The Zimiamvia Trilogy

by E R Eddison

  Then ’tis a saucy claim, deserveth no answer.’

  Lessingham shrugged his shoulders. ‘Be not sudden, cousin, the matter is of weight. Indeed, it is no more than need.’

  ‘I wonder you will not ask me deliver up to you Gabriel and those six men: ’twere scarcely more monstrous.’

  ‘That were one way,’ said Lessingham, ‘But I am reasonable. That were to shake your authority: a thing you could never grant. But this, easily. And this is as good for me.’

  ‘Dear Gods!’ The Vicar laughed in his anger. ‘If you but heard yourself speaking with my ears! I’ll tell you, cousin, you are like a kept woman: and the cost, I ’gin to think, beyond the enjoyment. Sink away to hell then, for this is a thing you could not in your senses hope for.’

  The falcon was perched still on the crag, alone and unmerry. At an instant suddenly out of the sky there swept down at her a little unknown, as if she were his prey: barely avoided her as he stooped, swept up again, and stooped again. She, with wings half lifted and head lowered snakelike betwixt her shoulders, faced with sudden beak each teasing stoop of his; and now she took wing, and in ever widening spirals they rose skywards above Laimak, racing for height. Lessingham, imperturbable with folded arms, watched that play. The Vicar, following his eye, noted it too. And now as they swung wide apart, the tassel-gentle from a momentary vantage in height stooped at her in mid-air, avoiding her by inches as he dived past, while she in the same instant turned on her back to face his onset, scrabbling in air at him with her pounces and threatening with open beak. Twice and thrice they played over this battle in the sky: then he fled high in air eastward, she pursuing, till they were lost to sight.

  ‘I have strained a note above Ela for a device,’ said Lessingham upon an unruffled easy speech, ‘but you can scarce expect me, for safety of my person, be content with less than this. I would not, by speaking on’t, move an evil that is well laid; yet partnership betwixt us can scarce hold if I must get a good guard to secure me with swords and so forth, whensoever I am to lodge in your house of Laimak.’

  The Vicar ground his teeth, then suddenly facing round at him, ‘I know not,’ he said, ‘why I do not go through and murder you.’

  ‘Why, there it is,’ said Lessingham. ‘Have you not this moment laid great trust and charge upon me, and will you sup up your words again? Have you not a thousand tokens of my love and simple meaning to your highness? Yet, like some girl ta’en with the green sickness, you will turn upon me: and as you are, so will you still persist. ’Tis pity. Our fortunes have bettered soonest, I think, when we have gone arm in arm.’

  She was back again, perched. And now came her mate again and stooped at her; and again they mounted and went to their sport again, high in the blue. Lessingham said, ‘I’ll go take a walk: leave you to yourself, cousin, to employ your mind upon’t.’

  The Vicar replied neither with word nor look. Left to himself, he leaned upon folded arms looking north from the battlements: his brow smooth and clear, his mouth set hard and grim, and his jowl, under the red bristly clipped growth of beard, as if carved out of the unyielding granite. As a film is drawn at whiles over the eyes of a hawk or a serpent, thought clouded his eyes. The tassel-gentle was fled away again into the eastward airt, and the falcon at length, returning from the pursuit, perched once more on her little rock. She looked about, but this time he came not back again. And now she sat hunched, alone, discontented.

  So it was in the end, that Lessingham had his way: confirmed by letters patent, under hand of the Lord Protector and sealed with the great seal, Captain-General of the Queen, with like inviolability of person and like guilt laid upon any that should raise hand or weapon or draw plot against him, as were it the Vicar’s own person in question or one of the royal blood and line of Fingiswold. With so much honour was Lessingham now entertained and princelike estate in the open eye of the world, and proclaimed so, not in Laimak only but up and down the land. And now, for certain days and weeks, he was whiles with the Vicar in Laimak, and at whiles in the March, or south beyond the Zenner, putting in order matters that were necessary for carrying out of that concordat made at Ilkis. Nor was there found any man to speak against that measure, but it was accepted of by all of them: by the High Admiral Jeronimy, and by Earl Roder, and by the Chancellor. And all they with an industrious loyalty upheld the Duke and Lessingham in the conduct of this work, in so much that, as summer wore and July was turning toward August, things were well set in order for a good peace; and that seemed like to hold, since all were contented with it. With things in such case, Lessingham came north again to Owldale, and men thought that he, that had been great before, was by all these things grown greater.

