The Zimiamvia Trilogy

by E R Eddison

  They kept silence, each waiting on the other. Lessingham’s patience outstayed the Vicar’s in that game, and the Vicar spoke. ‘I have bethought me, cousin, and if there’s aught you can say may extenuate the thing, I’ll hear it.’

  ‘Extenuate?’ Lessingham said, and his voice was chilling as the first streak of a winter’s dawn on a frozen sea. As the Vicar held the lantern, so his own face was shadowed, but the eye of Lessingham in full light: the eye of such a man that a prince would rather be afraid of than ashamed of, so much awfulness and ascendancy it lent to his aspect over other mortals. ‘Is it morning then, outside of this hole you have thrust me in?’

  ‘Two hours past midnight’

  ‘It shall at least be set down to you for a courtesy,’ said Lessingham, ‘that at this time of night you are gotten up out of your bed to make me amends. Pray you unlock.’ He held out his right wrist, chained: ‘’Tis a kind of gewgaw I ne’er put on till now and not greatly to my liking.’

  ‘There’s time to talk on that,’ said the Vicar. ‘I’ll first hear if there be any good face you can put on this ill trick you have played me.’

  Lessingham’s eye flashed. He held out his wrist, as might a queen to her tiring-woman. ‘An ill trick you,’ he said, ‘have played me! By heavens, you shall unlock me first, cousin. We’ll talk outside.’

  The Vicar paused and there was a cloud in his face. ‘You were a more persuasive pleader for your safety but now, cousin, when you lay sleeping. Be advised, for I have cause against you enough and beyond enough; and be sure you satisfy me. For except you do, be certain you shall never go from this place alive.’

  ‘Indeed then you might a spared your sleep and mine,’ said Lessingham then, shaking his cloak up as if to lie down again. The Vicar began pacing to and fro like a wolf. ‘’Tis simplicity or mere impudent malice to say I did betray you; and this an insolency past forgiveness, to use me so. So touching this concordat not a word will I say till I am loosed, and ’pon no conditions neither.’

  The Vicar stopped and stood for a minute. Then he gave a short laugh. ‘Let me remember you,’ he said in a clear soft voice, glaring in Lessingham’s face by the light of the lantern, ‘of Prince Valero, him that betrayed Argyanna a few years since to them of Ulba and led that revolt against me. The Gods delivered him into my hand. Know you the manner of his end, cousin? No: for none knew it but only I and my four deaf mutes you wot of, that were here at the doing on’t, and I have told no man of it until now. Do you see that hook in the ceiling?’ and he swung the light to show it. ‘I’ll not weary you with particulars, cousin. I fear ’twas not without some note and touch of cruelty. Such a pretty toying wit had I. But we’ve washed the flagstones since.

  ‘Well?’ he said, after a silence.

  ‘Well,’ said Lessingham, and from now he held the Vicar constantly with his steel-cold eye: ‘I have listened to your story. Your manner of telling of it does you credit: not so greatly the substance of it.’

  ‘Be you ware,’ said the Vicar with a loud sudden violence, and give him an ill look. ‘The case you are in, this place you lie in, which is my hidden slaying-place in Laimak: think on’t. And I can make that laughing face of yours turn serious.’

  ‘I laugh not,’ replied he. ‘’Tis not a laughing matter.’ They looked one another in the eye without speaking. In that game too Lessingham outstayed the Vicar.

  Then Lessingham said: ‘Do not mistake me. If I fear you not, I am not so foolish as hold you for a man not worthy to be feared. But to threaten me with death, ’tis as the little boy that sat on a bough and would cut away from the tree the bough he sat on. I think you have more wit than do that.’

  In a deadly stillness, with feet planted wide apart, the Vicar stood like a colossus looking down upon him. The Vicars’ own face was now in shadow, so that when, after a long time, Lessingham spoke to him again, it was as a man might speak to an impending great darkness. ‘I know it is a hard choice for you, cousin. Upon this side, you have no true friend in the world but me; lose me, and you stand alone amidst a world of enemies, your back bare. And yet, against this, you have done me a gross injury, and you know me for a man who, albeit I have looked upon this world for but half your span of years, have yet slain near as many men upon matter of honour alone, in single combats, as yourself have slain whether by murder or what not. I have slain a dozen, I think, in these eight years, since I was of years seventeen, not to reckon scores I have slain in battle. So, and to judge me by yourself, you must see great danger in it to release me. A hard choice. As if you must run hazard either way to lose me. And yet, my way you stand some chance of keeping me: your way, none.’

