by E R Eddison
King Mezentius gave him his eyes for an instant, undisturbed, resolute, but, save for their good will, unreadable: then, turning to the Admiral and Lord Roder, "Take up the Queen's body," he said. "Sit it in her chair of state."
When they, in a maze and rather in manner of contrived automatons than of waking men, had done his bidding, he stood up, somewhat slowly, from his high-seat and, taking from his own head the crown of Meszria, set it on hers. "I'll view it again thus, where it belonged when first I had sight of it. Who loveth me, remember her greatness, and her father's. Put out of mind aught you may think she did amiss. She has paid for that, and as no skulking cheater, neither, nor in no false com. Sorely tried she was, and, i' the end, no unnoble daughter of the Parry. Few there be that I shall gladlier shake by the hand, beyond the hateful river."
He looked at Fiorinda: saw how her eyes rested constant on Barganax.
"You may see," said the King, seated again and surveying Rosma's face, undisfigured and wearing a peace and a majesty not known there in her life-days, "that here's no villainous discountenancing poison, to mar that which God Himself hath made, and send us aboard of Charon's ferry as puff-balls swol'n up and bursten. 'Tis a clean death, and worthy of royal Princes."
Outside, now, a gale was raging from the west: rush-ings of rain, and the huge belly of darkness continually a-rumbling with near and distant thunders. The windows of the hall nickered blue with the ceaseless lightning.
"Beroald," the King said, "you are a brave man and a discreet, and a friend of mine. You are instantly to take boat, then saddle and ride your swiftest to Zayana. This ring," here he took the great Worm-ring from his thumb; "give it to her grace. She'll know the token. Say to her I have yet a few hours to live, but I am dog-weary, and it is no more in my power to turn this destiny."
As if the forked lightning-flame had with these words leapt among them, all, save only the King and my Lady Fiorinda, sprang to their feet. The Duke said, out of a deformed silence: "But the counterpoisons your highness hath alway taken?"
"Without 'em, I were gone, her way, at first sip. Look to the ring on her finger: undo the bezel: so: it is empty, but for specks of this greenish dust. This was her aunt's first wedding-gift, Lugia Parry's; and 'gainst that masterpiece, wetted or ta'en by the mouth, all counterpoisons in the world are naught: save to delay. She had it in her handkercher."
"Send for leeches."
"They can do nothing. Begone, Chancellor: your speediest."
"Shall I bring her noble excellence back with me?"
"No. Though my salvation hung on't, I would not hazard her safety in such a storm. But it were a hell to me to die and no word from her to speed me. Begone, Beroald, and swiftly back. Haste, haste, post haste. Worketh already, dull in my feet.
"Earl," he said, as the Chancellor, with face like a stone, strode swiftly down the hall, "fetch me my armour; and the triple crown; and my robes of state. Kings ought not to die lying on their backs."
"And fetch leeches, for God sake, quick," said Barganax swiftly in the Earl's ear. "All blame's mine, if 's highness mislike it."
Within five minues, the Chancellor put out upon the firth in the fury and height of the storm: himself at the tiller, and two boatmen to take turns at oars and bailing. There was but a mile to go, but they were not gotten half way when a tremendous sea breaking over the stern swamped the boat and left them to swim or drown. By strength and by heart, but most (it seemed) by some over-riding fate of necessity, they made land, but on a lee shore, much east beyond the right landing-place and set about with sharp rocks and skerries. On the teeth of these one of the boatmen being dashed by a wave was knocked senseless and, taken by the undertow, no more seen. His fellow won to safety, but with 's leg broke. The Lord Beroald, bruised and cut, came aland a little farther east and, with but a tatter of soaked rags left to cover his nakedness, part walked, part ran, till he was come to the little township and fishing-harbour of Leshmar, Here the Admiral's bailiff found him dry clothes and a horse: sent, by bis bidding, to bring in the wounded boatman: and so, scarce more than an hour from his leaving of the banquet-chamber, the Chancellor rode up into Acrozayana.
