Zimiamvia: A Trilogy

by E R Eddison

  He stood listening: not a sound from within. So still it was, he might hear the clock ticking in the hall below. He shook the door. She said, from inside, "No opening of doors to you tonight, my lord." And, upon his shaking it again: "If you look for any more love-liking, in your life, betwixt you and me, importune me no more tonight"

  Baias made as if to charge against the door with his shoulder: break the bolt if he might; but, ruling himself, went away.

  My Lady Fiorinda listened until the sound of her lord's footsteps, of his going downstairs and across the hall, ceased and everything was still. Then, smiling, she set to to disapparel herself and, suddenly serious, stood awhile betwixt fire and mirror to contemplate with cool appraising eye, like as that morning seven months ago she had examined from horseback the sun-lit sea-pools of the Korvish, the wonder of her own face and of all her naked beauties. Even as thought against thought, passion against passion, and all against each, made up the ever-changing bewitchments of her face: even as, throughout this other enchanted queendom, of her body, from throat to toe, from shoulder to finger-tip, some deep harmony between conflicting superlatives issued in a divine perfection: so between these two several queendoms was utter diversity in kind swept up to unity. In the face, her soul sat free: now bared, now all or in part disguised or veiled. In body's loveliness, through lively and breathing balance of form with form and of her three fair colours (white, red, and that blackness whose outbraidings are but one mode, of many divine and coequal, of the pure empyreal fire), shone the peace of Her beauty that to its eternal substance subsumes both earth and heaven. Each queendom by itself, face alone (incarnate soul) or body alone (incarnate spirit), were a thing abstracted: soul without platform or warmth or stature: spirit without understanding and without truth. But that were an impossible. Spirit, within and without, suggested this soul; and this soul spirit. Soul's beauty and spirit's were in an untimed ecstasy so steeped in each other, and by each other interpenetrated, that, without question of the outward hierarchy, each feature and lineament of her face and each particular treasure of her body, each flicker of an eyelid, each moving or stillness of swan-smooth surface, each filigree delicacy of jet-black hair, was inwardly of equal honour and worth, as implicate with all the remain and, wholly as each of these, postulating and ensphering both them and Her. So that here stood She in very presence; self-exiled (doubtlessly for some such Olympian purpose as she had foreshown to Vandermast) to this house of Masmor. With a narrowing of eyes that seemed snake-like now, and with a deadly twist of some quality never, may be, noted until now even by herself, of some tigerishness and pride and unmercilessness in the contours of her lips, she smiled again. In a whisper that, to hear, should have struck chill to a man's veins and sent the blood fleeing to the heart, she said: "Not a commodity. Not to be had by choosing or by slices, as eat a chicken. Not that, whether for man or God. And the reward of inveterate transgression, death."

  In her bower below, meanwhile, Baias threw logs on the dying fire, then sat in her chair, ridging and musing. Her book lay on the floor beside him, where he had thrown it. He picked it up. It opened at Anchises's second speech in the Hymn to Aphrodite:

  If mortal, then, thou beest, and woman the mother that bare thee; Otreus of name renown'd thy father, as thou averrest; If thou through grace of the deathless Guide be hither-ward comen, Thro' Hermes, and wife of mine must be call'd to everlasting: Then shall none, were't whether of Gods or of men mortal, Me constrain nor hold, till mixt in love I have thee, Instant now: not were Far-darting very Apollo Launch from 's bow of silver the arrows that worketh groanings. Wittingly I thereafter, O woman Goddess-seeming, So but first I mount thy bed, would sink to the House of Hades,

  "Yes," said Baias, closing the book and with shaking hand putting it by: "so that's the trash she reads. And he had, at that time, but his own imaginings to light that hot fire in him-How much more I, that have proved and know?"

