A Fish Dinner in Memison - Zimiamvian Trilogy 02

by E R Eddison

Seven Against the King

  KING MEZENTIUS and my lord Chancellor Beroald, having refreshed them with a few hours' sleep at Rumala, rode down from the Curtain into Rubalnardale: taking thus the easternmost, the directest, and the roughest-wayed and so most unfrequented pass over the mountains out of South Meszria northwards to the marches of the Zenner. They rode armed at all points, but cloaked and hooded. They were alone, even as alone they had set forth the evening before from Memison. A little beside Ilkis they began to bear away more northerly, leaving the beaten way and giving a wide berth to Kutarmish town; meaning to strike the river ten miles or more upstream and come over it by an unfrequented ford, and thence up by forest ways to the neighbourhood of Gilgash and the place intended. The sun had topped the far snow ridges of the range of Ramosh Arkab, and flooded all the vale of the Zenner with its fresh and unclouded glory of summer morning. They came.on without haste now, and with time in hand.

  'Beroald,' said the King, reining in his horse at the top of a slope where the moorish champaign began to fall away northwards before them in fold upon fold of heather and silver birch down to the green flats, purpled with distance, of water-meadow and woodland and winding river, 'I have changed my mind concerning this undertaking.'

  The Chancellor, with his most saturnine smile, said, 'I am glad to hear it.'

  'Glad? Why you know not yet what it is.' The King threw back the hood of his cloak: put off his helm: suffered for a minute the wild delicate morning breeze to play about his forehead and ruffle the ambrosial curls above his brow. Clear and smooth his brow was as the polished ivory; but the rest of his countenance, down to the beginning of the great black beard and mustachios, was weather-bitten and passion-worn with the tracings of iron resolution and of a highness of heart beyond the nature of man, and of humour and a most eagly suddenness of thought and act And now, as he laughed, it was as if the infection of some unsmotherable superfluity within that King, ever rash, ever headlong, like lightning, or like the rut and furious rage of love, fed the cold light's flame in the watching eyes of the Chancellor that watched him. 'For the life of me,' he said, 'I cannot bring myself to permit even you, Beroald, now that I come to the pinch, to have share with me in the grand main act'

  The Chancellor shook his head. ‘I have long given over seeking to compass your serene highness or learn your drifts. You will go alone, then?'

  'Alone.'

  Beroald was silent.

  'Come,' said the King, putting on his helm and drawing the hood over it once more: 'you are a politician, and yet see not reason in that?'

  ‘I see unreason in going at all. If I had your authority, I would be so bold to unvicar him, and be done. But that case I argue no longer. Your serenity over-ruled me there.'

  'Remember,' said the King, ‘I go to-night to reclaim an outrageous unstaid hawk. If I go accompanied, he may think he has high cause to fear lest this wild worm of ambition wavering in his head shall be uncased and laid open to the view of the world. That may alarm him to some unadvised violence: fall upon us then and there, and so spill all. For if he do so, then one of two things, and both evil: the worse, me and you to be slain, fighting alone against too much odds; or else (the lesser evil) slay him—as I had resolved not to do, but to reduce him.'

  He paused. The Chancellor but tightened his lips, thinking it folly, no doubt, to spurn against the hard wall. 'You shall therefore,' said the King, 'await me in a place I will show you, under a wood's side, a little this side of Gilgash. If I be come not again before midnight, then must you doubt not but that the worst is befallen, and so, haste haste post haste, back to Sestola, and do thus and thus,' (instructing him at large in the whole manage of affairs).

  Mean time, forty miles or more north-away, in the hold of Laimak, that grey eyrie by strength insuperable upon its little hill, which had been to the Parrys since generations both refuge from the storm and seat key and sustainment of that power whereby, through long vicissitudes and whether by open means or dissembled, they swayed the middle kingdom and fattened on the land of Rerek, the Lord Horius Parry, upon this sweet morning of the twenty-fifth of June, stood a minute at his window of his private chamber: gazed south. There was a tranquillity in his gaze: a tranquillity on his un-furrowed brow. Close-sprouting as a pile of velvet, the cropped hair ran up and back over the round head of him to the large bull neck: red hair, stiff like hog's bristles, growing far down the chine. His beard, clipped short too, came to a blunt point on the chin. His light hazel-hued eyes were small, set near, like a bear's: the sharpness of their glance as the flashing of diamonds. There was about his nostrils a mobility, an expansion, a bestial eagerness, so that, to look at him, one had sworn he lashed a tail. And yet, over all, that tranquillity, as of a mind at peace with its own self: all the great frame of him reposeful as a falcon hooded, or as quiet waters above some under-suck of the sea. Broad and heavy he was of body, may be nearly fifty years of age, yet knit to that hardness that comes of the soldier's life and the hunting-field, turning to brawn all over-grossness which might else proceed from overmuch pleasuring of table or bed. He scarce reached the middle stature; and yet, for some native majesty of glance and bearing, seemed a man that could be tall without walking on tip-toe.