  There was a pause when he ended. Then said the Vicar with his face yet in darkness, ‘You are a strange man. Doth not death then terrify you?’

  Lessingham answered, ‘The horror and ugsomeness of death is worse than death itself.’

  The Vicar said, ‘Is it one to you: live or die? Do you not care?”

  ‘O yes,’ said Lessingham. ‘I care. But this choice, cousin, is in the hand of fate now: for you even as for me. And for my part, if the fall of the dice mean death: well, it was ever my way to make the best of things.’

  With the cadence of his voice falling away to silence, it was as if, in that quiet charnel under Laimak that knew not night nor day, scales were held and swung doubtful, now this way now that. Then the Vicar slowly, as if upon some resolution that came near to crumbling as he embraced it, turned to the door. Behind him his shadow as he went rushed up and stopped like a winged darkness shedding obscurity from wall and ceiling over half the chamber. Then he was gone, and the door locked, and all darkness; and in that darkness Lessingham saw Pyewacket’s eyes, like two coals burning. He reached out a hand to her, open, palm downwards. He could not see her, save those eyes, but he felt her sniff cautiously and then touch the back of his hand lightly with her cold nose.

  The Vicar was mid-part up the stairs when he missed her. He called her by name: then stood listening. Cursing in his beard, he was about turning back; but after a few steps down, halted again, swinging his keys. Then, very slowly, he resumed his mounting of the stairs.

  Betimes in the morning the Vicar let fetch out Amaury from the place where he had been clapped up: gave him in charge to Gabriel and those six close men: made these wait in the ante-chamber: gave Amaury, in private audience, keys for Lessingham’s prison by the secret door: walked the room a dozen turns, eyes still bent upon the floor, then said: ‘You are free, lieutenant. Go to your master: conduct’s provided, Gabriel and them: strike off his chains: here’s keys, enlarge him. Tell him I’m sorry: a jest: went too far: he and I am friends, understand each other: therefore let us meet as if this ne’er had befallen. He and I be two proud men, tell him. I’ve took a long step to meet him: ’tis for him make it easy for me now.’

  Amaury said with flaming face, ‘I humbly thank your highness. I am a blunt soldier, and there is this to be said: my lord is your highness’ true and noble friend. And strangely so. And a thousand times better than you deserve.’

  ‘Have you got it by rote? Say it over,’ said the Vicar, not hearing, or choosing not to be thought to have heard, that bearding boldness. Amaury said over his message, word by word, while the Vicar paced the room. ‘Away then.’

  Lessingham woke and came forth into the air and day with as much of careless equanimity as a man might carry who rises from the accustomed bed he has slept upon, night by night, for ten years in peace. Only there sat in his eyes a private sunbeamed look, as if he smiled in himself to see, like a sculptor, the thing shape itself as he had meant and imagined it. Amaury sat with him in his chamber while he bathed and donned clean linen. ‘Praise be to the blessed Gods,’ he said, leaping from the bath where he had rinsed away the suds, ‘for curling of my hair by nature: not as yonder paraquitos, must spend an hour a day with barbers to do’t by art.’ His skin, save where the weather had tanned or the black hair shadowed it, was white like ivory. Then, when he w
as well scrubbed dry with towels: ‘Boy! When, with orange-flower water for my beard! Foh! I smell her yet.’ He gave his boy kirtle, hose, ruff: all the upper clothing he had worn in prison: bade him burn it.

  Amaury spoke. ‘What o’clock do you mean to set forward?’

  ‘Set forward?’

  ‘Leave this place,’ said Amaury: ‘out of his fingers: out of Rerek?’

  ‘Not for some weeks yet. There’s a mort of work I must first set in hand the conduct of.’

  Amaury sprang up, and began to walk the room. ‘You are preserved this time beyond natural reason. If a man take a snake or serpent into his handling – O he spoke true when he said you do understand each other. And there’s the despair on’t: and your eyes were not open to your danger, there were hope yet, by opening of ’em, to save you from it. But you do know your danger, most clearly, most perfectly and circumspectly: yet rejoice in it, and laugh at it.’

