Mistress of mistresses

by E R Eddison

  'Each to his taste,' Lessingham said. ‘I have given you reasons enough in policy. And if you will have more, say he is a dangerous horse: say I taste a pleasure in such riding.'

  'Say you will break your neck, my Lord Lessingham,' said the Chancellor.

  But Barganax and Lessingham, like as formerly at the council-board in Ilkis, now faced one another as if, for all their company about them, they stood alone, and a third presiding: a third, perceived but by them alone; and scarcely, indeed, to be named a third, as being present strangely to the Duke in the person of Lessingham, and to Lessingham in the Duke.

  Two days later, a little before noon, Lessingham rode into Laimak. It was a day of close, hazy weather, boiling up for thunder-storms. The Chancellor's armies still held siege before the castle, for the allies had no mind that the Vicar should use this truce for getting in of provision, then defy them anew and so drag on. Lessingham and his they let through with no delays, for he bare letters of credence under seal of Zayana. All the valley for a mile about the castle was wasted with fire and eaten up. The Vicar greeted Lessingham as a man might greet a son long given up for lost. He carried him -to his closet in the keep, and hither was dinner brought them, poor campaigning fare indeed: bacon pies, black rye bread, cheese, and smoked fish, with a runlet of muscadine to wash it down and a little joy the heart withal.

  'Are you come with a treaty in your wallet?' said the Vicar when the waiting-men had set all in order and, upon his command, left them to dine private.

  Lessingham smiled. 'No more treaties, cousin, of my making. I have somewhat here: but you shall sign for yourself, if it like you; and no room for cavil afterward.'

  'It will keep till after dinner.'

  'Yes. It will keep so long: not much longer.'

  The Vicar looked swiftly up. Lessingham's face, careless and with eyes averted, was not to be read. 'You're come none too soon,' said the Vicar then, and took in a great mouthful. 'Rations left for seven days. Starving men make best fighters; but 'tis not a discipline fit to hold 'em to too long: though it be good to savage 'em, yet in this other 'tis as bad, that drawn out beyond a day or two it sloweth and feebleth the animal spirits. And so ninth day from this had I set for the grand carousal, warm meat and blood puddings i' the field below there, and the leavings for the crows to pick on.'

  'Rant it not to me as if I were a woman,' said Lessingham. 'You have not sufficiency to withstand their forces: not one hour, in the open.'

  'Well: end so, then.' He watched Lessingham through half-shut lids. 'Better so than swallow another treaty like the last you crammed down my throat, cousin.'

  'Your highness is a great soldier,' said Lessingham; *but politician, not so good. How should you now look for so good a treaty as that? which was just and equal, but you did break every article and published your every breach too from the house-tops. Be thankful if I have saved you your life, and some few false beams of your supposed honour.' 'So!'

  For a long while, eyeing each other, they ate and drank in silence. The Vicar's neck swelled like a puff-adder's. At length, 'You've been a weary while,' he said, 'dallying on the door-step: more than a fortnight. Talking with those devils (the sweat and swink they've cost me!) Might a talked to me ere this, I'd have thought?'

  Lessingham said nothing, only with a delicate air raised his cup and drank, regarding his cousin the while with level and thoughtful eyes. The Vicar took a gobbet of bacon-rind out of his mouth: leaned sideways to give it to Pyewacket. The play of the light revealed, as might some great master's brush, the singularity that belonged, but seldom so lively seen as now, to his strangely-sorted countenance: heavy eyelids, wide-winged jutting nose, lean lips like a snake's, delicate ears, ruffianly reddish-be-bristled jowl, serene smooth forehead, small swift-darting eyes: a singularity of brutish violence joined with some nobler element in a marriage wherein neither was ever all subdued to other, nor yet ever all distinct; so that divorce must needs have crippled a little both, as well the good as the bad. And upon Lessingham, while he so watched this renewing of a pageant he knew well, a mantle seemed to fall, enduing limb and sinew and poise of neck and head with a grander and yet more pantherine grace. And the Grecian lineaments of Lessingham, and the eyes of him thus savouring his cousin, seemed not so much to be informed now with a swift beast's majesty or an eagle's, but rather as if strength and mastery should. take to itself the airy loveliness of a humming-bird, and so hang hovering on viewless wings, as the bird quivers bodiless upon air beside a flower, uncertain into which honeyed fold amid petals it shall aim its long and slender beak.