  Wine and goblets stood on a side-table. He walked over to it; poured a cup; drank; returned to her chair. Quarter by quarter and hour by hour, the clock's chimes led on the watches of the night. At two o'clock, after nigh upon three hours of sitting so, he drank a second cup of wine and went upstairs again to listen. There was not a sound, save only of her breath taken peacefully in sleep. Her sleep, by native habit and suited to her years, was quiet and profound. It was dark in the passage. A fault glow of firelight showed under her door and in the chink between door and door-jamb. Baias went to his own room, a few paces along the passage, shut the door silently, and leaned out of the window nearest hers. The night was moonless, but clear and starry. From sheer hunger for her and from hard staring to make sure that her casement stood open, as even in these winter nights was her custom so to have it, his eyes watered and smarted. He leaned out: measured the distance with his eye, window-ledge to window-ledge: said in his mind, " 'Tis the road her cat-a-mountain took. Where that can go, there can I": stood now erect on the broad outer sill, steadying himself by hand-grip on the roll-moulded top edge of the stone architrave above his head. It was as if some unvoiced menace spoke out of the night's star-lit stillness to the proud will of him standing there: as to say, Leap not. He took a mighty leap sideways, face to the wall: landed with both hands clutching upon her window-sill with a jerk enough to have broken the finger-joints or dislocated the shoulders of another man, but by main strength hung on, and by the might of his arms and with scrabbling of toes against the wall pulled himself up till, half in half out of the window, he could rest at last: a thirty-foot drop below him on the outer side; but inside, the slumbrous glow from embers on the hearth; the assurance of her presence; the undisturbed sound of her sleeping, peaceful as a child's.

  Next morning she rode into Zemry Ashery, gave her horse to the grooms, went up usherless to the Chancellor's study, and there found him but just finishing his breakfast. She sat her down at the far side of the table, facing him, her back to the window and the sunrise.

  "An unlooked-for pleasure to begin my day with. You have breakfasted?"

  She shook her head and, when he would have risen to pull the bell, prevented him with a look. He took a bit of marmalade and waited.

  "I'm come home," she said at last, looking down with the question in her eyebrows, while with one jewelled finger she moved a plate in circles before her on the san-dalwood table.

  "But why?"

  "Decided that I do not care any longer for married life."

  A sardonic smile flickered across the granite features of the Chancellor. "Why?" he said, and she shrugged and looked at him: a strange look. The look of a lily that has been rudely handled: but no entreaty in it, no asking for pity.

  He poured out two cups of white hippocras: pushed one across the board for her. She left it untouched. He finished his breakfast in silence, as it to let her take her time. When she looked at him again her eyes were stone-hard, like a snake's eyes, but, for all that, piercingly piteous now; as though here were some proud implacable thing, armed with a merciless power, come to him in its unhappiness as a hurt child to its mother.

  "Is't there the wind sits?" said Beroald. "Anchises begins to show the defects of a mortal man? A rough herdsman, albeit a prince?"

  "Let's not talk Greek. There was Roman ways rather. A rape of the Sabines last night." She gave him a steady look, then suddenly rose up and went across to the fireplace to stand there with her back to him. The curve of her neck as she looked down into the flames: back hair sitting exquisitely in the nape of it, gleaming, smooth-wound, pear-shaped, voluptuously coiling down upon itself, a black leopard, a sleeping danger: the pure and stately lines of her body, amphora-like, giving nobility to every hanging fold of her pleated skirt: as the Chancellor looked and beheld these things, his lean lips and clipped mustachios and the lines of his shaven jaw and chin seemed changed to iron.

  He began a stalking up and down the room, hands clasped behind his back, and so after a turn or two placed himself to front her, a little on her right, his should
ers against the mantelpiece. "One should not strike a woman," he said, "even with a flower."

  "He did not strike me."

  The Chancellor studied her face. In this shadow cross-lit with the leaping fire-flames, it was like the Sphinx's. "Shall I talk to him?" he said.

  Fiorinda smoothed her dress. Very softly nodding, still looking wide-eyed into the fire, she answered in a low voice, clear and dispassionate: "If you think it talking matter." She looked up swiftly in his face with eyes that from their sphinxian coldness were suddenly become those of a frightened child: then bent her head for him to kiss her on the forehead. "I was asleep," she whispered close to his ear. "In my own chamber, very well secured, to be from him for a while. Let himself in by the window, I suppose, without waking me. By some goatish trick, in my sleep, upon me: no help: the enemy in the gate." She buried her face on her brother's shoulder, arms tight about his neck, sobbing and shuddering. "I hate him. Dear Father in heaven, how I hate him."

