A Fish Dinner in Memison - Zimiamvian Trilogy 02

by E R Eddison

  The Vicar sat uncloaked now, in tanned leather jerkin armed all over with scales or sequins of polished iron and with golden buckles at neck and waist and a gorget of iron plate damascened with gold and silver. Bolt upright, his hands flat-palmed before him on the table, he went over his company man by man. 'You have begun ill with me, Prince,' he said for first word, thrusting out his jaw at him: 'broke faith ere we be set at table.'

  Gilmanes changed colour. 'I know not what your excellency means.'

  'Bring a train of soldiers with you, when I made it condition all should come alone. I saw 'em myself in Gilgash.'

  'I'm sorry. 'Twas but three or four only, for safety Of my person.'

  ‘I can care for your person, my lord. Robbers and reivers walk not here at liberty uncorrected, in South Rerek, as in your northern parts they do use. If I am to trust a man, a shall trust me, tit for tat. Who else hath done like that? Olpman, I noted your badge on half a dozen buff jackets as I came through the village.'

  'Your noble excellence will pardon me, I hope,' said the Count, 'if I mistook the condition.'

  'If me no ifs. All this is against you, and shall be, till you make it good.'

  'I thought we were free to bring 'em up to Gilgash so we came alone hither to Middlemead.'

  'The Devil dirt in your beard. You deal like the fish sepia, you lawyers: ever smother your traces in voidance of too much ink. Stathmar?'

  'Not an one, my lord.'

  'There speaks a man. Clavius?'

  ‘I dare not venture myself unmanned on the Meszrian border: by cause of Ibian.'

  'Your old kind Meszrian host? Go, I think you've reason.' The Vicar laughed, a single crack betwixt a snarl and a bark. I'f I'd been so unkind as give you bound to Ibian when he asked me, go, I'd wager five firkins of muscatel 'gainst a couple of peasen you'd ne'er gone gulling again.—Arquez?'

  Arquez sullenly answered, ‘No.'

  'What's no? I say you brought men, contrary to troth plighted 'twixt us. Answer me directly without colour whether it be so or not.'

  ‘I say directly, your highness, it is not so.'

  A combust black choler seemed to darken the Vicar's eyes glaring upon him. There was silence a minute. Then the Vicar spoke again, sitting back in his chair with folded arms. 'By the ear-feathers of Sathanas! I'm heartily minded to a done with you all. My Lord Stathmar and I come hither alone, as articled:' (here Gabriel, passing in his hithers and thithers out of the door, with none to mark him, laughed in his sleeve): 'the rest break faith, e'en in so slight a matter, quick as a dog will eat a pudding.' Like rabbits under the menace of the stoat, those great lords sat mum, meeting one after the other the eye of him upon them. 'Where's Mandricard?' None could tell. 'If he hath turned tricksome,—go, they say kings have long hands: a shall find that I have longer. I'll have him caboshed like a stag and bub my wine from's brain-pan. Look you,' he said, and a sudden great clattering blow of his fist on the board made all leap in their seats, If there be any here doubteth to confide himself to me in this business, let him go home now. I'll take it upon my honour I'll bear him neither grudge nor disfavour. So only it be now o' the instant; for, after this business be opened, to turn back them shall cost a man nothing but his life.'

  But they, as with one mouth, with most vehement heat of oaths and promises, pledged him their fealty.