"Dying, and past hope of mending?" said the Duchess when he told his tale. "God's precious Dear take mercy then of this land of Meszria, mercy of our dear son, mercy of us all. You have spoke to me killing words, noble Beroald. O, I am very sick." And throwing herself face downward upon the great brocaded couch between the windows she fell into an unmasterable great passion of tears. The Chancellor, that had never seen her weep, turned him away and, with folded arms and iron-lipped, unmoving as stone, stood looking on her picture above the mantel, a master-work of Barganax's painted five years ago, and so waited till this tempest should blow itself out.
Presently she stood up and dried her eyes.
He turned. "I was to take word back from your beauteous excellency."
"Word? You are to take me, my lord. Have you not yet given order for my horses?"
"There is a dangerous sea running in the firth tonight. The King's highness did expressly command you must not adventure it."
"Pray you, pull me that bell-rope."
Beroald looked at her. Something glinting in his cold eye, he went to the window, drew back the curtain, threw open the casement. The wind had dropped. Westward, over Zayana lake, was clear weather and moonlight. He came back to her beside the fire-place, reached hand to the twisted rope of honey-coloured silk and gave it a jerk. "The Duchess intends for Sestola tonight," he said to the waiting-woman: "taketh but one maid and a portmanteau. Her grace's horses are at the Kremasmian gate already, waiting with mine."
Amalie gave him her hand. "To be great-hearted," he said, kissing it, "is a lovely virtue. And loveliest in woman; 'cause least of course."
When the Duchess, with the Chancellor carrying her cloak, was come into the banquet-chamber, King Mezentius sat yet in his high-seat, clad now in all his royal habiliments and ornaments of majesty. Above him were seated the Admiral, Earl Roder, Duke Barganax, and my Lady Fiorinda. The body of the Queen had been taken away to lie in state. The Duchess, very white and with eyes only for the King, came up that great empty hall almost as a woman walks in her sleep, but noble of mien and carriage as a tall ship dropping silently down the tideway at evening before a light breeze. So, mounting the dais, she stood before him.
"So, Amalie, you are come to me? and spite of my strait forbidding?"
"How could I choose?"
"Do not kiss me, sweetheart, or I shall poison you. Sit where I can see you. The sands are running out. You, Beroald: thanks, and fare you well. Leave us now: you have had my commands, and you too, Jeronimy and Roder. May the Gods lead you by the hand. You too, my son: yes, but stay you. And stay you too, dear Lady of Sakes."
When those were sorrowfully departed, the Duke set a chair for his mother and on her right another for Fiorinda, and himself took seat on his mother's left, facing the King.
The Duchess leaned forward. "Do not kiss you?" she said. "O yes, that you may take me with you. How can I, after so many years, bear the darkness here alone?"
"I," said the King, "am entering upon a darkness that was, until late ago, unthought on: darkness uncompanionable: may be, unreturnable. If there be throughway, my darling dear (and there's no man nor, I think, no God, to tell us whether), you shall find my doing was but to prepare new kingdoms for you. I' the long mean time, comfort you that My choice it was. No will but Mine could force me this gate, open it upon triumph such as eye hath not seen nor heart imagined. Or else," he paused, and while he looked on her a film seemed to be drawn over his eyes: "or else: upon Nothing."
The Duchess listening, from her chair between Barganax and Fiorinda, as if to some terrible commination, seemed to miss the sense but yet to be touched, as fire touches the shrinking flesh, with the deadly import. "I do not understand," she said, trembling. "Your choice? I can never forget you were my lover. I never thought you, of all people in the world, would choose to hu
rt me."
He bore her look a minute in silence. Then, "O turn your eyes away, Amalie," he said; "or for your dear sake I shall, at this last, fail of Myself: become less than, of My true whole nature, I must be."
"How could you do it? O," she cried, "how could you do it?" and she covered her mouth with her hand, biting, for silence, at the palm.
"Remove her away for God sake," said the King. "I can grapple the great death, but not with My hands tied."
None stirred.
The Duchess, pale, but collecting herself to sit now in a self-warranting superbity erect in her chair, said, "I'm sorry, dear my Lord. It is brought under. I'll not, i' the last turning, become a foot-gin in your way."