  ‘Well, that is true,’ said Lessingham, giving a touch to his ruff. ‘What shall’s do then?’

  The heat of the summer noonday stood over Laimak when Lessingham at length came, with Amaury and two or three of his gentlemen attending him, to meet the Vicar on that long straight paven walk that runs, shaded at that hour by the tennis-court wall, along the battlements above the north face. Their folk, of either side, hung back a little, marking, these in the one, those in the other, their looks as each faced each: the Vicar a little put out of his countenance, Lessingham, under a generous noble courtesy, a little amused. After a while Lessingham held out his hand, and they shook hands without speaking. ‘Give us leave,’ said the Vicar and took him apart.

  When they had measured a few paces in silence, ‘I hope you slept well,’ said Lessingham. ‘It was prettily done to leave me your bitch for company.’

  ‘What’s this?’ said the Vicar. ‘The Devil damn me! I had clean forgot her.’

  ‘I had thought,’ said Lessingham, ‘you were hard put to it to make up your mind, and conceited you might cast her for the part of Fate. A chained man: ’twas a nice poising of the chances. I admired it. And you feed ’em on man’s flesh now and then I think? Of ill-doers and such like.’

  ‘I swear to you, cousin, you do me wrong. By all the eternal Gods in heaven, I swear I had forgot her. But let’s not talk on this—’

  ‘Waste not a thought upon’t. I ne’er slept better. Being of that sort, may be ’twas that made her take to me:

  O we curl’d-haird men

  Are still most kind to women.

  ‘Or how think you?’

  ‘Cousin,’ said the Vicar: ‘this concordat.’ Here he took him by the arm. ‘I would know the whole carriage on’t. I question not there’s good in’t, for, by my soul, you have ever done me good: but let me die bursten if I understand the good of this.’

  ‘An answer so fairly besought,’ said Lessingham, ‘should be fairly given. But first I would have you, as a politic prince who will not lay your foundations in the dirt but upon the archaean crust, refer the whole estate you are in to your highness’ deliberate overviewing again. This kingdom, whiles the old King lived, was set in its seat unshakable: terrible to kings and peoples upon lengths of seas and shores. A main cause was, ’twas well knit: at one unto itself. True, at the last you had been already straining at the leash in new-conquered Rerek: unwisely, to my thinking, as I plainly told you. Then the King died, and that changed all: a hard-handed young fool in the saddle ’stead of a great wise man: and that shook all from withinwards. You had experiment then, cousin, of my mind towards you: did not I stand for you at Mornagay with my eight hundred horse, as a boy with a stick ’gainst a pack of wolves? Had you miscarried I mean; and that was not past likelihood. Then you took a means that both rid you of present danger and, ’cause men shrewdly guessed it, weakened you, ’cause it blasted your reputation (and a sickly browned flower was that already) – and then immediately, by direct bounty of Heaven, was all given into your lap by handfuls: named in the testament Lord Protector and Regent for the young Queen’s minority. Why, ’tis all in your hand, cousin, and you will but use it. The realm is in your hand, like a sword; but all in pieces. And first is to weld the slivers: make it a sword again, like as King Mezentius had: then strip it out against Akkama, or what other heads were best plucked off that durst threaten you.’

  They walked slowly, step with step, the Vicar with a brooding look, silent. Lessingham hummed under his breath a lilting southern song. When they came to the corner against the wall of the round north-western tower the Vicar stopped and, resting his elbows on the battlement, stood looking over the landscape where all colour was burnt to ashes under the sunlight. Near at hand, to the northward, a little crag rose solitary, a mimic Laimak, may be fifty feet above the marsh; and on its highest rock sat a falcon-gentle all alone, turning her head sharply every now and then to look this way and that. Once and again she took a short flight, and small birds mobbed her. And now she sat again on her rock, hunched, with a discontented look, glancing about this way and that. The Vicar watched her in his meditation, spitting at whiles thoughtfully over the parapet. ‘Remember, I have taught ’em,’ said Lessingham, ‘first in Zayana, and now with sharp swords upon the Zenner, there’s a higher here to o’ersway them if need be. Next is to reclaim ’em, call ’em to heel, be kind to ’em. By this, eased of your present fears lest they of your own house shall pluck the chair from under you, you may frown upon the world secure.’

