by E R Eddison
‘To shine as stars into everlastingness,’ said that hamadryad princess, still looking in the fire.
For a few minutes none spoke, none stirred, save only for Campaspe’s playing her little game. Lessingham, upon the stairs, noted how the learned doctor, as old men will, was fallen asleep where he sat. Campaspe, noting it too, softly swept up her cards. She stood for a moment looking at him so sleeping, then on tiptoe came and bent over him and, very prettily and sweetly, kissed his forehead. Anthea, turning in her sleep, put up a hand and touched his face. Lessingham very quietly came down the stairs behind them and so from the stair-foot to the door. Only Zenianthe, sitting quite still, turned her head to watch him as he passed.
Lessingham went out and shut the door behind him and stood alone with that garden and the summer night. Under stars of June he stood now, in an awareness like to that which once before he had known, upon that night of feasting in her Rialmar: as then before the pavane, a hardening of sensual reality and a blowing away of dreams. Only no hardness was in this lily-scented night: only some perfection; wherein house and slumbering garden and starry sky and the bower of radiance south-eastward where the moon, unseen, was barely risen behind Zenianthe’s oak-woods, seemed now to flower into a beauty given them before all everlastingness. Slowly between sleeping flower-beds he walked to the eastern end of that garden and stood watching the top leaves of the oak-trees fill with the moon-rise. In the peace of it he remembered him of someone, not Campaspe, that had sat so a-nights upon heels before the fire, playing and talking and listening all at once: a strange accomplishment he thought now, and had thought so then: but as to speak of when, or who, the gentle night, as if it knew well but would not say the answer, held its peace in a slumbrousness of moon-dimmed stars.
He looked again at her windows. There, which had a minute before been empty, and no light within, he beheld her upon the balcony: facing the moon. From his place in the deep shade of a yew-tree, he watched her: Antiope: all in white. It was as if she stood upon no firm substance but on some water-wave, the most adored beauty that ever struck amazement in the world. Almost in disbelief, as if night had spoken, he heard her speak: ‘You, my lord? Standing there?’
Slowly he came towards her. As spread out upon some deepening of the stillness and the blessedness, the long churr of a nightjar sounded near. It ended, purring down like the distant winding of a clock, into silence. ‘I could not sleep,’ he answered, under her window.
‘Nor I,’ said she. All being seemed now to draw to her, as lode-stones to the lode-star, or to a whirlpool’s placid centre the waters which swirl round it and their floating freight, both of the quick and of the dead.
‘Nor you?’ said Lessingham. ‘What is here, to inquiet your mind?’
Her answer came as upon a catch in her breath: ‘Deep waters, I think.’
The wistaria blossoms hung like heavy grape-bunches below her balcony: the limbs of the tree, lapped about and crushed in the grip of their own younger growths, showed gnarled and tortuous under the moon. ‘I think,’ Lessingham said, ‘I am broken with the fall of such as climb too high.’
Again the nightjar trilled. Upon his left, sudden and silent it slipped from the branch where it had lain. He felt it circle about his head: heard the strange wild cry, Pht! Pht! saw it swoop and circle, its body upright as it flew, its wings, as it flew, uplifted like a great moth’s that alights or like a bat’s: heard the clap of its wings: heard Antiope’s voice as in a dream, or as the summer night stirring in the wistaria’s pendent blooms: ‘There is a remedy: to climb higher.’
He took one step and stood quivering like a dagger struck into a table. ‘Ha!’ he said. ‘If master but now, yet now am I water-weak.’ Then in a sudden alteration, ‘Tempt me not, madonna. In action I was ever a badger: where I do bite I will make my teeth meet.’
He heard her say, as a star should lean to the sea, ‘What boots it me to be Queen? O think too,’ her voice faded: ‘– howsoever they may seem chanceful – are yet by God.’