  Then,' said he, 'to proceed with frankness to the matter. There's not a man here but of Rerek born and bred. In this land of our fathers hath changes come about, these ten years or more. We be loyal liege subjects all unto our sovereign Lord the King (Gods send he live for ever). For all that, we feel the changes: feel the foreign hand upon us. Instance myself: Laimak since thirty generations her own mistress, but now fief royal: we must do suits and services. For the lesser fish i' the pond, where were they to-day if I had not stood 'twixt them and forfeit of their privileges? where were Mandricard? County Olpman, where were you? With the headsman's hands already fumbling at your neckband, whose mercy, say, save mine could have availed to keep that head of yours upon your shoulders? ay, and a dozen more i' the like despaired condition, attainted after Valero's treason? You, and you too, my Lord Stathmar, are witness to the sharpness of my correction of that traitor: to the sharpness too of my dealing with some that, seeing the realm fallen in a roar, thought it time to oppress their neighbours. But I shaved their beards right smoth and clean,—insolents, o' the kidney of yonder office nobility we see puffed up now, Jeronimy, Beroald, Roder, and their kind: crammed till they belch again with the rightful sustenance of better men. So help me, I'll pluck down some or another of them too, ere I come to my grey hairs. Then you, Gilmanes. Be you remembered the King took Kaima from you, the most rich and precious stone out of your princely coronal, 'cause of this matter of your brother Valero; but by my procurement, was given you back again. I helped you 'gainst your neighbour Princes, Ercles and Aramond, that, of their long accustomed malice many years rooted, so vexed you in your borders. 'Twas thanks only to my speedy intelligence but last winter, in your little beggarly town of Veiring, that you 'scaped there unmurdered. I have still helped and upholden you in correcting of the mutiny of certain cities in your parts, which were dread in time to allure and stir the more part of the other cities to the like. To you, Arquez and Clavius, I say but this: I have in a casket matter against you enough (should you displease me) to send you to them that shall cut out the head, gammon, and flitches, and hang up the rest pro bono publico.

  'Broach some more wine, good pug,' he said to Gabriel. 'So much friendly exhortation marvellously dries the throat.' He thrummed a morris dance on the table with his fingers while the wine was pouring. When he looked up, the thunder-clouds had left his face. 'We be loyal liege subjects all,' he said. 'But sad 'tis and true 'tis, no King lives for ever; and 'tis mere prudence to ponder what waits us round the next turning. 'Twere no great wonder if some that have well and truly served King Mezentius should boggle if it were to come to King Styllis.'

  'As, by law, come it must,' said Count Olphman: 'to the son born in wedlock and undubitate heir.' 'An untried boy,' said Stathmar.

  'Proud, insolent, jealous of all true merit,' said Gil-manes.

  'God abolish his name under heaven,' said Clavius. Arquez ground his teeth.

  'Such inconveniences,' said the Vicar, 'are lightly by wise policy to be turned to advantage. But mischief is in his tutors. Be sure of this, my lords: come that day, you shall see a triumvirate of court sycophants, under colour of young Styllis, take power i' the Three Kingdoms: Roder, 'cause the boy clings yet to him as to's wet-nurse; the fat Admiral, 'cause of legitimacy and what has been must be; and Beroald, 'cause in the sheep's-heads o' the other two is not brains sufficient betwixt the pair of 'em to keep 'em from disaster not a sennight's space, nor resolution enough to hold to any course resolved on, but still must run to him.'

  'And besides all this,' Stathmar said, 'your excellency has to reckon with Zayana.'

  'Aye, I was coming to that'

  'O, I redoubt not him,' said Olpman. 'So he have his pretty pussy to huggle withal, it forceth not A do-little, a—'

  There your judgement, my Lord Olpman, so needle-eyed as I have known it, turns blind as a beetle,' said the Vicar. 'Five years now he hath shown himself, in conduct of his dukedom, high-thoughted like to's father. Because in his underage and jollity he will eat and drink and have dalliance with women, be not you so bedoted as think that the sum. Bastard blood is very bold and hurtful: the more so, come of the loins of King Mezentius. And we manage not this young Duke, he may yet prove a main part of our undoing. Styllis, Barganax, and yonder three unite and joined against us, our matter were like to go evil. But feed we but their factions and hold 'em apart (as, with him, we may use the offences Styllis hath unbrotherly committed and shall likely yet commit against him),—why, with such a policy, I dare pawn down my life, Rerek shall still find her a cloak for every rain.'

  There fell a silence. Under the Vicar's careless-seeming yet most discomfort
ably mind-searching glance, men's eyes shifted, as though each looked for other first to unrip the seals and show what underlay these unresty hints and half-spoken loose suggestions. 'Let me put in your minds, if you forget,' said the Vicar, that you, not I, first sought such a conference as this is, when each severally in writing you put yourselves to my protection. And, that you may see how merely for the common weal I take hand in the thing, I'll tell you: if there be any man living you think likelier than me to help you in such perilous circumstances as but now we spoke on,—show him to me. I'll give place to him, swear him fealty and upholding.'

  Every man of them sat mute as a fish.

  'You, Prince Gilmanes: will you undertake, say?'

  Amid angry murmurs, Gilmanes made haste to disclaim so ungrateful an eminence.

