Zimiamvia: A Trilogy

by E R Eddison

  The house was silent: not a light showed at door or window. The Duke, making sure of his sword, loosening it in the scabbard, rode into the forecourt past the vine-hung trellis and that bench of asterite. As he passed the empty bench, a taint or perfume as by fine and quick fingering made all his senses stand in a fire-robed expectancy. It was gone the next instant, dissipated and lost on the evening breeze.

  The door stood open. He dismounted, ran up the steps, but checked at the threshold. In the profound stillness of the house sat a menace, as if the universal world were become in that sudden a city unsure, not impregnable. It seemed suddenly to be unsufferable cold and he, standing on a bridge of thread precariously above floor-less immensities, to look down between his feet to a driving upon noiseless winds, as dead leaves are driven, earthward, skyward, and about, without path or purpose, of half-memories out of the old age of time past, as if from other lives, other worlds. Then natural present cleared itself again; and the Duke, loosing the grip of his strong fingers upon the latch of the silver-studded door by which in that turmoil he had steadied himself, crossed the threshold into the silent house: stood listening: heard only the blood that pounded and pounded in his ears. Then he ransacked the house, room by room in the falling shadows that fell like slowed chords descending of stringed instuments in ever darkening procession, as door after door was flung wide by him and slammed to again. The very kitchens he ransacked, store-rooms, cellars underground, sculleries, buttery, and all. And when all was searched and found void of any living being he began again. And again everywhere, save for the clatter of his heavy riding-boots, was silence: empty all, as last year's nest in November. Only, as it were some intermittent rare flicker kindling ever and again an edge of those shadows falling, came at every while a scarce discernible tang of that most vading perfume. Upon that faint warmth and deliciousness, as though in carnal presence she had brushed by within an inch of him and away again unkissed and unknown, the sense was become to be no more a thing mediate but the unshaled nakedness of the live soul, held quivering like a bird in some titanic hand that was of itself but the bodiment of that world-enfettering sweet hyacinthine smell. As to say: This savour, this thread-like possibility of her, is all that knits the fabric together. Should it depart to come not again, this faint Olympian air which is as from the very mouth of laughter-loving Aphrodite of the flickering eyelids and violet-sweet breast, gone is then all else beside; and you go too, and the world from your hand. Barganax, like now to a man entering in the trembling passage of death, said in himself, 'God keep it!'

  Then, in the long upper gallery that opens toward the sunset, he was ware of her in the dusk, standing in the embrasure of a window.

  The floor rose by two steps to that embrasure, so that when she turned at the Duke's approaching she looked down on him from above. With her back to the light there was no reading of her face, but she held out her hand to him. It glowed through the half-dusk, a water-chill unsubstanced glow, like the moonstone's; but warm it was to the touch and, as he took and kissed it, redolent, to unseating of the wits, of that ambrosial scent. 'This one too,' she said, and the self-savouring indolent voice of her came like the disclosing of dewy roses, blood-red, underset with thorns, as she held him out the other hand. And while he kissed that, 'So you have come?' she said.

  ‘Yes, my life-blood and my queen,' said the Duke. 'I have come.' Over and over again he kissed the two hands: caught them both together to his lips, to his eyes: fell down upon his knees then before her: seized his arms about her waist that rose slender as neck of a Greek vase above the statuesque smooth languor of her hips and yielding as throat or breast of some sleepy dove. His forearms, crossing each other, were locked now behind her knees so that she stood pinioned, backward-leaning against that window-ledge, breathing fast, limbs unstrung. So for a fire-frozen minute, while the Duke's forehead and eyelids pressing blindly against the folds of her silken gown, here where it covered her flank, here her thigh, here the dream-mounded enchanted mid region between hip and hip.

  He bent lower, as if to kiss her foot. 'No.' she said, upon a catch of the breath. ‘No. We will wait for that, my friend.'

  'Wait? Have I not waited long enough?' and he took her with both hands by the waist again, drawing her down to him. 'By heavens, too long.'

  She said, 'No. You must order yourself mannerly with the things are set before you. We will wait till after supper.'