  'You were ever at your best,' he said after a little,

  ‘back to the wall. Trouble is, set you at your ease, you fall athinking. And that is bad for you.'

  'I know not, cousin, what you account good for a man. My belt's half a foot the shorter since Yule-tide.'

  'What dispossessed your wits,' Lessingham said, 'soon as my back was turned, treat this Duke as you would some poor-spirited slow boy? And did I not tell you what he is? and could you not use him accordingly?'

  'That which is, is,' said the Vicar, and drank and spat 'That which was, was. That which shall be, 'tis that con-cerneth me and you. This new turn in Rialmar,' fleet as a viper's his eyebeam flashed upon Lessingham's face and away,' 'hath upsyversied all, ha? Or how think you on't? Look you,' he said, after a silence, and leaned forward, elbows on the table: 'I will tell you a thought of mine: may be good, may be naught, howsome'er hath come me oft in mind since Kutarmish set all afire here. That Derxis. Could a been used, ha? matter of marriage, had't been nicely handled:' he paused, studying through red eyelashes Lessingham's face, inscrutable and set now as a God's likeness done in marble. 'And so, using Akkama to put down Zayana, afterward—, well, there be ways and means.'

  Lessingham toyed with his wine-cup. 'Ways and means!' He tossed off the wine, sprang up, walked to the window, and there stood looking down on him as in a high displeasure. 'Pray talk to me of your soldiering, for there I can but admire, and even love you. But these twisting policies, I can but laugh at 'em.'

  'Nay, but hangeth together. My wardship's lost: so. Well, shift weight to the well-lodged foot then.' He paused, sat back in his chair. Their eyes met. 'I know not what this paper may say which you have in your purse, cousin; but would you'd a talked to me first ere talk to Zayana. You had not thought on this other way, ha? and yet opened fair before you: to use Derxis, I mean, as our instrument? And not too late now, neither, if rightly handled.'

  'What are you,' said Lessingham, 'but a bloody fool? Have I not told you long ago there's no way but the straight cut? the Mezentian way, not these viperine crawl-ings: weld all fast under Barganax now, and -crush this vermin, this of Akkama. Sweet Gods in heaven, cousin, is't not your own kith and kin? (in a distant way, I grant). And as for use Derxis, I'd as soon the putrid skull of some invenomed serpent, and use't for my wine-cup.'

  'Go,' said the Vicar, and there was the look in his eyes as of one that weigheth pro and contra as he gazed on Lessingham: 'here's a talker.'

  Lessingham took two parchments from his doublet: tossed them before the Vicar among the dishes. 'Take it or no, 'tis you to choose, cousin: but if yes, to-day's the last day: sign it or say good-bye. You may thank the kind Gods and me, that have hooked you out of this quagmire you have by your own curst mulish obstinacy rushed and stuck fast in. May be, since indeed I think you're mad now, you'll liefer choose your feast of tripes in Laimak home-mead a week hence; or t'other choice: that the Duke will give you, and please him best. Three livelong days I wrought for you, and little thanks I see for it, ere I won him to offer you this good bargain, 'stead as he would a had it: and that was, get you dead or alive, as in a month's time or less no power on earth could a letted it: head you and side you, and nail the meat up so for crows to eat on Laimak walls.'

  But the Vicar had snatched the parchment and was by now half-way through it, his great stubbed finger following the words as he read. When he came to the end, h
e read all again, this time the duplicate copy: then, without word spoken, reached pen and ink from the sideboard and signed and sealed. He then stood up: came to Lessingham beside the window, took him by both hands. 'Think not I forget it, cousin, that this is by the great wit and prowess that is in you, the which I mind me well hath stood me in good stead many a time and yet shall do again.'

  'Good, then we're friends,' said Lessingham. 'You have ta'en it well, cousin, as a wise prince should do. And the sixth day from to-day, as there writ down, your highness will come to him in Areyanna, enact that ceremony? your allegiance full and perfect?' 'Ay, as a cat laps milk.'

  'You do well, cousin.' He took up one copy of the concordat, scanning the hands and seals: the Duke's, Beroald's, Jeronimy's, and now the Vicar's. 'This raiseth the siege to-day. I'll begone with it, and we meet 'pon Wednesday in Argyanna. But remember, cousin,' he said upon departing: 'I look for deeds from you upon this: no more false closes designed to shun a final end.'