  The next morning, not so unseasonable early as yesterday his lady, the Lord Baias came to see the Chancellor. He opened the matter with an easy frankness as between friends and brothers-in-law: a wretched inconvenience, not worth the time of day, save that it concerned her that was very dear to both of them. Main necessity was to clear with the business and stop report; and were it even for that sake alone (though he was most desirous not to hurry her) he earnestly wished her speedy return to Masmor. In this he doubted not he should have her brother's wise help, who knew as well as she did in what dear respect and love he held her. Maybe himself had been at fault too. Be that as might be, 'twere worst thing in the world were she, by tarrying over long tune in Zemry Ashery, to set foolish tongues a-wagging; which, to say true, they had to his own knowledge already begun to do weeks ago, but he thought he had so far scotched that. There was nought behind it, save lovers' humours. And remember, 'twas yet but honeymoon.

  At this last the Chancellor, who had listened in silence without stir of a muscle, smiled somewhat scornfully. "For myself," he said, "I have never yet adventured me in the toils of wedlock, but I am enough otherwheres experienced to tell you that when a four-month honeymoon ends as this hath, 'tis time to end all. I'm sorry, my lord, but since as between kinsmen-in-law you seek my help and counsel, I can but counsel you to agree to a divorce, and that without pother or delay. Indeed, there's no choice else": here he gave him an ill look, and added, "unless a worser." So saying, chill and formal again, he rose from the table.

  Baias rose too: his face scarlet, but his tongue well curbed. "This is scarce the help I looked for," he said, "when I came hither to you. I must take time to think on't."

  "I will give your lordship twenty-four hours," said Beroald, "to accept my decision."

  "You speak high, my lord Chancellor."

  "It is my custom," replied he with great coolness, "when the occasion demands it. Fare you well. And consider with thoughtful care what I have said to you."

  "It shall not fail. Fare you well."

  With that went Baias forth from the room, and so down the wheel-stairs in the west turret, and so through the main hall. Thence in his way out, he chanced upon his lady as she came in from the garden. She turned ashy white: checked in her walk and seemed to hesitate how she might pass him, but the passage was narrow and he blocked up the way. He unbonneted: "I came to ask forgiveness."

  "To make your peace? I' the fashion of Wednesday night?"

  Baias, as letting this pass unnoted, said, "There's no living soul I'd accept it from but you: much less ask it. For God sake, some place with closed doors. We cannot talk here."

  "Closed doors. Upon you and me!"

  "The garden, then: care not for eyes, so there be no eavesdroppers. I entreat you. I am tame. But I cannot away afore this be some way mended."

  They went, whence she had come, into the garden. After a score of paces she halted. "This is far enough. It. is past mending."

  "God forbid."

  "I have made my brother my attorney. You must talk to him."

  Lord Baias set his jaw. "Is your pride so devilish that you cannot be high-minded enough not to tread down mine, when like some humble miserable suitor to his sovereign lord I come to prostrate it before you?"

  "My pride, God save the mark! when you've used me with such outrage as I'd a supposed a scullion, perfumed with grease, would have spared his meanest punk."

  "Must you cut my heart out? My fault was but my love for you."

  "I owe you thanks for that admission. Bear with my ignorance: I ne'er knew man till you. And truly this half-year's testing hath killed my appetite for more, if you be a right example."

  "By God's lid!" said Baias, as a man whose will is seldom wonted to be gainsaid, letting loose bis passion, " 'tis a perilous game you play, mistress, and a foolish. What aim you at? are you levying faction against me? What have I done? Because your brother is the great Chancellor and grows here to great abominable purchase, think you by running to him with lies against me-"

  "What needed lies? Truth was enough."

  "You're an ill wife. Yet hearken, for a last word: come you home with me."

  "I will die sooner."

