by E R Eddison
Amid this magnificence hundreds of guests were now assembled to rejoice upon Queen Antiope’s eighteenth birthday. And as they walked and mingled, it was as the shining forth of the sun after long and heavy rain, when the beams suck up from a wet hedge of box or yew a mist that shimmers with rainbow colours, and the drops upon the leaves change, as the wind shakes them, from emerald to amethyst, from that to ruby, from ruby to liquid gold. King Derxis, surveying the scene with the look of one that has yet in his mouth the taste of a sour mixture, stood with his folk in the main hall. Some saluted him with a formal respect as they passed by; more went about some other way; none joined his company. Every while, the furrow betwixt his brows knit at the sight of some young lord of Fingiswold or some proper man among the company; but his eyes turned oftenest towards the stairs. ‘Rialmar fashions,’ he said under his breath at last. ‘I am nigh sickened of these meant discourtesies. The bitch! Am I her monkey to be led in a string? Esperveris!’ he said, aloud.
‘Humbly to your highness’ wish.’
‘Send in another messenger. Say the King of Akkama tarrieth, and ’tis not our custom to wait on women’s leisures.
‘Hold thee. Send not.’ Esperveris turned back. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’ Esperveris, bowing his obedience, had in his eyes that brightened cringing look (seen before in the little garden) of a man that has seen a sight behind the veil.
And now, turning to look towards the eastern doors, Derxis set eye for the first time that evening upon Lessingham, where he talked with old Bodenay and the Lord Romyrus, Constable in Rialmar, and some young lords about him, Orvald, Venton, and Tyarchus, and ladies besides, the Countess Heterasmene, Myrilla, daughter to the lord Admiral Jeronimy, and others. Gay and easy seemed Lessingham, and it was plain how their conversation danced to his tune and opened under his presence as flowers to a warm sun. His attire was of great richness and darkness: blacks and deep indigo blues, with figurings of silver trefoils. He wore a narrow three-double ruff, and ruffs at the wrists besides, below cuffs of silver lace. But a single jewel he wore, of the kingly order of the hippogriff, about his neck; and upon his thumb a ring in the figure of that worm Ouroboros, that eateth his own tail.
Not with the flicker of muscle nor eyelash did the countenance of Derxis uncover his mind as he, for a full minute, steadfastly regarded Lessingham across the hall. Then in that chill unruffled lady-like voice he said to Orynxis, taking his arm, ‘Behold yonder woman-server, come to ruffian it out in the company of his betters. A soldier of fortune: hireth out his sword, and body too, for trash. How call you such an one, Orynxis?’
‘So please your grace, how but shortly thus?’ answered Orynxis: ‘a male harlot.’
‘O sweet and excellent!’ said Derxis. ‘Go, tell him so, from me.’
His eyes, like pebbles, rested upon Orynxis, noting how the blood shrank, leaving the brutal face white and pappy, then rushed to it once more as under the lash of shame: noting the fumbling of irresolute fingers for the sword-hilt that was not there, for no man was admitted armed to that presence. Squaring his shoulders, Orynxis began to go, as a condemned man towards the beheading-block. The king stayed him with his hand. ‘Thou fool,’ he said, and there was a muted evil music of laughter in his voice that cut like the east wind: ‘shall I unfeather me of all my friends, aids, and helps, because you are like pilled rabbits when’t cometh to facing this bloody bully? Alquemen could eat up two such as thou: yet did not this fellow whip him? As I’ll whip this puling girl, might I but come at her i’ the happy occasion and where I would. Whip her flesh till the blood spurt.’
Almost in manner of a royal progress was Lessingham’s passage among the guests: not by his doing, for he seemed ever as a man whose thoughts and looks went outwards, not busied with his own self. But, as the lily of the compass is turned always towards the pole, so of that throng of great court-men and ladies in their summer beauty and others of worship from up and down the land, were eyes turned towards him. ‘So you live not always upon gondolas or islands?’ said a light bantering voice at his elbow. He looked down into beady eyes whose strange shy gaze captured the gaze that looked on them, allowing it no liberty to look well at the face that owned them.