  ‘For's health, a were best be gone,' he said without looking round. 'Have you summoned me out that squadron of horse?'

  Gabriel Flores answered him, seated at the broad oak table among papers and ink and seats: 'Below the main gait, half-hour from now, your highness. As for him, a will hear no reason.'

  'Here's a villain that would face me down. Is he mad?’

  'Like enough.'

  'Bring him in.'

  'If your highness pleased, I could send two lads to souse him in the moat. That might learn him.' 'Bring him in, you sucking-pig.'

  Gabriel went and returned. 'The Lord Sorms,' he said loudly, falling behind to let him precede. But the room was empty. Sorms, much too aback, turned in anger upon Gabriel.

  'You must have patience, my lord. His highness will certain be here anon.'

  'You villain, I am tired out with patience. Where is the money I gave you?'

  'Your lordship hath had money's worth, and three times told, in my wise advice.'

  'What? that I must spend yet a week waiting on my right in Laimak? Arquez hath done me wrong. 'Tis now six months since, with leave under seal vicarial and in your hand delivered to me, I have by suit of the King's peace and in all due forms took course to right me. But in vain. There's some works strings against me. I am not grounded in lands, and the faculty is very bare. At great charges I came south. I sent three days since to the Vicar for audience, but he would not be spoken with. I spoke with Rossillion: yesterday again with you: one might as well try to collect milk from a he-goat with a sieve. I sent after to the Vicar but he could not attend it for hunting. Or I will have it this morning, or I will hunt with him, by God's leave.'

  He strode up and down the room. Gabriel at the table fiddled about his papers: presently looked up. 'I will yet, saving your worship, say a word of wisdom to you. 'Tis clean out of the ordinary, unbidden guests in Laimak. The Vicar's highness hath matter enough in hand without you and your private differences. He is wrath already with these importunings. Were I in your lordship's shoes, out of Laimak I would go while commodity yet is for departing. Till the fury of his highness settle, come not before him.'

  ‘I’ll have my right,' said Lord Sorms. If not, I am resolved to hold you all such play as you shall be weary of. And you, master secretary, I do begin to discern for as honest a man as any is in the cards if the kings were out. You and your lord too.' His jaw fell as, turning to a sound behind him, he faced the Parry in person, come secretly in at a little hidden door.

  'Well, my Lord Sorms,' said he, with much sweetness of words and amiable countenance, 'I have read your lordship's depositions. And well have I in mind the painfulness it must have been to you, abiding here so long, desirous to know whether your matter be in any wise compounded, or like t
o be shortly compounded, or no.'

  1 thank your excellency. These concerns, be they but a trifle unto you, are to me a thing of good moment and importance. The pleadings, six months now, lie before your court signorial in Leveringay. Your secretary here, since April, hath notice of appeal unto your excellency's person as Vicar General in Rerek of the King. Nought moves. And now, marvelling not a little of the very frosty coldness and slack remissness shown me, I cannot but, joining words and deeds together, thereby see that all is but finesse. I cannot but think there be practices which—'

  'Ay, practices,' said the Vicar gently, gently drawing near to Sorms: Gabriel's ferret eye watched his master's. 'And herein is lapped up a very great secret, which 'tis but fair, perhaps, I should now make plain unto your lordship, why I have had small leisure for your domestical concerns. Well, thus it standeth: I, of my envious covetous and vengeable disposition, do now enterprise shortly no less than to usurp and seize, wrongfully and against all right, the whole sovereign power of the King in Rerek. Which to keep safe in your mouth, take this:' and, leaping like unkennelled Cerberus, stabbed him in with a dagger from his belt, first by the ear, next in the ribs, last down by the collar-bone.

  Gabriel, that was small and little of stature, leaned back against the table, watching this business; his teeth, jagged and uneven, showed yellowish betwixt dark beard and mustachios.