  Now the Lord Horius Parry made a feast for his cousin Lessingham in the great banquet-room in Laimak, and there were there mighty men of account from all the dales and habited lands in Rerek, and they of the Vicar’s household and his great officers, and Amaury and others that followed Lessingham. And now when the feast was part done, the Vicar upon a pretext rose from his seat and made Lessingham go with him privately out of the banquet-hall, and so up upon the roof of the keep. Here they had many a time taken counsel together: as upon the morrow of Lessingham’s coming from Mornagay, when he wrung from the Vicar the truth touching the taking off of King Styllis and undertook that embassage to Zayana. On this secret roof they walked now under stars which shone down with a mildness like sleep and with an untwinkling steadfastness through the region air that was woven in web and woof of moonlight and where no wind stirred. Only Antares, sinking to the west above the ridges of Armarick, blinked red with sometimes a sparkle of green fire. The noise of feasting floated up faint from the banquet-hall. The hooting of owls, as they went about their occasions, sounded at whiles from the wooded hillsides and spaces of the sleeping valley afar. Breathing such airs, showered down upon with such influences, flattered with such music, that the season of sleep discourses and the ensphered peace of the summer’s night, Lessingham talked with the Lord Horius Parry of men and their factions within the land and without, and of their actions and valour, and the ordering and grounding of their several estates and powers; deliberating which of these it were fit to encourage and rely upon, which were best coaxed and dallied withal, and last, which ought upon first occasion to be suddenly extinguished. After which mature deliberation they propounded to themselves this, that Lessingham should shortly go north and across the Wold to Rialmar, there to perform for a while his office of a commander, entertaining the people and assuring himself of the great men: a thing not to be done by the Vicar himself, in so much as they of those northern parts held him suspected and were not easily to be wooed to serve him faithfully or cancel that sinister opinion they had held of him. But Lessingham was not odious to them, but rather held in admiration, upon experience in late wars both by soldiers and people, for one of fair dealing, and for a man-at-arms fierce and courageous in his venturing upon and coming off from dangers.

  And now while they walked, Lessingham, debating with himself of all these things, was ware that the Vicar talked now of women, and how unfit it was they should succeed to the government of states, where need was rather of princes that should be both venerable and terrible: and so forth of women in generality: ‘In my conceit he understood it aright that said, “It is all but hogsflesh, varied by sauce.” And I think you too are of that opinion, cousin?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lessingham out of the starlight, as a man might answer a child: ‘I am of that opinion.’

  ‘And, by that, the sured man for this further purpose. Cousin, it would comfort my hand mightily could I bring this pretty ladybird and emblem of sovereignty to dwell here in Rerek. I do mistrust the folk about her in the north there. And remember, she’s of manable age: wooers, I hear tell on: that Derxis for one, newly crowned in Akkama, a sweet young swanking: in Rialmar, I have’t upon sure intelligence, this very instant. Phrut! the cat will after kind. Therefore, cousin, of this plain power I give you and make you commissio
nary: use what means you will, but bring her south to me in Laimak.’

  Lessingham studied a season and at last said: ‘In plain terms, cousin: this is not an overture of marriage?’

  ‘Footra! I ne’er dreamed on’t.’

  ‘That is well; for ’pon first bruit of that, you should incur the hatred of them all, and all our work fly again in pieces. Well, I will undertake it, if your highness will wisely give me a large discretion: for it is a thing may seem mischievous or profitable, and whether of the two we know not till I be there to try.’

  ‘Enough: you know my mind,’ said the Vicar. ‘Try how she stands affected to me, and do what you may. And now,’ he said, ‘let us go down and drink with them. Cousin, I do love you, but by my soul you have this fault: you do drink commonly but to satisfy nature. Let’s you and I this night drink ’em all speechless.’

  Lessingham said, ‘Wine measurably drunken delighteth best. But to humour you tonight, cousin, I will drink immeasurably.’