‘My pleasure is my power to please my mistress
My power is my pleasure in that power.
‘Are you still so roundabout in your philosophy, my Lord Lessingham?’
‘I had thought, madam,’ said he, bowing over her small hand, gloved to above the elbow in velvet-soft brown leather that had the sharp sweet smell of summer evenings amid rush-grown sleepy waters, ‘that I had demonstrated to you that ’twas a philosophy agreeable to extreme directness of practice. May I have the honour to tread a measure with you when the music shall begin?’
‘Please you, I’ll be asked rather when that time shall come,’ she replied. ‘I know not yet what orders have gone forth for tonight. Care not, my lord: once had, you cannot lose me.’ As she spoke, the brown paw had slipped from his fingers, and she in her brown fur-trimmed gown was lost among the press, as if she had slid noiselessly into water, and no ripple left behind.
Lessingham, under a singular unseizable exhilaration of spirit, looked round for her awhile in vain, then went on his way. It was as if the bright lights of that hall burned brighter, and as if secret eyes watched from the lamps themselves, and from the hangings and from the golden chapiters of the pillars, and from the walls themselves: a thousand eyes, unseen, that watched and waited on some event. Lessingham, stroking his black beard, bethought him that he had drunk no wine: bethought him then that wine has no effects like these. For now a tranquillity possessed him, and a clarity of thought and vision; wherein, as he looked round upon all that company, he was aware of a new grandeur come upon them. Zenianthe, passing through the hall, acknowledged his salutation: it seemed to him that he beheld for the first time her beauty, of her that he had thought but a princess among princesses, but clothed now with the perfection of the ancient earth, as on the hills shepherds trample the hyacinth under foot, and the flower darkens on the ground. A change, not of the like quality yet of like measure, was come upon a hundred fair women that he now gazed on, so that they seemed like Galateas in marble quickened to a cold stately movement of life and breathing: statuesque presences of nymphs, or of persons half divine, brought back to the visitations of the common earth, and that September evening, and the young moon setting. Yet had this alteration no character of dream nor vision: it was a hardening rather of sensual solid fact, as if some breath had passed, blowing away all dissembling mists and exhalations and leaving naked the verity of things. Lessingham now, without surprise, met, levelled at him from the re-entrant corner of the southern hall to the right of the seahorse staircase, the unblinking, cat-like stare of his oread lady, Anthea. In her, as flame held in flame remains flame still, he beheld no change. Making his way towards her, he walked across that very place where Derxis and his gentlemen were standing: walked indeed through the midst of them, knowing not that he did so, nor that they in angry astonishment gave back right and left to let him pass. For they, under that alteration, were become so unremarkable that he did not, for the while, perceive their presence.
But ere, with mind a-surge now from memories of past love-sports in Ambremerine and lately in Laimak, he might come within speaking-distance of that lady, seven silver trumpets blew to a sennet, and upon the first blast was every person in that great hall stood still, and all eyes turned to the staircase. And now in a silence, under the shadowy splendours of the looped hangings and betwixt those mighty sea-horses, Queen Antiope came down the mid-stairway and, upon the last step, stood still.
The silence broke with a stir of soft music. Guests of honour were marshalled and presented before the Queen, to kiss hands upon her birthday: King Derxis first. Lessingham, from his place a little removed upon the left or eastern side, noted her face as Derxis, with a flowery ceremony, lifted her hand: her eyes caught Lessingham’s in a private interchange, too slight f
or any else to detect it, of comic intelligence and resignation.
Upon the ending of these formalities, came a dozen waiting-men and spread a little carpet of black velvet with selvage of silver a few paces forward from the foot of the stairs, and set upon it a chair of mother-of-pearl and ivory. Thither came the Queen now, still in her cloak of dull cloth of silver, gleaming to all greys, and four little boys to bear up the train behind her, and sat in that chair, and her ladies of presence took place behind her and upon either side. Derxis came and stood at her right hand. She gave him short answers, and spoke most to Zenianthe upon her left. The company now danced the sarabande; and in this had Lessingham Madam Campaspe to his partner. Derxis craved the honour to dance it with the Queen. She answered, it was custom for her to dance but in the pavane only, since that was their royal dance. Derxis asked when would the pavane begin. She answered, ‘When I shall give order for it.’ He prayed her then give order now, soon as this dance was done, and so ease his impatient longings. ‘If this can any way oblige you,’ she said, ‘’tis a simple matter to do it;’ and bade her sergeant of arms see it given forth accordingly.
