by E R Eddison
Barganax neither spoke nor stirred.
‘He will say nought to me,’ said Medor: ‘nought to any save to your grace alone.’
‘Is he weary of his life?’
‘I did instruct him at large. Yet nought will do but he shall have speech with you face to face. I have done my best.’
After a pause the Duke said, ‘Admit him.’
Thereupon was guarded into the chamber, betwixt two of the Duke’s red-bearded shaven-headed men-at-arms, Amaury. He was dirted to the knee from hard riding through the marshlands. They had made him leave his weapons. ‘Was this well done, Amaury,’ said the Duke, ‘to come and make me your gazing-stock, and the glory of Zayana laid in the suds?’
‘My lord Duke,’ said Amaury, ‘I see no such thing. If your grace will in your old used nobility meet my master, he doth most eagerly desire to treat with you, and upon such terms as shall be of more honour and advantage to you than those which he beforetime did offer, before war was betwixt you.’
‘Do you see that goblet?’ said the Duke then. ‘Were you to set in it an invenomed toad and mash him to a jelly, then pour wine on’t and drink it off, that were a thing likelier for your safety than come hither to insult over me with his words of peace.’
Amaury flushed like a girl under his fair skin. He said, ‘If there is blame, blame me. Of myself, not sent, came I hither into your power; for I knew his strange and needless resolve to come himself tomorrow on the like errand, but I smelt danger in that. Therefore I came first, without leave asked, to be his taster; as great men will have the dish tasted first by another, if there be poison in it.’
‘Then shall he thank me,’ said the Duke, ‘for chastising of his disobedient dog. And yet,’ he said, ‘you might a known there was little danger. You might a known I should have the wit to let you go: as men use with rat-traps: there is a way in with a snap-door, but another way out: let ’em go at will, in and out, for a few nights till they have lost all fear on’t; then, one night, shut the way out, catch ’em all in a bunch. Dear Gods, could I have but that Roder and that Beroald amongst ’em: mince them all!’
‘But I am not a rat,’ said Amaury. ‘I can judge; and if I judge so, warn him.’
The Duke’s face was dark as blood. ‘Take him out,’ he said. ‘Tie him hand and foot and throw him down the cliff. This may somewhat ease my rage.’
The guardsmen laid each a hand upon Amaury’s shoulders. He turned pale. He said, ‘If I come not back, there is this good in it, that ’twill yet give him pause. And his life is better to me than mine.’
‘Make haste, as I bade you,’ said the Duke, starting suddenly up, deadly white, terrible, like a wounded lion. ‘If more come, I’ll use the like liberty on them. It shall appear whether I be well tamed with the infortunity of this battle. Trokers and dastards: let them know me, too late.’ He strode with great clanking strides to the window and stood there, stiff, his back to the room, his arms tight folded before his face and pressed against the wall, his temples pressed against the backs of his clenched fists. Medor, by a look, bade the guard stand still. Amaury waited.
‘Medor,’ said the Duke: he was now at the window, looking out. Medor went to him.
‘Keep the man till morning: out of my sight. I will think more on this.’
Amaury spoke: ‘May I, with your grace’s leave, say but a word?’
The Duke made no answer, looking still out of the window, but his frame stiffened as he stood.
‘If I be not returned ere morning, there be those will tell my lord whither I am gone. He will conclude your grace hath made away with me. That ruins all.’
The Duke swung round. ‘Have him away, ere I afterthink me.’ He plucked out his dagger.
‘He was resolved to ride up the Curtain alone,’ said Amaury loudly as they led him out: ‘alone: in so high a trusting honour hath he held you.’
‘Away!’ said Barganax. His left hand shut upon Medor’s wrist. The soldiers hurried Amaury through the door. ‘O horrible ruin! Was ever prince betrayed as I am? O Medor I could bathe in blood: butcher their heads off with my own hands: cut their hearts out, eat ’em raw with garlic; then sink with stink ad Tartara Termagorum.
‘Nay, that’s foulness,’ he said, again striding up and down. ‘Damned Beroald: damned two-faced Zapheles: damned womanish Jeronimy: dregs of the Devil’s cup. That’s worst of all: I, that dared imaginarily place myself above the circle of the moon, to be the wide world’s paragon, and only beauty’s self to be my paramour: now baffled to extremest derision, changed to a bloody beast.