But that Dark Lady, Her eyes like the eyes of a lioness that gives bay to her adversaries, said to the King: "Is she not Me, albeit she know it not? And think You I do riot know Myself and, through Myself, You? It is child's play to You and Me, this world-making; and child's play to abolish and do away a world, or a million worlds. But to abolish (as You seem now, of Your furious self-feeding folly, resolved to hazard it) the very stuff of Being, which is Me and You: this seemeth to Me a greatness which, like overblown bubbles, is of its own extreme become littler than littleness."
"Be silent, lest I strike You in pieces first with My thunderstone. We will yet see whether God be able to die."
"Questionless, He is able. To Him is not even the impossible possible? But questionless, He will not."
"Why not?"
"For sake of Her."
The Duchess buried her face between Fiorinda's breasts, as if the heart-beats unquieting that violet-sweet enchanted valley were her own eternized: last core and safeguard unsure of an unbottomed world. The King, shutting his eyes not to behold her, said: "We will see."
"If You do Your intent, and the throw fail You," said that Lady, "then We shall not see. For there will be nought to see, nor eye to see it. By that unexperimented leap, in peril and blasphemy both of Yourself and Me, You may (since there be no chains to chain omnipotency run mad), at a stroke end All. End it so as not so much as a dead universe nor a dead God be left to be remembered or forgotten, but only a Nothing not to be named or thought; because in it is nor existence nor unexistence, hope nor fear nor time nor life nor God nor eternity (not even that eternity of nothing), nor truth nor untruth nor remembering nor unremembering any more: not even such last little wet mark or burnt-out ember as might rest for the uncipherable cipher: I am not: I never was; I never shall be." In the honey-dropping dying music of Her voice, time, space, fate, beauty, seemed let fall as a tale told, and all stings of death desirable before this horror of the void.
"Which is to deny itself," said the Duchess, turning her head. "Evil, which is the ultimate Nothing, so shattered at last and broken in its nothingness, as not be able even to be nothing." She shuddered violently and, sitting up and resting a hand on Barganax's knee, "Your way is mine," she said to the King, in a whisper. "The truth is, love is not able to kill love."
"To God," said the King, "all things are easy. And, save one thing alone, all are accomplished."
"You say well, my lady Mother," said the Duke, with his hand on hers. "But as for truth, I know not. And care not. For what's this but tilling of the sand, to talk so and question so about truth? I have small inclination for this, when this infinite which is beauty's self" (his eyes now upon Fiorinda) "lieth open for my tilling: the only truth I know the name of, the only truth I would purchase at a flea's worth. And if God be (as I know not nor reck not whether), He is no God of mine when he ceaseth to love where I love."
There was a long silence. Barganax, with the grace upon him of some hunting-leopard in a muse 'twixt sleeping and waking, gazed between half-shut lids now on his Father, now on Fiorinda. In her face, seen thus sideways, warring insolubles, of heart-break and heart-heal and things yet deeper in gram, not in reason adorable yet past reason adored, seemed to flicker and change with their own self-light. He saw now, like as in Memison almost a year ago but not yet seen tonight, glow-worms in her hair. Her eyes were on the King's. He, bolt upright in his high-seat, crowned and robed and armed, looked now in them; now upon Amalie's tender neck and, smoothly drawn up from it with a high comb of tortoise-shell and inwoven to a voluptuosity of shining twists and coils on the crown of her head, the red-gold glory of her hair (her face was by this time bidding again on Fiorinda's breast); now upon the night-piece of the two of them: Queen of Spades: Queen of Hearts. Presently, as in a mirror, his speckled grey eyes, their eagle gaze unblunted yet and undimmed, met his son's.
"I leave you and the others a tangled business," he said, "where I could if I would have left all pat. But you'd have smally thanked me, I think: to do all beforehand and leave my after-comers with occupation gone."
"Be you thanked as I thank you, O my Father," said the Duke. With a catch of his breath he made as if to say more; but no words came.
