin feel the prick of it through his doublet, while the Duke might feel through the pommel in his hand the leaping of Roder's heart. The face of Roder turned dark as blood, then grey like well-thumbed parchment. His jaw fell, and he sat still as a mouse, with dull blood-shotten bull's eyes staring at the Duke. About the two of them the Duke's men, swiftly casting off their cloaks, had made a circle, facing outwards with drawn swords. People now ran together from the houses, these in the street screeching out to those within who burst forth in heaps. 'If you love your heal, be sudden,' said the Duke, 'and proclaim me. Here is your argument: hath a sharp point and a tart. If 'tis die and go to hell now, be certain you, my lord, shall in the entrance of this massacre be murdered: 'I'll send you first, show me the path. If not, sudden, while you may.'

  'I am your grace's man,' said the Earl then out of a dry throat, 'whatsoe'er my mouth have jangled. Aware, fellows,' he shouted, 'and stand a-room: blow oip your trumpets that every man of good will shall stand
'pon his allegiance to the lord Duke of Zayana, for whose behalf I have hold this city and do him right so.'

  The Duke commanded him, 'Proclaim me Vicar of the Queen in Meszria.' They blew up the trumpets and so proclaimed him.

  By evening was all quiet in the town, and the Duke's power well seated. For they of his faction, that had fared this while with hidden head while Roder held it for the Vicar, came forth upon his proclamation and set upon those of the other party. These turmoils the Duke put down with a heavy hand without fear or favour, using the soldiers, to the number of four or five hundred, that Roder held the town with: not of his own private following, but of the royal army established in the south these many years, from whom the Duke took oath of allegiance now in the Queen's name, they accepting him sooner than accept the Vicar, after this autumn's doings, as upholder of the house of Fingiswold. But the Vicar was proclaimed by trumpet up and down the town as traitor, usurper, and king-killer, that every loyal subject should refuse and reject him and receive instead, as Lord Protector and Vicegerent for the Queen, the Duke of Zayana. And now as the day wore, and men grew bolder, they of the town began to come with whole cart-loads of complaints and grievances against Roder, petitioning the Duke to deliver him up, either else punish him himself. Barganax, finding that Roder could not bungle up but a very poor answer to these complaints; finding besides, upon seizure of the Earl's papers, plain proofs of wicked devices devised by him with the Vicar, upon price of Kutarmish, for invasion of Meszria contrary to the Concordat, and a plot drawn to murder the Duke; considering too how (and that by proof of documents) they had hatched up such bloody practices since October even and that meeting in the Salimat; accordingly next morning let lead out Roder into the markert-place and there, with these proofs exposed and a man to cry them, take off his head. By which example of severity, as well as by his yesterday's insulting wild fierce and unaffrighted quick seizing of the town with so little a band of high-resolved men, men's minds were wonderfully sobered, to beware how they should make themselves as of a faction or party against him, or think to play bobfool with him.