  After a while the Vicar stood up and began to walk again. Lessingham walked beside him.

  Lessingham said: ‘Once you have the main picture, the points of my concordat are as easily seen as we can discern flies in a milkpot. I know this Duke, cousin, as you do not. He is proud and violent: will stick at no extremity if you drive him and hold him at bay. But he is given to laziness: loveth best his curious great splendours, his women, voluptuousness, and other maddish toys, delicate gardens where he doth paint and meditate. And he is an honourable man, will hold firmly by a just peace; and this peace is just.’

  ‘Will not she hound him on to some foul turn against me, that woman of his?’

  ‘What woman?’ said Lessingham.

  ‘Why, is’t not the Chancellor’s sister? Zayana loveth her as his life, they say: ’can wind him to her turn, I’m told.’

  ‘Again,’ said Lessingham, not to follow this vein, ‘’tis weapons in your hand to a won Jeronimy, Beroald and Roder to your allegiance. The point of law hath stuck, I know, in the Chancellor’s gullet since the testament was first made known: by this largesse of amnesty you purchase much secureness there.’

  ‘Ay, but ’twas put in ’pon urgency of Zayana: he’ll get the thanks for it when he shows it them, not I. And why needs he your warranty, cousin, as if you should compel me to abide by it? By Satan’s ear-feathers! There’s neither you nor any man on earth shall so compel me.’

  ‘Compel’s not in it,’ answered he. ‘He knows I am in your counsels and that you would listen to me: no more. Another great good: these vexations in north Rerek should go off the boil now, when he hath called off Ercles and Aramond from that business. Brief, we are not presently strong enough to hold down by force no more than Outer Meszria, and that but with his good will. By so much the more had it been folly to a carried the war south after this victory to Southern Meszria and Zayana.’

  They walked the whole length of the parapet in silence, then the Vicar stopped and took Lessingham by both arms above the elbow. ‘Cousin,’ he said, and there sparkled in his eyes a most strange and unwonted kindness:

  ‘That Friend a Great mans ruine strongely checks,

  Who railes into his beliefe, all his defects.

  ‘You have saved me, very matter indeed. By God, your behaviour hath not deserved such doggish dealing. Ask your reward: will you be Warden of the March of Ulba? I’d told Mandricard he should have it: ’tis yours. Or will you have Megra? What you will: you shall have it.’

  Lessingham smiled at him with that measure of admiration, cont
ented and undeluded, that is in a skilled skipper’s eye when he marks, on a blue and sunny sea, the white laughter of breakers above a hidden skerry. ‘A noble offer,’ he said, ‘and fitting in so great a prince. But I will not be a lord of land, cousin. Like those birds Mamuques, that fly upon wingless wings and the air only feeds them, such am I, I think: a storm-bird, and to no place will I be tied, but live by my sword. But, for such as I am I will take this good offer you have made me; and two things I will choose: one a great matter, and one little.’

  ‘Good. The great one?’

  ‘This it is,’ said Lessingham: ‘that wheresoever I may be within the realm I bear style and dignity of Captain-General of the Queen, having at my obedience, under your sovereignty as Lord Protector, all armed levies in her behalf whether by land or sea.’

  The Vicar blew out with his lips.

  Lessingham said, ‘You see I can open my mouth wide.’

  ‘Ay,’ said the Vicar, after a minute. ‘But I will fill it. Today there’s no such office, save I suppose it vesteth in me by assumption, flowing from my powers vicarial. I cannot tell where I should better employ it than on you. Conceive it done. The next?’

  ‘Thanks, noble cousin,’ said Lessingham. ‘After so high a thing, ’tis almost churlish ask you for more. Yet this goes with it. I wish your highness will, by decree general throughout your realm of Rerek, proclaim, as for my body, like dispensation and immunity as for your own particular. By this must all attempts ’gainst me, were they by your very commandment, carry from this time forth like guilt as attempts ’gainst you and your throne and state do carry: and like punishment.’

  The Vicar gave a scoffing laugh. ‘Come, you would be witty now.’

  ‘I was never in plainer earnest,’ said Lessingham.