‘Nay,’ he said, ‘but I’ll prince it out;’ and sat again in the stone chair. Medor was leaned on his elbows at the window surveying the night. ‘What dost think on?’ said the Duke.
‘On your star-like nobleness,’ answered he.
‘What was that he said?’ said the Duke suddenly: ‘that Lessingham would trust himself all alone to treat with me here in Rumala? That was very like a lie.’
‘I think it likely true,’ answered Medor. ‘He knoweth well enough your grace’s firm-kept faith toward him lately in Zayana.’
The Duke was silent. Then, ‘Why have they taken him away?’ he said. ‘Fetch him back! Must I be betrayed by you too, to do my bidding when I’m beside myself?’
‘No,’ replied he, and gave him a look. ‘I will keep my old bargain with your grace as for that.’
Barganax put off his helm and set it beside him on the table with his iron gloves. The leavings of storm yet darkened and flickered about his eyes and about the lines of his mouth under the curled mustachios; but no longer so as to deform that face and brow which, clear seen now in the upward beaming of the lamp, seemed to contain the united sweet of heaven’s graces. He said under his breath: In a dream I spake with Our Lady of Cyprus.’
When Amaury was come in again with Medor, ‘You are a brave man, Amaury,’ said the Duke; ‘and that was to be looked for, since you serve a brave man; and he is a man to pick out men of strength and manliness to follow him, and men of his own bent of mind. And now lay open your former speeches, that I may understand your meaning.’
Amaury laid it all before him point by point.
‘And now,’ said the Duke then, ‘I have bethought me of this matter betwixt me and your lord, what way it shall become. Here is a ring,’ he said, and took it from his finger: ‘the stone of it is called quandias: it is found in the vulture’s head, and is man’s friend, for it driveth from him all things that be hurtful. Give it him from me. Say to him, I will not be outdone by him in nobility: I’ll meet with him, but not here. I’ll meet him half way, at Ilkis in Rubalnardale. Today ’tis Monday; let it be Wednesday at noon. ’Tis best we go weaponed, seeing the countryside may well be up in a tumult after these doings. But let there be twenty of either side, and no more. And let truce hold, howsoe’er things fadge, till Thursday midnight.’
Amaury kissed Barganax’s hand and took the ring. ‘I am so far in my lord’s counsels,’ he said, ‘that I can here confidently accept it all on his behalf, and say that your grace’s noble dealing in this business hath opened an easy way unto honour and peace betwixt you.’
‘Then fare you well, sir,’ said the Duke. ‘On Wednesday at noonday we shall confer in Ilkis. Soldiers, conduct him: a dozen torches down the Curtain.
‘And now,’ said he to Medor, when Amaury was gone: ‘nor you nor no man speak to me. Lights and to bed.’
It was now about midday of Wednesday, that fourteenth day of June. In Acrozayana, in a jewelled shade of strawberry-trees, where the sun speckled the gravel path with moidores strewn upon a carpet of cool purple, the Lady Fiorinda rested as music rests when the lute is laid by. Her couch was cushions of wine-dark satin on a bench of porphyry. Her gown, very soft and fine, long-sleeved, close fitting, yellow of the pale cowslip petal and with narrow ruffs at throat and wrist, settled at every gently taken breath to some fresh perfection of her as she rested there, sweetly gathered up, upon her right side, her feet along the ben
ch. A hood of black netted silk, rebated at the border with chrysoprases sewn upon cloth of gold, framed her face as with an aureole within which, betwixt white brow and jewelled tissue, her hair was like the mystery of night set betwixt bright sun and moon.
Below her to her left, on the step of the carved porphyry seat, sat Rosalura, her needlework fallen on the ground at her side, her hands clasped in her lap. Anthea, clothed in white, stood on the confines of the shade and the sunlight of the lawn without: the pupils of her eyes were slits against that brightness: there was in her bearing an alertness of expectancy: her hair, loosely gathered and knotted up in a disordered grace, was as fire burning. Bellafront, at the outer end of a low bench on the left, close to Anthea, caught the rays too on her coiled plaits of chestnut red. Pantasilea and Myrrha, Campaspe and Violante, reclined these upon this bench those upon that, of the two low benches to Fiorinda’s left and right. All were as if listening to something afar off, or, may be, to the humming of the bees only that droned on the summer air, now louder now more dim, but never silent; listening not as hearing but rather hoping to hear some expected thing.
Doctor Vandermast, in russet-coloured gaberdine, walked in his meditation. The little arrows of sunlight, piercing the leaves, rained upon him ceaselessly in his measured walking.