  He was on his feet now beside her in the window, gripping with his left hand the window-ledge, searching her face: her colubrine slanting eyes with their lashes now asleep, now a-flicker: eyes enabled, with such a mouth, with such nostrils, to infinite allurements, confections of sugared gall honeyed with the promise of unspeakable benedictions, unspeakable delights, or (when the Devil drives) to the summoning of strange horrors, ice-cruel or tiger-fanged, out of the deep. 'Fob.! I have dreamed dreams,' he said.

  She threw up her head in a little laugh, that seemed to take flesh in her disordinate and unresty beauty. 'Dreams are like an orange. The rind is hot, and the meat within it is cold. I love a doer, not a dreamer.'

  'Your ladyship sent for me. Is it not so?' He saw how her eyes, averted now, busied no more with his, were for this once, in the fast failing light, become softer and stiller than the eyes of a yearling hind.

  'For a wild hart wandering out of order? Well, if I did? In a dream of my own?'

  The Duke looked now where she looked, north-westward to the lake roughened with wind, a sapphire lit from within, darker in the distance. A little north of it, Memison showed grey against cloud-banks of a stronger grey behind it, with a slanting smudge of pale crimson upon a sky of yellow ochre. To the left, westward, the cloud-bank was indigo against that yellowishness of the sky, here smirched with brown. Hesperus, beautifullest of all stars, burned low in the west. High over all hung that night-hue: that heaven's-blue which holds depth beyond depth within it, and is the young unfledged dark. Still the breath of spring persisted on the air, and the lay, bitter-sweet, of the nightingales.

  "Then you sent, and sent not? Good,' he said. Leaning now his two elbows on the window-sill, he looked up at her sideways. It was as if the string of a lyre, invisible, unvibrating, strained his dark eyes to hers and tasted, in some inward contemplation of its two-fold self, the un-boundlessness of music to be. 'Well,' he said, standing up like a man that shakes himself awake, 'for the present I am content to unlace no more of these mysteries. Enough that there is a pair of us.'

  'And that it is supper-time.'

  Barganax glanced down at his dusty boots. 'First I would lay off the sweat and dust I have soiled me with, hastening to this place.'

  'O, for that, all is laid ready for your grace within there. No, the right-hand door: this left-hand leads, I know not well whither. To heaven, perhaps. Or hell.'

  He looked at the doors: then at her. 'Right or left, I saw neither of these two doors till now,' he said. 'And 'tis very certain, madam, that every door in this house I have seen and opened, twice over, before I found you here.'

  Surely in that Lady Fiorinda's voice were echoes of the imperishable laughter, as she answered and said, 'Indeed it is true and for every door you shall open in my mansion, my lord Duke, you shall find always another yet that awaits your opening.'

  Curtains were drawn and the fire raked up and candles lit and supper set for two in the gallery when the Duke returned. The mistress of the house was already in her place at table. He saw how that she wore a dress of soft scarlet sendaline, flourished with gold and spangles of gold and small bone lace of gold. No jewels she wore, save but only the smaragds and diamonds of her finger-rings and, at her ears, two great escarbuncles, round, smooth-cut, that each tiniest movement set aglow like two coals of fire. He saw on a chair beside her an elegant mountain lynx which she played with and caressed with her white hand luxuriously.

  She made sign to him to be seated over against her. There were candles on the table in candlesticks of orichalc, and, in little bowls of Kutar
mish glass coloured with rich and cloudy colours like the sunset, odoraments to smell to: rose-water, violet-flowers, balm, rose-cakes, conserves of southernwood and of cowslip. Her face in the candlelight was more beautiful than the evening star when it upsprings as forerider of the night between clouds blackened with thunder.

  'I hope your grace will bear with our rude uplandish country manners this evening,' she said. 'Indeed I sent my servants out of the house two hours since, that our converse and business might be more free.'

  'But who set the table, then? Your ladyship's self?'

  'It amused me.'

  'On my account? with such lady-soft a hand? I am ashamed, madam.'

  'O but indeed I did it not myself. 'Twas this mountain cat of mine did do it for me. You think that a lie?'

  'I think it very like one.'

  "How say you to a taste of what she has set before us? What's this: a little sardine, dressed up in love-apple? May I please have that little plate to put this backbone upon.'