The swinging heavy blossoms, brushing his face and beard, blinded him as he came up. Standing before her in that balcony, looking down into her eyes that were unreadable in the warm and star-inwoven darkness, ‘Who are you?’ he said in a breath without voice. ‘Sometimes I hardly know,’ she said, leaning back as if in a giddiness against the window-frame, her hands holding her breast. ‘Except there was a word,’ she said, ‘written inside a ring, HMETEPA – ’Las,’ she said, ‘I remembered; but it is gone.’
‘And I remember,’ said Lessingham. ‘To say, ours: you, ours: of all things, ours: of you and me, beyond all chanceableness of fortune.’ Sometimes so in deep summer will a sudden air from a lime-tree in flower lift the false changing curtain, and show again, for a brief moment, in unalterable present, some mountain top, some lamp-lighted porch, some lakeside mooring-place, some love-bed, where time, transubstantiate, towers to the eternities. ‘’Tis gone!’ he said. ‘But you’ – her body in his arms was as the little crimple-petalled early-flowering iris that a rough breath can crush. He felt her hands behind his head: heard her say, in breaks, into his very lips, ‘I cannot give you myself: I think I have no self. I can give you All.’
Through the wide-flung casements of Antiope’s bedchamber in that wayside house came the golden-sandalled dawn: the sky gold, and without cloud, and the sun more golden than gold in the midst of it. The Queen said, at Lessingham’s side, ‘Thanks, my lord, I’ll take my reins again.’ As she gathered them, the thud of galloping hooves came down the whinflower-scented air behind them, and Tyarchus and Zenianthe, knee to knee, with Amaury thundering close upon their heels, swept round the turn from behind the screening birch-woods.
They were nearing Rialmar when Lessingham found means of speaking with her in private. It had been late afternoon when they turned homewards, and now, the autumn day closing in early, the sun was setting. On their right, two-horned Rialmar was lifted up dark and unassaultable against clouds that drifted down the west. The air was full of the crying of sea-mews. Southward, the wash of the sea answered from bay to bay. The blue smoke of houses and their twinking lamps showed about Rialmar town. Far as the eye could see from the eastern highlands round to Rialmar, the clouds were split level with the horizon. The dark lower layer was topped as if with breaking waves of a slate-dark purple, and in the split the sky showed pink, golden, crimson, apple-green. Above the clouds, a rosy flush thrilled the air of the western heavens, even to the zenith, where the overarching beginnings of night mixed it with dusk. The turf beneath them as they rode was a dull grey green: the whinbushes and thornbushes black and blurred. Lessingham looked at the Queen where she rode beside him: the cast of her side-bended eye: the side of her face, Greek, grave, unconscious of its own beautifulness. He said: ‘I had a dream.’
But she, with a kind of daybreak in her eyes very soberly looking into his: ‘I am not learned to understand these matters; but ’twas not dreaming,’ she said. ‘I was there, my friend.’
XVI
THE VICAR AND BARGANAX
‘THE DIVELLS QUILTED ANVELL’ • APPREHENSIONS IN KESSAREY • STORMS IN THE AIR • A FIEF FOR COUNT MANDRICARD • ‘BULL TREAD PANTHER’.
THE Vicar meanwhile, sitting in his closet alone with his cursed dogs, upon the very morrow of Lessingham’s setting out for Rialmar, sent for Gabriel Flores. ‘Take ink and pen: write.’ Word by word he gave it him, and, when it was written, scanned the letters; signed them: certified them with his seal vicarial. The same hour, he took a secret person, commanding him go with these to the High Admiral, that lay with the fleet in Peraz Firth, and to the Chancellor in Zayana. Another he sent to Kutarmish, to Earl Roder. That done, he summoned Count Mandricard from Argyanna, and Daiman, Thrasiline, and Rossilion from outparts of Rerek, and had with them Arcastus besides, that was already at hand. With these men, all five being creatures and instruments of his, and with Gabriel, he for a full day till supper-time held talk in secret, showing them of his mind so much as he de
emed convenient.