  'Snail's let this stand adjourned, then? How if we send to Ercles in Eldir, bid him our following?'

  'God strike him dead first!'

  'The old keen tiger that in a wait hath lain for us so long?'

  Clavius began to hum a ditty sung by Gilmanes's faction in the street of Veiring:

  The elder from Eldir

  God sent him here selder!

  When he might have hearing again, Gilmanes said, 'Shall Rerek speak with one man's voice, with whose if not with the Parry's?'

  Gabriel Flores, eyed and footed like a weasel, went betwixt bench and wall filling first for his great master then for the rest. All drank deep. Then the Vicar spoke. ‘If I have given you,' he said, 'any sour words to-night, be satisfied 'twas but in consideration of the secret knowledge I had of my own will, and being resolved to make some difference between tried just and false friends ere I would strip off all farthingales to the bare nature of these high purposes. Let's confess it was never merry world in Rerek since Fingiswold came up. Which thing, though it be coloured per jus regale, yet it is tyranny. Which tyranny,—considering the straiter amity between me and you concluded, and considering your several private promises in writing (which, as I shall satisfy you, import an army of well five thousand men, veterans all, to be had abroad in a readiness at any time now upon ten days' notice given, resting upon Kutarmish),—why, 'twere abomination irremissible and everlasting scorn upon us if we overtopple it not' He paused. All they as they listened seemed but more and more to fan their feathers in his lime. 'That is to say,' he added, 'occasion arising.'

  For a minute none spoke, man watching man. Then Gilmanes, making a cast about the table with his long pale eyes and running his tongue along his thin and bloodless lips, said, ‘I question but one thing, my lords. His highness said "occasion arising". But is not occasion instant upon us? seeing the greatness of our adversary and his infinite dominion in Rerek, that already hath gone far to work us all from princes into pages. Thinks, too, that he knoweth, I ween, some hollow hearts in Rerek; and is himself one that keepeth his displeasure in close, then, like God's severe judgement, dallieth not where to strike he doth purpose.'

  The air in that room seemed suddenly to have grown closer. Again man eyed man. Then, 'God send him here,' said Arquez with a thick gluttonish laugh, 'and give me the unbowelling of him.'

  The Vicar looked at Arquez then sidelong at Gilmanes, through half-closed lids. 'Argument: ergo, dally not we, but strike first?'

  'Ay,' said Clavius, 'and strike him into the centre.'

  'Who speaks against it?' said the Vicar. 'In so extreme jeopardous a work as you now propound to me, needs must each stand by all or else all go down in solido’

  'Better that,' said Gilmanes, than be still kept under like beasts and slaves.'

  'Who speaks against it?'

  But in a confusion of high and clamorous words they cried out saying, 'Strike, for Parry and Rerek!' 'Death to Mezentius!' Throw the crooked tyrant to the Devil!' 'Chop him into steaks!’

  'You, Stathmar?' said the Vicar, seeing him sit silent amid this rant

  ' Tis but that I will not,' answered he, 'be one of those who rashly before a great man enter into talk unrequired. To my thinking, it is better the sword be sheathed than unsheathed. Howsomever,—'

  The Vicar strokes his heard thrice. Huge as a lion he seemed, high seated in that great chair; and red as a fox; and untrusty to handle as a quick eel by the tail; and a king in potentia, wanting but the regal crown and sceptre; and wicked out and out. In the nick of time, ere he should speak again, the door flew open in Gabriel's face, and before them in his majesty stood the King.

  All leapt to their feet, and, save the Vicar's and Gilmanes's, every man's hand to his sword-hilt. It was as if the instant moment itself leapt and hung tip-toed on an instability of movelessness, while men's minds, violently unseated, waited on direction. Only the Lord Horius Parry, as in lightning-swift apprehension of the posture of affairs, and of the choices, deeply ravelled of good and bad, of known and unknown, not to be eluded nor long put off, fateful of life and death, which it imported, seemed to face it with a mind intact and unremoved. Like the snapping of a string wound to extreme tension, Gabriel heard the silence break with the King's 'Good evening, cousin': heard in the deep cadence of the King's voice, careless and secure, an almost imperceptible over-tone of irony that thrilled less upon the ear than upon the marrow that runs within the neck-bones: saw the Vicar's obeisance: saw, for one breath, their mingling of eyes together, his and the King's, as if each would craftily undergrope the other's policies.