As the last majestic chords of the sarabande grated, on the strings, and the dancers paused and sundered, Lessingham said to his Campaspe, ‘Dear mistress of still waters and sallows and moonshine, may we dance again? The third from this, or what, will you grant me? Or, for your warm darknesses have charms beyond these bright lights, shall’s walk then in a little garden I can find for you, where a statue of the blessed Goddess Herself stands amid water and lily-flowers?’
‘So’s there you may explore again the mysteries of divine philosophy?’ she said, laughing in his eyes. ‘As upon Ambremerine? But I’ll be asked later. Nay, I’ll not play kiss-and-begone, my lord. Nor I’ll not nurse it against you if you find other ’ployment when the time comes. For indeed,’ she said, very prim-mouthed and proper, her soft arm touching his above the elbow as she with tiny gloved fingers settled the pins in a loosening plait of her dark hair, ‘the part, as we know, is but part of the whole.’
Mistress Anthea he now claimed for his partner in the stately pavane, kissing her hand (the nails whereof he noted were polished and sharpened to claw-like points) and looking across it as he did so, from under his brows, into her yellow lynx-like eyes: beacons that he had ere now learned well to steer by, into enchanted and perilous seas wherein he had approved her to be a navigator both practised and of adventurous resource. But, ‘Madam,’ he heard a man’s voice say at his side; ‘I pray you pardon me.’ Then, ‘My Lord Lessingham, her serene highness desireth your presence.’
‘Madam,’ said Lessingham, ‘there’s a sovereignty ruleth here higher than even yours, that you must let your servant go when that biddeth. Strengthen me to my duty by saying I may find you anon?’
‘Why, here speaks a mortal truer than he knows,’ said she, and the cold classic features of her fair face were chilled yet the more for a certain disdain. ‘It must ever be an honour to me to be to your excellence – what was’t you told the learned doctor? – a “pleasurable interlude”? But indeed, tonight there are changes in the air; and, were I you, my Lord Lessingham, I would not reckon too far ahead. Not tonight, I think.’ The upright slits narrowed in her eyes that seemed to plunge into his own and read his thought there, and find there matter of entertainment. Then she laughed: then turned from him.
Lessingham, smoothing his tumbled thoughts and stifling in his mind, as he walked, his discontent and his disappointed designs, threaded his way in the wake of the Queen’s chamberlain through couples that stood forth now for the pavane, and so came before the Queen. She, at that instant rising from her pearly chair, let fall her cloak that the little pages received as it left her shoulders, and so stood in her rich and lovely dress, mistinesses of silver and rose and faintest blue, like the new morning sky in gentle summer weather; and nobly she carried about her shoulders that which, of all raiment worn by woman, is test of a noble carriage: a shawl, of blue pale gauze, sprinkled with little diamonds and edged with a fringe of rose-pink silk. The stringed instruments began now, preluding in parts. Lessingham read in her eye swift advertisement, sudden and gone as he made his obeisance, that here was somewhat he must swiftly do for her, and be ready upon the instant to note and act it. Derxis, upon her right, turned to her with proffered arm. She, as if not seeing it, looked round upon Lessingham. ‘Sir,’ said she, ‘you do here in person represent the Lord Protector, who is to me in loco parentis. In that quality pray you take place of honour in this company, and lead on for the pavane.’
Derxis, watching them go, stood rigid while a man might count ten. Amaury, chancing to pass at that moment with the Lady Myrilla on his arm, saw the look in the king’s eye, and, seeing it, felt a sudden deadly weakness catch him behind the knees. Lessingham, too, had sight of that look: the Queen was ware of a sudden stiffening of the strong arm where her own hand rested. For even as the gentle voice of that young prince if he were angry, so now in his countenance, pale as ashes, and in his eyes, was something, a tang, a menace, a half-raised mask, that even a brave man might sicken at, as if in the apprehended waiting presence of the damnablest of all Furies found in hell.