  So came they again to the feast, in the hall of the great carven faces of black obsidian-stone whose eyes flung back the lamplight; and straightway there began to be poured forth by command of the Vicar cup upon cup, and as a man quaffed it down so in an instant was his cup brimmed a-fresh, and the Vicar shouted at every while that men should swiftly drink. And now he bade the cup-bearers mix the wines, and still the cups were brimmed, and swiftlier drank they, and great noise there was of the sucking down of wines and clatter of cups and singing and laughing and loud boastings each against each. And now were the wits of the more part of them bemused and altered with so much bibbing and quaffing as night wore, so that some wept, and some sang, and some embraced here his neighbour, there a cup-bearer, and some quarrelled, and some danced; some sat speechless in their chairs; some rolled beneath the table; and some upon it. The heat and sweat and the breath of furious drinking hung betwixt tables and rafters like the night mist above a mere in autumn. It was ever that the Vicar and Lessingham set the pace, carousing down goblet after goblet. But now the high windows, all wide open for air, began to pale, and the lamps to burn out one by one; and not a man remained now able to drink or speak or stand but all lay senseless among the rushes, or in their seats, or sprawled forward on the table: all save the Vicar and Lessingham alone.

  The Vicar now dismissed the cup-bearers, and now they two fell again to their drinking, each against each, cup for cup. The Vicar’s countenance showed scarlet in the uncertain light, and his eyes puffy like an owl’s disturbed at noon; he spoke no more; his breath laboured; the sweat ran down his brow and down nose and cheeks in little runlets; his neck was bloated much beyond its common size, and of the hue of a beetroot. He drank slowlier now; Lessingham drank fair with him as before, cup against cup. All that night’s quaffings had lighted but a moderate glow beneath the bronze on Lessingham’s cheek, and his eyes were yet clear and sparkling, when the Vicar, lurching sideways and letting fall from nerveless fingers his half-drained cup, slid beneath the table and there lay like a hog, snoring and snouking with the rest.

  Two or three lamps yet burned on the walls, but with a light that weakened moment by moment before the opening dawn. Lessingham set cushions under his cousin’s head and made his way to the door, picking his steps amongst bodies thus fallen ingloriously beneath the cup-din. In the darkness of the lobby a lady stood to face him, goblet in hand, quite still, clothed all in white. ‘Morrow, my Lord Lessingham,’ she said, and drank to him. ‘So you go north, at last, to Rialmar?’

  There was a quality in her voice that swept memory like harp-strings within him: a quality like the unsheathing of claws. His eyes could not pierce the shadow more than to know her hair, which seemed to have of itself some luminosity that showed through darkness: her eyes, like a beast’s eyes lit from within: a glint of teeth. ‘What, dear mistress of the snows?’ he said, and caught her. ‘Under your servant’s lips? Ha, under your servant’s lips! And what wind blew you to Laimak?’

  ‘Fie!’ said she. ‘Will the man smother me, with a great beard? I’ll bite it off, then. Nay and indeed, my lord,’ she said, as he kissed her in the mouth, ‘there’s no such haste: I have my lodging here in the castle. And truly I’m tired, awaiting of you all night long. I was on my way to bed now.’

  He suffered her to go, upon her telling him her lodging, in the half-moon tower on the west wall, and giving him besides, from a sprig she had in her bosom, a little leaf like to that which Vandermast had given him in the boat upon Zayana mere, that month of May. ‘And it is by leaves like this,’ said she, ‘that we have freedom of all strongholds and secret places to come and go as we list and accompany with this person or that; but wherefore, and by Whose bidding, and how passing to and fro from distant places of the earth in no more time than needeth a thought to pass: these are things, dear my lord, not to be understood by such as you.’

  Lessingham came out now into the great court, with broadened breast, sniffing the air. In all the hold of Laimak none else was abroad, save here and there soldiers of the night-watch. Below the walls of the banquet-chamber he walked, and so past the guard-house and Hagsby’s Entry and the keep, and so across to the tennis-court and beyond that to the northern rampire where they had had their meeting in June. Lessingham paced the rampart with head high. Not Maddalena treading the turfy uplands in the spring of the year went with a firmer nor a lighter step. The breeze, that had sprung up with the opening of day, played about him, stirring the short thick and wavy black hair about his brow and temples.

  He stood looking north. It was a little past four o’clock, and the lovely face of heaven was lit with the first beams thrown upward from behind the Forn. The floor of the dale lay yet under the coverlet of night, but the mountains at the head of it caught the day. Lessingham said in himself: ‘His Fiorinda. What was it she said to me? “I think you will find there that which you seek. North, in Rialmar.”