Albeit midsummer, it was now turned bitter cold, in this dead time of night when the tide of man's blood runs lowest: the hour when oftenest men die. Here, under the bright lights and in the large, emptiness of this banquet-chamber, scarce was a sound heard, save that of the sea with the storm-swell not yet stilled in it lapping the seawalls: this, and the breathing of those four, and the ticking of the clock. These breaths and these tickings measured out the ingredients of the stillness: hollownesses within, dulling of the spirits from sleeplessness, dulling of the brain: hands and feet grown powerless, fingers all turned to thumbs, eyelids hot and heavy. So they waited, as if for something that itself, too, held back and waited in the night without.
At length the King said, the third time: "We will see." Then, as in a secret gaiety which held under-stirrings of that power that moves the sun and the other stars, and which brought the Duchess on the sudden wide awake again, her name: "Amalie."
Upon that, Duke Barganax, looking first at his Father and then where his Father looked, beheld a great wonder. My Lady Fiorinda was stood up to her full stature: the red corn-rose dress, fallen down about Her knees, seemed water-green laced with white, sea-waves of the heavenly Paphos; and upon Her brow and cheek, and upon all Her divine body thus unveiled, was the beauty that blinds the Gods. In that great banquet-hall in Sestola was nothing now visible but that beauty, all else, for a timeless moment, put out by it as the risen sun puts out the stars. Barganax, so beholding Her, knew he beheld what his Father beheld: save only that this eternal morning wore, for his Father's eyes, an aurora of red fixe, but for his own eyes that sable aurora of night: which, for him, all perfects else excels. And the face of Her, while they looked (as a finger held up before the eyes can seem now to stand against this tree in the far landscape now against that, and so alternately, as alternately right eye or left takes power) seemed now Fiorinda's, now Amalie's.
Then time and space resumed their vicegerency in Sestola; even as when the eyes, leaving to look upon the landscape and converging upon the raised finger, see it its own known self again, familiar and near again, of Like flesh with the looker. That Dark Lady sat palpable and exquisite here in her chair, wearing her gown of scarlet sendaline; and on the sweet unrest of her bosom the Duchess of Memison yet laid her cheek, as if in slumber.
Barganax rising softly, came to the King's side: viewed him narrowly. Then he turned to those two. The Duchess raised her head: stood up: looked first at the King, then, as in a sudden fear at her son: saw in his eyes a new depth of power and sufficiency: new, yet far beyond all remembrance old. "I have thought it, I think," she said, very low, "from the beginning: that there have been four of us. Perhaps, more than four. And yet always a twoness in that many. And that twoness so near unite to oneness as sense to spirit, yet so as not to confound to unity the very heart and being of God; who is Two in One and One in Two."
Barganax took her hand and kissed it. "Even and we were Gods: (my Father, upon whom be peace, said it, you remember at your fish dinner last July): Even and we were Gods, best not to know. Well: thank God, I know
not. Only," he said to Fiorinda, standing within handreach, "I believe your ladyship knows."
In her eyes, unsounded heavens of green fire, and in the gravity that overlay the smoulder of her uncomparable lips, sweet-suggesting inviters, forcible setters-on, to the lime-bushes and labyrinthine ways of love, sat the Bitter-sweet. "Yes," she said. "I know: or almost all. And indeed I suppose I have a bent of mind is able to bear with the knowledge of some matters which even to you, who are a glad man of your nature, should hardly I think be bearable."
"Promise me this," he said, watching her eyes, that mouth, the glow-worms in her hair: "never to tell me."
"It is," answered that lady, and there was that in her voice that fetched down for him, from heaven, both the morning and the evening star, "the one sole promise that I will ever make to your grace. And from my heart. And for love." And she added, unspoken but read darkly, like enough, by Barganax in the comet-caging deeps of those Olympian eyes: "for My servant, love, whose triumph We see tonight."
Table of Contents
Mistress of Mistresses
The Overture
Principal Persons
I
A Spring Night in Mornagay
II
The Duke of Zayana
III
The Tables Set in Meszrza
IV
Zimiamvian Dawn
V
The Vicar of Rerek
VI
Lord Lessingham’s Embassage
VII
A Night-Piece on Ambremerine
VIII
Sferra Cavallo
IX
The Ings of Lorkan