When Amaury, after a minute, had mastered his senses to look again, Derxis, and his lords with him, was gone from the hall.
Above measured beats, plucked, throbbing slow, from the strings of the bass viols, came now the melody of the pavane, like the unrolling of the pageant of dawn when vast clouds, bodied forth from the windy canopy of night, ride by in smouldering splendours; and the splendours take fire, and in the glimpses qf the sky, rain-washed, purer than dew or awakening airs upon the hill-tops, comes the opal morn; even as that, was this music of the pavane. Lessingham, treading its rhythm with the Queen’s hand in his, beheld, as a man folded ever deeper in contemplation, Anthea’s face, and after a while Campaspe’s, as they passed in the dance: the one cameo-like in its setting of sun-bright hair; the other the face of some little fieldish thing with features gathered to a strange charm, not beautiful but akin to beauty, by beady and coal-black eyes. In both faces he noted an air as if they, knowing somewhat, took a secret delicate delight both in it and in him and his unknowingness.
He looked at the Queen. On her face no such mystery sat. Only she smiled at him with her eyes. He bethought him of that Lady Fiorinda, Barganax’s lover: in no woman’s eyes save hers had he met, and now in Antiope’s, that look of friendship familiar, mere, unalloyed, unconscious, fancy-free, as of his own inward self companioning him from withoutward.
Then, while their eyes rested in that untroubled regard, as adrift together upon some surgeless sea of quiet rest, suddenly he, for the first time, was ware of that music. Like a spate roaring down from some water-spout among hills it thundered upon his inner sense, blinded him, drowned him under. Well he remembered now this music, with its deep-plucked throbbing beats, above which the melody walked singing, and the thing desirable beyond all the stars of heaven trailing in its train. He looked at Antiope as he had looked, in Ambremerine, at that night-piece, of Fiorinda with glow-worms in her hair. For a moment it was again as it then had been: her face was to him unseeable: nought save the outshowering of spears of many lights and hues of fires. A chill-cold shivering took him. But then, in memory he heard, as it had been in very presence, the lazy caress of that voice that had seemed to play with time and the world and love and change and eternity as with a toy: I think you will find there that which you seek: north, in Rialmar; and with that, as with the sudden opening of a window in heaven, he saw the Queen truly, as in that dream in Acrozayana he had first seen her, and, for a second time, when he walked like a sleep-walker onto Barganax’s swordpoint. Almost, it may be, as a God sees her, he saw her now; with eyes refined to look on the world new born. He knew her. The web of memories which, with his first coming up to Rialmar, had been torn up and scattered, was on the sudden whole again, so that, remembering, he recognized beyond peradventure too her voice: that voice
which had spoken on that May night in Mornagay, unknown, yet beyond peradventure his: his beyond all familiar things, speaking, closer than blood or sinew, out of the abysses within his mind, while, with the meditation of bubbles mounting for ever through golden wine, his thought had hung like a kestrel stilled against the wind: Be content. I have promised and I will perform.
In this climacteric moment a sudden quiet seized him: such a kind of quiet as Gods know, riding betwixt the worlds: iron knees clamped against flanks of lightning: all opposites whirling to one centre, where the extremity and sightlessness of down-eddying flight stoops to awful stillness. And in that stillness, he considered now circumstance, and this Queen of his, in the spring-time and morning of her life, grey eyes where delicate morning’s self sat ignorant and free. And, for the look in those eyes as they met his, he clamped tighter yet the grip of his knees; so that, if the Queen felt indeed the grasp tighten of the hand that held hers, the regard that she encountered in his eye was enough to have laid to sleep in her mind any half-wakening question ere it could come near to waking. And yet behind that unnoticed pressure of hand, given without his will and that he cursed himself inwardly for the giving of, was the whole weight of his iron spirit upon the reins to check the stoop of the winged courser he bestrode, and make it bear him still on the way he chose, superb and perilous between gulf and gulf.