  ‘Rialmar.’ A long time he stood there, staring north. Then, drawing from the bosom of his doublet the leaf of sferra cavallo: ‘And meanwhile not to neglect present gladness—’ he said in himself; and so turned, smiling with himself, towards the half-moon tower where, as she had kindly let him know, Anthea had her lodging.

  XIII

  QUEEN ANTIOPE

  ANOTHER KIND OF COUSIN • A ROYAL WOOER • MISERY OF PRINCES • HAPPY DIVERSION • THE QUEEN AND HER CAPTAIN-GENERAL • ‘—BUT LOOKT TO NEARE …’ • A KING IN WAITING • PRINCESS ZENIANTHE • USES OF FRIENDSHIP • THE HALL OF THE SEA-HORSES • QUALITIES AND CONDITIONS OF DERXIS • CAMPASPE LIFTS A CURTAIN • THE QUEEN IN PRESENCE • ANTHEA: DERXIS: THE PAVANE • VERTIGO • THE SEAHORSE STAIRCASE.

  THROUGH the wide-flung casements of the Queen’s bedchamber in the Teremnene palace in Rialmar came the fifteenth day of August, new born. Over a bowl of white roses it stepped, that stood on the windowsill with dew-drops on their petals, and so into the room, touching with pale fingers the roof-beams; the milk-white figured hangings; the bottles on the white onyx table: angelica water, attar of roses, Brentheian unguent made from the honey of Hyperborean flowers; the jewels laid out beside them; the mirrors framed in filigree work of silver and white coral; gowns and farthingales of rich taffety and chamblet and cloth of silver that lay tumbled on chairs and on the deep soft white velvet carpet; all these it touched, so that they took form, but as yet not colour. And now it touched Zenianthe’s bed, which was made crossways at the foot of the Queen’s, betwixt it and the windows; and her hair it touched, but not her eyes, for she was turned on her side away from the light, and slept on. But now the day, momently gathering strength, fluttered its mayfly wings about the Queen’s face. And now colour came: the damask warmth of sleep on her face; her hair the colour of the young moon half an hour after sunset when the pale radiance has as yet but the faintest tinge of gold. With a little comfortable assenting sleepy noise she stirred, turning on her back. The day kissed her beneath the eyelids, a morning kiss, as a child might kiss awake its sleeping sister.

&nbs
p; She threw back the clothes and leapt from the bed and, in her night-gown of fine lawn, stood in the window, looking out. Seventy feet beneath her the wall had its foundations in native rock, and the cliff, greatly undercut, fell away unseen. The drop from that window-sill was clear eight hundred feet to the sea of cloud, dusky, fluffed like carded wool, that overspread the river-valley of Revarm. North-westward, to her left where she stood, the walls and roofs swept down to Mesokerasin, where, in the dip between this horn Teremne and the lower horn Mehisbon, is the main of Rialmar town; horns which overhang the precipitous face north-westward, so that both the royal Teremnene palace and the houses and temples upon Mehisbon are held out over the valley dizzily in air. To her right, south-eastward, the blanket of mist hid the harbour and the river and the Midland Sea. Overhead, in a stainless sky, night still trailed a deeper intensity of blue westwards towards the zenith. The whole half circle of the horizon was filled with the forms, diamond-clear against the saffron of the dawn, of those mountains Hyperborean that are higher than all mountains else in the stablished earth. Upon all these things the Queen looked: beholding in them (but knew it not) her own image in a mirror. A lark singing mounted from height to height of air till it was level now with her window.

  After a little, ‘Cousin,’ she said, without turning: ‘are you awake?’

  ‘No,’ answered she. ‘Are you asleep?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Get up,’ said the Queen.

  ‘No,’ she said, and snuggled down a little more, so that the sheet was nicely arranged to cover her mouth but not her nose.

  The Queen came and stood over her. ‘We will wake her up ourselves, then,’ said she, picking up from the foot of her own bed a little white cat, very hairy, with blue eyes, and dangling it so that its paws were on the sheets above Zenianthe’s chin. ‘Now she is at our mercy. Wake up, cousin. Talk to me.’