Fiorinda spoke: ‘That was a strange freedom in so grave a scholar as you, sir, to say that I was, of myself – but indeed now I have forgot what ’twas you said.’
He came to a stop at her side, looking past Anthea to the smooth sunny spaces of lawn and flower-bed beyond and, over the parapet, to mountains dim in the summer haze. ‘It is a principle infringible of divine philosophy,’ he said, ‘to seek an understanding of all things sub specie quadam aeternitatis: holding them up, as to a lamp, to eternity, wherefrom they take illumination. Myself too did spend whole thirty-seven years together in studying of the Physicals and Ultramundanes, proceeding therein by concatenation of axiom with proposition and so through demonstratio, scholium, corollarium, to the union of all in a perpetual and uniform law: that vertical point above the pyramids of knowledge where the intellects may in momentary contemplation seize the truth of things. Yet was it, when all came to all, but an empty truth: praeter verbum nihil est, a vain breath. For it supposed further, if it must stand, a reason, understanding, and platform. But whensoever, leaving these toys, I have considered of your ladyship, then is all clear daylight; and whensoever I have been put to a stound, unable to understand of this or that in nature or in time, wherefore it should be thus and not thus, I need but view it under the light of your ladyship, and in an instant I see its very worth and its necessity.’
‘As this late ruinous field of Lorkan?’ said she, ‘that hath cut the ground, from under his feet and sent him cap in hand to make peace with his great enemy?’
He replied: ‘I behold it in your ladyship as in a glass. I embrace and accept it.’
‘Mew!’ said she, ‘I would plague him. That is all.’
‘I do discern you through a thicker cloud than that,’ said Vandermast, meeting her eye.
‘Do you so?’ said she. ‘’Las! Were I not somewhat high-hearted I should be scared out of my senses, as if with such a cockatrice stare the old man would unclothe me where I sit. Horror of Apollonius upon Lamia! Are we safe indeed?’
‘Apollonius,’ said Vandermast, ‘was but a very false philosopher, and had but a very superficial and poor understanding. In sum (and this was in my mind when by a trope or figure, madam, I permitted myself to liken you to eternity), I conclude that your ladyship is, of yourself, omnium rerum causa immanens: the sufficient explanation of the world.’
Fiorinda did not smile. ‘But what needed it of explanations?’ she said. ‘Here it is. I like it.’
‘Without you,’ said that old man, ‘it should fly in pieces and be gone. Like a drop of glass that I have seen, will crash instantly into dust if a man but nip its tail off.’
‘And, sure, you will not say there ever lived a man so wicked,’ said she, ‘as dream it could be otherwise? A world without me? Or that hated me?’
‘My Lady Fiorinda,’ said he in a low voice: ‘nemo potest Deum odio habere: no man is able to hate God. I speak not of time and place and outward habit. In Rialmar, no less constantly than in Acrozayana, you do have your siege and presence. There may be more of you, three, nine, nine thousand thousand: I know not: ex necessitate divinae naturae infinita infinitis modis sequi debent: infinite shapes and ostentations. I know, in this world, but two. And you, albeit you change, yet change not.’
He fell silent. ‘Nay, I would have you go on,’ she said, in accents that seemed to draw a veil of mockery shot with starry sparkles across her thought, even as the long black lashes veiled her eyes. ‘’Tis very music to me, to smooth my ear: to listen to subtleties, fantastic queries, and speculations, discoursed so by so learn’d a doctor: like as the deceiving of the senses is one of the pleasures of the senses.’
Vandermast, immerst yet in his vision, and as if he had not heard her, said, ‘It is an open-founded doctrine, which can scarce escape the notice even of the rudest; save that they note it and pass by, not knowing fully that which they noted. As they that go to and fro in the street behold a tower, and yet there be many steps and degrees to be ascended painfully, per scientiam, ere a man shall stand upon the top thereof and know the thing. And yet,’ he said, ‘this is to small purpose talking so, with laborious stumbling words, to your ladyship, as a child conning his lesson: to you that do know these things better than I and without all grammatication.’
‘You may have a nose for metaphysicals,’ said that lady; ‘but here you cry out upon no trail. I know nothing. Only, I am.’
‘Your ladyship doth play with me,’ said Vandermast.