  All saluted the King now, with an unhearty greeting but yet with due humble show of allegiance, drinking to him peace, health, joy, and victory upon his enemies.

  The Vicar made place for him at the table's head, seating himself at the King's right, betwixt the King and Count Olpman. 'Bare a fortnight since I tasted your noble entertainment, cousin, in Laimak,' said the King, raising to his lips the goblet from which the Vicar had but just drunk his health, and pledging them all in turn. 'And now, benighted in these woods, what luckier find than this hospitable room? or what luckier choice of loving friends and subjects to be met withal?' His eye seemed merry, as of a man set among them of his household, nothing earthly mistrusting.

  ' 'Lack,' said the Vicar, 'this should seem to your serene highness a strange dog-hole, I'd a thought. And, truth to say, we be assembled here 'pon a strange business.'

  Wise men started, and light men laughed in themselves, at these words. But the King said, unconcerned, ‘I had supposed yours was, as ours, a hunting party.'

  'It might be named so. Your serenity has had good sport, I hope?'

  'Tracked the big bear to his hole,' replied the King: 'but as yet not killed.'

  The Vicar met his eye without quinching. 'As for our hunting,' he said, 'your serene highness will laugh at us. You have heard, may be, stories of this same farmstead: that there was of old a man dwelt alone in this place, a bonder, rich in goods and in cattle, alone save for's thralls. And these thralls, uncontented, it seems, with his hard and evil usage of 'em, one night, 'pon agreement had together, took and murdered him.' Glancing round the table while he talked, he saw them sit like dumb beasts, as if afeared to meet some eye upon them were they to look up, his or another's. Only the King, idly fingering his wine-goblet, gave him look for look: idly, as one who rolls on his tongue the wine of some secret jest, the delightfuller to him because hid from all men else. The Vicar proceeded: 'Since when, to this day, none durst live in the place for dread of the dead sprite which, as if said, rideth the roof a-nights, breaketh the necks of man and beast, and so forth. And is neglected so, some three generations and all fallen to ruin. Now the Prince here and my Lord Olpman, they laid me a wager, a thousand ducats, that these tales were sooth and that something bad resorteth indeed to the house; but I tell 'em is but old wives' foolishness and fiddle-faddle. Which to determine, we mean to sit out the night here, drinking and discoursing, with these four lords besides to witness whether aught beyond ordinary shall befall us.'

  The King smiled. ‘I’d a sworn there were things in this house worth the finding out Coming but now, supposing it empty, and fi
nding, 'pon opening of the door, this jolly company within, put me in mind of the old tale of the shepherdman's coming by night beside Holyfell in Iceland. He saw that the fell was opened on the north side, and in the fell he saw mighty fires and heard huge clamour there and the clank of drinldng-horns; and he heard that there was welcomed Thorstein Codbiter and his crew. He and his crew. You remember?'

  That had, that same night, as was known later, been drowned in the fishing?'

  ‘Yes: dead men,' said the King: 'feasting that night in Holyfell. There's the difference: that here, at present, are all yet alive.'

  Furtively, as though some strange unwonted horror began to invade them, men's eyes sought the Vicar's, Gabriel Flores, watching there apart, bethought him how most things have two handles. How if one of these comates of mischief had blabbed out all to the King beforehand? How if his master, sitting so thoughtful, had the like inkling? Gabriel waited for his eye. But the Vicar, smiling to himself, played softly with the great seal-ring on his left thumb and gave eye to no man. 'Your highness sees some danger, then?'

  ‘A certain danger,' replied the King lightly, yet not a man there sat at ease under the look he now swept round the table, 'in meddling with such business as brought you here to-night'

  The Vicar still smiling, nodded his head: still intent upon his ring. Men watched him as if they knew, how smooth soever his looks were, there was a devil in his bosom.

  'In some serene highness' school well brought up,' said Gilmanes, after a pause, and his teeth flashed, 'we are inured to dangers.'

  'And yet,' said the King, 'there is measure in all things. Courage of the wise: courage of the fool.'

  "The second we know,' said the Vicar. 'What is the first?'

  'Is it not a native part of wisdom? A wise King, for instance, that will trust his person unguarded amongst his loyal loving subjects.'