  "Nay, then, I have a deeper vengeance is preparing for you. Filthy beauty. There's a man in this: men, more like. Well, 'tis Friday morn. If by Monday you be not come back, I counsel you keep yourself mewed in Zemry Ashery for the rest of your life. For I swear to you by my honour, if you prove loose in the hilts I'll take you to my fury. And I am a man that never missed of nothing yet that I took in hand. If, being your husband, I may not have you, I'll so deal with you as none else shall desire you. I'll slit your nose. Best cure, as most lasting, for such as you."

  Without more for goodbye, he left her: took horse and departed.

  But my Lady Fiorinda stood a full minute motionless there, gazing after him. Upon her brow some dreadful ghastliness of old night seemed, frowning, to rise into its throne and to shed its garment as a veil over her slanting eyes worm-glance darting, and cover her lips, changing them for the moment to things carved out of frozen blood. In the same hour she recounted to her brother, word by word, these things said to her by Baias. While Beroald listened, his lean countenance, flat in the cheekbones, wide between the eyes, clean cut about the jaw, close shaven save for the bristly mustachios, remained moveless as a stone. When she had done, "Forget it," he said, in a toneless voice, as cold and stately and as unreadable as his face. "And forget him." Their eyes met, and rested a moment together, as brother's and sister's who well understand each other.

  Next day, in the afternoon, was news brought to the Chancellor in Zemry Ashery of a horrible fact committed in Krestenaya market-place: of the Lord Baias, coming down the piazza, steps there in open sight of the people and the sun shining in full splendency, set upon at unawares and stabbed in by six men with daggers: his speech and senses taken suddenly away from him, yet lived awhile, "but the surgeons told me," said the messenger, "it should not be long." Of this, some hours later, the Chancellor informed his sister; saying besides that by latest assured intelligence Baias was dead. The murderers, it seemed, were persons unknown. Except two, whom Baias had killed outright in the scuffle, they seemed to have gotten clean away, "An act of God or the King's enemies," said the Chancellor, looking her straight in the eye.

  "An act of God," said the lady soberly, with a like steady, uncommunicative, understanding look. "It were wicked to be unthankful."

  Argument with Dates

  Barganax and Fiorinda-The King and the Vicar (Chapters 30-33)

  30 - Laughter-loving Aphrodite

  UNTIL FIORINDA'S marriage neither the King nor the Queen nor Barganax has ever set eyes on her. The Duchess has, and cannot abide her: probably has resolved privately that she had better not be seen by Barganax.

  In April, barely three months after the violent death of her first husband, she (once more, to please her brother) marries Morville, a distant cousin of the Parry. The King, seeing and talking to her for the firs
t time in May and having Barganax in mind, confers on Morville the lieutenancy of Reisma and persuades the Duchess to give Fiorinda a place at court in Memison and, later, in June, to make her lady of the bedchamber. Upon this nearer acquaintance the Duchess now changes her mind: thinks less about the reputation which, bruited by idle tongues, follows Fiorinda as a train of fire some red disastrous comet: in fine, surrenders wholly to the spell of this Dark Lady, in whose scintillating, unanalysable, and perilous perfections she seems to see (as a rose might see its own image mirrored but changed to incandescence in the surface of a pool of molten metal) a counter-image of her own inmost self: Rosa alba incarnata looking upon La Rose Noire.

  Fiorinda is passionately adored at first sight by Barganax on midsummer night, 775, at a ball given by his mother in Memison.

  31 - The Beast of Laimak

  THE VICAR (whose policy, as Beroald once said, "is that of the duck: above water, idle and scarce seen to stir; but under water, secretly and speedily swimming towards his purpose") has ever since the rebellion been unobtrusively but with patience and thoroughness consolidating his power in Rerek. By firm government, lavishness in both promise and performance, good-fellowship, princely hospitality, a certain directness that tempts many to trust him where they had wiselier been ware of him, and by a set policy of fastening a private hold on each man worthy his attention (laying men under obligations to his person, or holding over them his knowledge of some secret misdoing which they would least of all wish to see brought to light), he has in the four years of his vicariate used the royal commission (as Beroald said) "to grapple to his private allegiance the whole mid kingdom 'twixt Megra and the Zenner."