‘I play with all things,’ she said. It was as if that which dwelt in the corner of her mouth shot its arrow and then buried its face again for very sweetness of the place it dwelt in. Her right hand made a rest for her cheek; her left arm was thrown back and fallen behind her behind the proud arch of her hip, as in a carelessness and divine largesse of the treasure of her body, ethereal as the scented thought of a white rose, beautiful as golden flowers, the fairness of it and the Grecian pride. ‘With all things,’ she said.
‘And rightly so,’ said that ancient doctor, slowly, as if communing with his inward thought: ‘seeing that it is for you that all things, omnia quae existunt, are kept and preserved by the sole power of God alone, a sola vi Dei conservantur.’
The bees’ drowsy note conducted on the silence. Fiorinda’s voice came like honey dropping from the hive on some Elysian Hymettus, saying, as in a dream, ‘It may be you said true. It may be I do know. The Poetess:
She was charier of words than you, most reverend doctor, and yet said it all, I think:
thou, and My servant Love.’
The Countess Rosalura, remembering Ambremerine, leaned suddenly forward to lay her head against the sandals of gold which, with broidered straps of fair Lydian work, covered Fiorinda’s feet.
Fiorinda, with a little movement of her head, beckoned the learned doctor to bend nearer. ‘Will you credit that old tale,’ she said in his ear, ‘of their speaking with King Hakon Athelstane’s-fosterling, to summon him home, when he sat there a-dying, on the bloody battlefield of Fitiar in Stord? When
Gondul and Skogul the Goths’-God sent
To choose of the kings,
Which of Yngvi’s line must with Odin fare,
In Valhall to won.
‘And was not the king glad then, when he heard the words of the noble Valkyries, where they sat there a-horseback, and bare themselves so fairly, and sat helmed and with shield and spear?’
‘It is not past credit,’ answered Vandermast. ‘Deus ex solis suae naturae legibus, et a nemine coactus agit: God fareth according to the laws of His own nature, and under constraint of no man.’
She laughed and stood up. Surely the light of her beauty was upon that old man’s face, to transfigu
re it, as sunlight the cold frosty season of December. Every line and thought-driven furrow, the wrinkled hollows of his eye-sockets, their bristling eaves, the lean beaked nose of him, and white beard, were as lighted with her beauty from withinward; and the peace of her beauty lay upon the fragile and vein-streaked smoothness of his brow, and all his countenance was made gracious with the holy spirit and power of that lady’s beauty, which stirred now and glittered in the depths of his swift and piercing eyes.
‘I will look on this meeting,’ said she. ‘A man shall not need be hurt to the death, as then at Fitiar, ere he may pluck the rose acceptable to the Gods and wear it: my roses of Pieria, reached tiptoe from the mere pinnacle of his hopes’ defeat. Draw back the veil.’
There went with that word a shadow across the sunpath, and a coolness without wind was on the air. And now it was suddenly as if trees and flowers and daisied lawns, nay the very walls and solid ground here in Acrozayana, and the stablished mountains seen beyond the parapet, far off across the lake, were thinned to a tenuous immateriality, not wavering but steady in edge and texture, as if made all of clear livid-coloured glass of the thinness of thin parchment. Through this, as through a painted window, appeared now the naked anatomy of earth, blue and cold: cliffs which swept down to fearful silences, with the tide washing against the bases of the cliffs, and a welter of drowned treasure and sea-wrack and vast worms tearing at one another in the shallows of the sea. The air between the cliffs, ruffled in mists and rawky vapours, was troubled with iron wings of chimaeras that mounted ever upwards, as bubbles mount in wine, and vanished ever in the strip of sky high up between the lips of the precipices: night sky, for all that it was day here in the natural world; and in the night a blazing star with long hairs appeared. Vandermast and those ladies were becoming even as the things about them livid and translucent, like shadows in water or fetches of the dead. She alone, in that falling away of appearance from reality, retained yet the lovely hues of life and carnal substance.
So that to the Duke, facing Lessingham across the council table in Ilkis, it was in that moment as if he looked through layer upon layer of dream, as through veil behind veil: the thinnest veil, natural present: the next, as in a dumb-show strangely presented by art magic, the dappled path beneath the strawberry-trees in his own garden in Zayana and the company there gathered: and so, the firm frame of things and a jut of rock between the abysses, and, standing upon it, that woman, clothed upon with the fires of thunder and of night. From whose eyes as from starred heavens he took knowledge of the action he now went on; and, as through them, saw it; and was content.