  'When next you mean to play serving-maid,' said Barganax, reaching her the plate, 'I hope your ladyship will let me be butler.'

  ‘I have told your grace, my creature did it. She is skilled in housewiferies of all kinds fitting.'

  The lynx stood up, making an arch of its back, and naughtily with his claws set to work on the edge of the chair: sat down again and, out of the upright slits of its eyes, stared at Barganax. He gave it (as at Kephalanthe) look for look, till it looked away and very coyly fell to licking its fur.

  'See what a tiny bird,' Fiorinda said, with a superfine daintiness taking a quail upon her fork. 'A little sparrow, I think. He that shot that must surely have frighted the mother off the nest and then caught it.'

  Barganax smiled. "There be some things ought best to be little. Othersome, best big.'

  'As for instance birds,' said she. 'For myself, I would desire always little birds, never big ones. But dogs, always big.'

  'And men?'

  'Truly that is a kind of cattle I find myself strangely disinclined to overbusy myself with. Of late. In their plurality. Your grace laughs?'

  'Some little shrubs of pride and vanity I have in me take comfort at that "plurality".'

  'Be not too confident.'

  'Faith, I am not. Should a beggar be a jetter? And yet—'

  'And yet? it is better kiss a knave than to be troubled with him?'

  'Ah, not that. I can tell true coin from false.'

  'And yet? in an undue manner the Devil coveted highness that fell not for him?'

  'His hopes were dasht, then. And serve him right. Nay but the "and yet" was mine. And, not to fall in open disobedience to your ladyship's command, it shall wait.'

  In soft lazy accents that wrought in the blood beyond all love-cups and enchantments, ' 'Tis a good "and yet",' she said, 'an amiable Devil, to wait so civilly. Let it not be despaired.'

  For a while now they ate and drank in such silence as wild hearts' desires will lie joined in, in closer lapped embraces than spoken word could tire them to: Fiorinda at every other while casting her eyes upon him, inscrutable under their curtain of long dark lashes; and he, so tall of his person, of so careless a repose of settled power in his magnificency, and with all his wilfulness and self-liking of ungoverned youth charmed asleep now, under the lynx's hot stare, and under the star of his lady's presence thus goldenly and feelably sitting before him in warrant of what transcendent fare to come.

  Presently, 'This is a strange wine, madam,' he said, 'as never in all my days I tasted. Of what sort is it? From the outlands?'

  ‘No, it comes of the grape about Reisma.'

  'It is such as might be looked for at your ladyship's table. A moment ago, limpid, transparent, and still: now, restiess with bubbles. Blood-red, to suit your lips, if I hold the goblet so. Then, hold it so, snake-green, seaish. Then, against the light, all paly gleams and with changing bands of colour that go and come within it as I let it swirl in the glass. How call you its name?'

  'For make-believe,' said she as they pledged each other, 'say it is nectar.'

  'I could in sober truth believe that,' he said. Her arm, of a lily-like smoothness and a lily-like paleness, was laid idly across the table, darkly mirrored in the polished surface, idly toying with the cup. 'For make-believe,’ he said, sudden out of the silence, 'say you are my Duchess in Zayana. Say you love me.’

  Some fire-worm of mockery stirred in her eyes. ‘But surely to say that, were a raw weak undurable and soon souring make-believe? My own I am. I stand untied.'

  'I too.'

  'You too?'

  'Yes. And I am an incorrigible person, that will not be ordered.'

  She gathered herself sweetly back in her chair, but her eyes were unrelenting flint 'You think this is a play, then?'

  ‘How can I tell?'

  'How can I either?' said she. 'Say it is a play, then; and that, in the play, you and I have forgotten, my friend, that this is the wine we drink always, you and I. And forgotten that he that drinks it with me shall return to me for ever, never altogether finding, but never altogether losing.' She began to fondle the lynx and hold its head in her lap deliciously. 'Is it not a play indeed, my moppet? See: riches come, and the man is not satisfied. Will he expect that freshly roasted larks shall fall into his mouth? Or is it, think you, that he came into the house but an hour ago meaning by force to ravish me, when as prevailed not, these weeks past, his fawning toys and suing tales?'