  "I'll teach these little lords,' said the Vicar, throwing the bloodied dagger on the floor. 'Come muling to me with their ails and plainings,' he said, his breath coming and going with the exertion: 'and me so grieved with so great causes. Come hither, my mopsy.' Gabriel came: his face grey, his eyes wide with apprehension. The Vicar grabbed his two wrists in a handful, while with the other hand, broad as a dried haddock, freckled, shimmering in the sunlight with reddish growth of hairs, he fingered Gabriel's weasand. 'You heard what I said to the scum?'

  'Yes.'

  'You credit it?' His eyes, searchful as needles, looked down into Gabriel's.

  'Not till your highness shall say it again to me.'

  'How dare you imagine it other than a lie?'

  'Your highness need scarce be so rabious against me. I daren't'

  'And yet, weren't very so? What then? Speak, filth, or I'll end you.'

  'Whom have I but your highness? I am yours. You can work me like wax.'

  The Vicar's eyes searched his, as a knife should search a wound. Gabriel held his breath. Suddenly the Vicar drew him to him, like a woman: kissed him. 'Even you, my little pigsnye, should find it dangerous too surely to know my drifts. I find close habours of discontentment: matters that may be uncunningly and indiscreetly handled: foolish and furious designs. Go, I'll mell me with no flirtations but them as end in bed. They shall see my back-parts, but my face shall not be seen. And so, walk you eared for attention in my foot-steps, if you hope to live through these next dangerous days. 'So,' he said, letting go of him, 'it is a careful life. Wipe up the mess. Feed that carrion to the dogs. Then attend me at the main gate. We must be by sun-go-down at the place you wot of.'

  The sun was of that same day now near upon setting when Count Mandrieard drew rein, coming out of the wood onto the northern edge of the clearing before a certain old waste and broken house desolate among pine-forests a mile above the little village of Gilgash, that lies just within the limes of Rerek. He was a big man, dull-eyed, horse-faced, with brown leathery wrinkled skin and long straggly beard with never a curl in it. There seemed a great stillness in the clearing. Westwards, gleams of the sunset pierced here and there the purplish-greenish obscurity of pine-frondage and close-set upright trunks. Presently he walked his horse up to the house door. Nettle-beds crowded up to the walls on either side. The windows were shuttered. He edged his horse round, and so, leaning sideways from the saddle, reached to give the door a great thump with the pommel of his sword. The stillness settled yet deeper after the sound of that blow and of the scutter of little feet (rats, may be) that followed it Mandricard waited a minute, then, growling some obscenity, swung from the saddle, tried the latch, went in. The house was empty, of a displeasant odour of dry-rot and of spiders: odour of grave-mould. He spat and came out again: swung up again into saddle. Dusk was gathering swiftly and the last embers of the sunset dying between the boles: blood among gallows-trees. 'Some and some is honest play,' he said in himself. 'Snick up. If I take heed to come to the Devil's banquet pat o' the hour appointed, why not they?' He spat. 'Clavius,' he said in himself: 'a young sly wFloreson. In all abomination of life, brisk as a body-louse, but I'd ne'er trust him unless held by the ears. Why he will use him's a wonder: having took his father's head, too, for letting himself be so bediddered in the Ulba enterprise, and he Lord President of the Marches. Then Gilmanes. Well, a man that could betray his own brother-german to him, to be cut in pieces in Laimak dungeons, I suppose a may trust him after that. Fellow's jealous as a kite, too, of Ercles and Aramond: knows that, long as the Parry sits firm in Rerek and favors him, himself '11 be left in peace to keep his claws on Veiring and Telia which else must straight fly back to allegiance to Prince Ercles. Knows, too, should a been unlorded long since, outed of all his hopes, for's misgovernment, but the Vicar pled for him: rubbed it off. Well, a may count on Gilmanes. Stathmar,—well: albeit I’d fear his goodness. No moving, though, without him. Who hath's buttocks firm in Argyanna may with one finger sway the march-lands. Olpman: I count him but a daw. He's no starter. Arquez: I hate Arquez: what's he but a common ruffian or thief, grown fat with the usurping of others' rights? He hath used him afore, true enough; and meaneth (it is in every man's mouth) to uncastle Sorms for him.—And there's the sum. I think he hath need of better tools to make such a frame perfect.'