  'Go, you have read me a fair lecture,' answered he. 'Think not I'll stumble at a straw now that I've leapt over a block. Fare you well.'

  The twentieth day of June was appointed a great festival and holiday for ratifying of this peace whereby, Barganax being now in both Rerek and Meszria taken for King, the lords of those countries should in his service fare shortly with great armies north across the Wold, win back Rialmar, and so carrying the war through Akkama ravish and ruinate all the cities and people thereof and lay them under subjection, seizing above all King Derxis whom they meant to punish and kill not as befits a noble person.

  Betimes that morning was the main army of the Chancellor, come down on purpose from Hornmere side and Ristby and those parts, besides the Duke's two thousand that he how held in Argyanna and thereabouts, marched under banners and with singing of war-songs and music of trumpets and drums three times round the bluff without the moat. The Duke, with fifty red-bearded men of his bodyguard bearing their great two-handed swords, had place of honour before the drawbridge. He rode upon a fierce white stallion with sweeping mane and tail and with harness all black and trappings and saddlecloth of black sendaline. Of like sad hue were the Duke's cloak and bonnet with black estridge-feathers and all his armour: black gloves upon his hands: the very ruff about his throat black, that should have been white: all this in formal sign of mourning and lamentation. The Lords Beroald and Jeronimy wore plumes of mournings in their hats and black mourning cloaks: the like tokens wore every one, high or low, man or woman, soldiers, townsfolk, that day; but the Duke alone, both for his royal estate and near kinship, that extremity of blackness.

  And now, well upon the hour appointed, marching from the north down the granite-paven causeway that in a ten-mile span, laid on a foundation of thousands upon thousands of strong oaken piles, bridges the quaking-bogs in the midst of which is Argyanna, came the Vicar and his following. Twenty trumpeters on horseback headed the march: great was the flashing of their helms and trumpets, all of silver: their kirtles and hose were dyed with saffron: they had black mourning saddle-cloths and black cloaks: at every twenty paces they sounded upon their trumpets the owl-call of the house of Parry. Behind them, guarded by two score of Lessingham's black riders, went the royal banner of Fingiswold, by him brought victorious from the northland through many deadly chances and the bloody battles at Ridinghead and Leveringay. The owl of Laimak, sable, armed and beake'd gules upon a field or, followed after: its motto, Noctu noxiis noceo, 'Nightly I prey upon vermin.' There went a company of veteran spearmen of Rerek four by four behind it, helmed and byrnied and with great oblong shields. The Vicar himself rode with Lessingham a score of paces behind these footsoldiery, and a score of paces before the rest of their following: Amaury, Brandremart, Bezardes, Thrasiline, Daiman, and so horse and foot to the number of five hundred or more bringing up the rear.

  Now when they were come close under Argyanna before the gates and the drawbridge, the Count Rossilion bearing the Vicar's Jpanner rode forth with two trumpeters that blew a fanfare. And Rossilion, doffing cap to the Duke and reading from a writing in his hand, cried out with a loud voice that all might hear: 'For behalf of his most excellent lordship Horius Parry I do salute the Lord Barganax, Duke of Zayana, and do receive and acknowledge him the said Duke to be great King of Fingiswold and of all states and dominions appertaining thereto, and in particular of all Meszria and the Marches and of all this territory or land of Rerek and places situate therewithin, being especially the fortresses or strong holds of Laimak, Kessarey, Megra, Kaima, and Argyanna, and of this March of Ulba. And thus saith the Lord Horius Parry: I hereby give, O King, into the hands of your princely highness all those estates and powers whatsoever which, whether as private-vassal and subject, whether as Vicar of the Queen, whether as Lord Protector, I herebefore have held under kingdom of Queen Antiope of glorious memory (upon whom be peace), hoping that your serenity may adjudge them to have been truly and diligently by me administrated and used, in the behoof of the weal public and the great glory of the crown of the three kingdoms. Humbled on my knee I now kiss your grace's hand, tendering my love and service true and perfect, and fearfully expecting your royal commands.'

  The Vicar meanwhile, being dismounted from his horse, and standing ten paces or so behind Rossilion, looked on and listened with no outward sign save the great puffing out and great redness of his neck. He was all armed, with a byrny of polished iron edged at throat and wrists and skirt with links of gold; thigh-pieces and greaves and toe-pieces and golden spurs. No weapon he bore, only in his right hand his staff vicarial. Two boys, dressed in the russet and purple livery of his bodyguard, bare up behind him the train of his great black cloak.