  The beast fuffed at Barganax like a cat

  He laughed. 'When your ladyship speaks to this lapcat if is, I suppose, in some dumb-beast tongue of its own? I understand not a word of it.'

  Fiorinda had bent her head, caressing softly with her cheek the lynx's fur. The bloom of her skin had an olive tinge, pallid as fields that spread their night-dews under the morning. And for apparentest outward seal of all perfections was the spider-thread fineness of her hair, seen in the prettily ordered growth of it at the temples, behind the ears, and at the nape of her neck, where it resteer? coiled upon itself, a closely woven knot, superb sleek and disturbing as some sweet black hunting-beast coiled upon itself in sleep. Barganax's eyes were darkened so beholding her and his throat dried.

  When she looked up again, he saw her eyes filled with tears. 'There's a blindness upon me,' she said in answer to his look, 'now that I have come so far.'

  'A blindness?'

  'I know not well whether. Corned so, to the parting of two ways at night. How can I know? Talking, may be, to-morrow with your carousing toss-pot. Meszrian friends: a sweet tale, somewhat hot of the spice too, of the cozening doctor, the crafty Chancellor, and puss his sister. Indeed and indeed I could wish your grace had not gone beside your purpose: were walking even now amongst your orange-trees in Zayana. I wish you'd a stayed there. Wish most, Td ne'er set eyes on you.'

  Barganax said, This is damnable false doctrine.' He came and knelt beside her, one hand on the chair-back, but not to touch her.

  ‘Is it?' She was crying now, with little sobs, sometimes held back, sometimes coming miserably in a huddle together. 'My handkerchief.' She found it: a square of cambric edged with bone lace of silver, scarce big enough to cover the width of Barganax's hand. 'I have seen an ugly sight. The ugly face of Nothing,' she said, drying her eyes.

  'But when?'

  'This morning. This Tuesday morning of this instant July. No, no, no: not when you were there. Without you, I could not, O my friend, I could not, I think go on being.' She avoided his eye: still stifling at every now and again a convulsive sob, while with her left hand she feverishly stroked the lynx's long back. Barganax very gently laid his cheek on her other hand which, resting on the table's edge, held her poor handkerchief, now screwed up in the fist of it like a child's; and very gently, as though it had been a child's indeed, kissed it.

  A minute, so. Then she began, still trembling a little, with her finger-ends of the left hand to move caressingly over his short-cut coppery curly .hair; then lapped her lovely arms about hi
s head. And Barganax's face, as by star-leap received up into that heaven, rested, unseen, unseeing, where, as it had been two doves, her breasts sat throned, ivory-smooth through the silk, violet-sweet, proud, and Greek.

  Without word spoken, they stood up from the table.

  The lynx watched them from its chair out of eyes that danced with yellow fires.

  That left-hand door opened upon a lobby. Fiorinda locked it behind them. At the end of the lobby they came to another doorway, doorless, curtained with rich and heavy curtains, and so to a room with tall windows at the ends west and east and, at either end between the windows, a fire-place, and the heat and movement and sweetness of fires burning of sweet cedar-logs. Scores of candles stood a-light in great branched candlesticks beside the bed, and on tables and mantle-shelves and in golden sconces on the walls. The great canopied, bedstead was of pure gold, throwing back fire-glitter and candlebeam, and its hangings and coverings of cramoisie silk were befringed all with gold and worked in gold thread with representations as of gryphons and manticores and flying fire-drakes and many unused shapes and semblances besides, but half-divined amid the folds of the costly hangings. The floor was strewn with beast-skins, of wolves, bears, and deep-voiced mountain-lions, upon a carpet honey-coloured, very soft to walk on, silent as sleep. The walls seemed to be of a pale green marble, but with a glistening in the body of it as of gold-dust and dust of silver, and with myriads of little gems inlaid in the veins of the marble like many-coloured sparkles of fire. Betwixt wall and ceiling ran a frieze carved with lotuses, which seemed in the wobbling candlelight and the glow of the logs, now a-smolder, now shooting up tongues of flame, to swing and circle, rise and sink, as upon slumbrous slow eddies and backwashes of their native streams.