  He let the reins hang loose on the pommel. The soft measured noise of champing of grass carried in that ugly stillness a threat, as of Time's sands running out. As if it were said: How if all this were but to feel our affection to his person? Not meaning to strike, but first— having summoned us together here, in this outest corner of the realm—to choose out, snap in two, throw on the midden, any blades of meaner mettle? Strange how all we cannot but entirely love and cleave unto him, like unreasoned beasts, that himself is evermore false and double. May be there's a design in these chance delays: heaven's design or his. Perilous, too, to be unobedient to the sovereign—'Howsoever, I'll think so,' said Mandricard suddenly. 'Pack while we may.' And so, giving the reins a shake, rode away through the woods northwards.

  He was departed but a few minutes when the others began to come in: Prince Gilmanes first, on a white horse: overtaking him, Count Olpman.

  'Your excellence rides well armed, I see.'

  'You too,' said the Prince.

  'Whom must we meet to-night?'

  'Yon can answer that as well as I can.'

  'Our host, our two selves, and four besides of his picking. How like you of those four?'

  'Tell me their names first.'

  Olpman smiled craftily. 'With your excellency's leave, I'll see 'em afore I name them.'

  'God's death!' said the Prince, 'are we children, to beat about the bush when each knows, and each knows t'other knows? No matter: 'tis safest may be. How life you of them?'

  'Trust him to pick sound.'

  'Trust? sounds strangely after such talk; and in the mouth of a man of law.'

  'When time comes for action, no moving save upon some hazard.'

  ‘I’ll tell you, Olpman, wherein I'll put my trust. In hate sooner than in love, and ambition than loyalty, and commodity than either. 'Tis therefore I trust the Vicar.'

  ‘Why? because of commodity?'

  'Yes. Commodity: to me in him, to him in me. You ‘I’ll trust, 'cause of the hate you bear to Beroald.'

  ‘Well, your excellency too, I think, hath small reason to love that one.'

  'For respect of what?'

  'Yonder lecherous and bloody woman. Your nephew sticked with daggers at Krestenaya.'

  The Prince gave a little shrug of the shoulders. A
haughty unkind cold melancholy man he seemed, not without charm of manner. 'O as for that, I know not. The like occasion had egged us to the like cruelty. Yours, my lord, is the more unfalliable ground: beholding this Beroald, your sometime pupil, ten years your younger, preferred, 'gainst all justice and reason, to this high place, of great Chancellor of Fingiswold. They ought not to think it strange if we shall otherwise provide for ourselves, and join with other, when we find no conformity nor towardness with them.—Here's Arquez and Clavius. 'Tis fear holds those two.'

  'Fear, 'cause the matter he knows against 'em?'

  'Aye. And 'cause he can break them in pieces when he will.—Here's Stathmar. Good. I smell comfort in Stathmar.'

  In the failing light it was barely possible to know faces now, the moon yet unrisen. The Vicar himself on a great chestnut stallion rode in last: Gabriel at his elbow on a brown jennet and with a led horse in his hand laden with saddle-bags and two hogsheads of wine. 'God give you good e'en,' said the Vicar, leaping from horseback and passing the reins to Gabriel. ‘Five. Well, go we in. Every man his own horse-boy to-night. Turn 'em into the yard behind the house: we'll take no chances where unreadiness might undo all. Gabriel, shutter the windows i' yon chamber: darken the chinks with cloaks: then light candles, set the wine on the table and the meat pies. We'll confer whiles we sup.' Then, under his breath, unobserved, to Gabriel, 'And forget not,' he said, 'the word I gave you: in case.' Gabriel answered with a little swift weasel-glance, secret, gone the next instant, sufficient.

  They sat about a bare trestle table: the Vicar at the near end by the door, Olpman upon his right, armoured to the throat, and Stathmar upon his left, with bold honest brown eyes, square brown beard and shaven head, a big man and a strong, may be forty years of age. Huge in bulk, upon Olpman's right, sat Arquez, with tiny piglike eyes buried in rolls of flesh; then, at the table's end facing the Vicar, Gilmanes, with Clavius on his right, and so again Stathmar. Youngest of them by much seemed this Clavius, of a malapert and insolent carriage, fluffy yellow beard, and pale fish-like eyes. Gabriel by the Vicar's command was ever in and out, to keep watch: held his meat in one hand, his sword ready in the other, and took his sup of wine between-whiles.