  'But look upon him,' said Zapheles in the Chancellor's ear. 'What charter of peace can you contrive, my lord, but this great devil will break it?'

  Beroald shrugged his shoulders.

  'Well, now a hath put his head in the lion's mouth,' said Melates, as Rossilion ended, 'cannot some contrive to set the King in a fume against him? Bite it off, and all were well.'

  "Tis but yonder Lessingham standeth 'twixt this and that,' said Barrian. 'A thing past man's understanding.' 'That he so stands? or that his grace should heed him?' 'Both,' said the Chancellor with a tart smile. Lessingham said in the Vicar's ear, 'Your highness would

  be well advised, put off your bonnet: he did the like for you, if I am told aright, in the Salimat last autumn. Besides there is about your bonnet the diadem, which you must assume again but at his bidding.'

  'Let be. I'm afeared of this sun. Shall not fry my brains, concordat or no concordat.'

  Men noted that in the very act of homage the Parry wore still his crown vice-royal with rich stones and orient pearl beset. Some murmured at it: the Duke, whose eye no littlest thing might ever escape, could not but note it, but yet let it go unremarked. Upon kissing of hands, the trumpets of either side blew a fanfare. The Vicar upon that, taking from off his head the coronal, presented it to the Duke, who straightway raised it on high that all should see, then set it again upon the head of the Vicar, saying, for all to hear: 'Be witness whom it may concern, and the blessed Gods Who keep the wide heaven, that, upon homage thus made to me in my estate as high master of these kingdoms and agreeably to articles of peace late sealed and made betwixt us, I do hereby assign unto you, Horius Parry, the strong holds and demesnes of Laimak, Kaima, and Kessarey, and all the country and principality of old Rerek, but not Megra nor the lands north of Swaleback, and not Argyanna nor the Ulba March, to hold as my vicar or vicegerent, answerable to no man save to me, but to me to be answerable with your head. In witness whereof, receive this coronal and name of Vicar of Rerek.'

  This done, amid great noise of trumpets and drums and shouting of all the soldiers and people there assembled, this solemnity had its end. But first the Duke let proclaim silence, and bade the Lord Beroald say forth on his behalf this, in a great voice, that all might know: 'Thus saith the most renowned and most mighty prince and lord, Barganax, great Duke
of Zayana, our sovereign master and King: that it is his pleasure, even as he will change not these mourning colours till he shall have beat the out-born usurper from the land and with the Gods' help punished him with death, so will he think it scorn, and not suitable with his princely dignity, to take yet the King's name, but will first, like as all other Kings of Fingiswold, be crowned in Rialmar. At his command publish it so accordingly. God save his serene and most excellent highness, Barganax, Duke of Zayana, of the three kingdoms our sovereign lord.'

  They rode now in a progress once about the hold with their bodyguards, the Vicar and Barganax riding in the midst somewhat apart, jointly taking the salute from those on the walls and those in the field and all the army drawn up beside the way in double line, so as men should perceive with their eyes this new condition of peace and friendship, and the conclusion of the war and hate there had been so long betwixt them.

  'This is a great pride in you, my lord Duke,' the Vicar said, 'not to take the style of King.'

  Barganax smiled. ‘I had thought it a great modesty.'

  'It was to shame me,' said the Vicar. 'Not clip the wings only of my vicariate, a thing I honourably endured, but make me do homage but to a ducal cap.'

  ' 'Las,' said the Duke: 'I fear I was thinking of my own affair, and not at all of you, my lord.'

  'I was gulled in it,' said the Vicar. There shone in his eyes, the Duke's head being for the moment turned away to acknowledge acclamations upon his right, a most cruel, mortal, and inexorable hatred.

  'Give credit, the thing ne'er entered my head,' said the Duke. 'But indeed,' he said, 'now I think on't, I can but praise your courteous carriage and affability; for indeed, God knoweth well enough without remembrancer, myself did bow as low, and to a like necessity, not a year since, i' the Salimat.'

  ' 'Tis of no moment,' said the Vicar. 'Only for this I thought fit to speak on't to your grace, considering we shall wisely avoid now whatsoever might diminish my estimation and authority, and so tie me shorter when we should work together for common ends.'.