Now came answers again from those three great commissionaries, not concerted, for they had had no time to confer together upon them, yet as showing one common mind; which, plainly stripped, was readiness indeed to meet with him, but not as cattle with the lion in the lion’s lair: not in Owldale. Upon this, having considered with himself awhile, he despatched more letters, and first to Jeronimy in quality of regent of Outer Meszria, to the intent that he did, as earnest of his friendship and as not unfitting to the Admiral’s charge and estate, give over and assign to him Kessarey castle and the township and lands thereof and all the roadstead harbour and sea-works of Kessarey, which, albeit within the March of Ulba, yet by its situation threw far into Meszria the shadow of its power; and now there let their conference be, in Kessarey instead of Owldale. And, for example of friendship, he would thither come with no more but a bodyguard; and upon such open and undoubtable terms of faith let them take counsel for the realm’s good and their own.
To Kessarey then, about middle August, came these four: Beroald, Jeronimy, and Roder, with the Vicar. There was nought given out, that folk might have known what manner of fowl were hatched in these layings of heads together. The Chancellor, after a day or two, betook him home to Zayana: the Earl to Kutarmish: the Admiral settled him down in Kessarey with the fleet, and had good strength of men both for land and sea. They parted all with manifestations of affiance and regard, the Vicar proceeding now upon a progress through the March and Outer Meszria to take oaths of allegiance from towns and strongholds in those parts subject to the regent Jeronimy, like as he had taken them from the regent’s self in Kessarey, for the acknowledging and receiving him as Vicar and Lord Protector, and owner of their fealty in peace and war. It went not unremarked that, whereas in the great King’s day had forms and salutations upon like occasion been as unto the King’s highness, and if through viceroys, commissionaries, or other, then but through them as middlers, and so expressed; yet now in this progress was all taken by the Vicar in person as unto himself, without all mention made of the Queen, principal and sovereign and fount of his authority. Which, furnishing with mischief such as will still be tale-bearers in matter capable of reward, came, upon such tongues, to the regent’s ear in Kessarey. To such kind of talk Jeronimy listened open-eared but close-mouthed.
The Vicar, returning now to Laimak, caused Gabriel to write him a letter to Duke Barganax as sweetly and amiably as could be devised. To this, after not many days of waiting, the Duke answered as pleasantly again, excusing himself from bidding the Vicar to guest with him in Zayana (which, had it been offered, the Vicar would, for jealousy of his own safety, have upon no conditions been minded to accept), and proposing instead a meeting in the Salimat. There, being that it was the border betwixt Outer and South Meszria, he would about October ceremonially receive the Vicar and do homage to him, as vicegerent of the Queen, for the regency of South Meszria, by the Concordat of Ilkis upon such terms of suzerainty conferred upon the Duke.
Now autumn wore, and all quiet.
In the first days of November the Chancellor came north again. Upon an afternoon he with the Admiral walked the poop of the Admiral’s ship royal, at anchor in Kessarey haven. It was a tempestuous and cloudy sky, with gulls hanging in the wind, and circling intercrossing flights of sea-swallows, and sometimes the passing of a line of gannets, strong-winged, keeping their line like ships, high through that windy grey tumult of wintry weather which swept in eastwards from the high seas without. Elbow to elbow those two lords paced, cloaked and hatted against the weather and in great sea-boots, keeping to the lee side for the wind sake and spindrift.
‘In Owldale,’ said the Admiral: ‘Owldale. I said, you did not carry your friendship so far as accept that inviting to go to him in Owldale.’
‘No. And yet that showed a certain nobility, to trust us here in Kessarey.’
‘The measure of his trust is but the measure of his contempt.’
‘For my part,’ said Beroald, ‘I will trust no man these days. Saving present company.’
They took another turn or two. Then said the Admiral: ‘Truth is, I have it by kind to see clear and feel my power in a manner thus, with the tar smelling in my nostrils and with good oak planks and salt water a-wash beneath my feet; never so ashore. Remember,’ he said, after a pause, ‘’tis alway stab i’ the dark with him. Attempt ’gainst Ercles in September, miscarried but by accident, even as that ’gainst yourself last spring in Zayana.’
Beroald said, ‘O I take my precautions.’
Jeronimy shot a sidelong look at him. ‘And he is a layer of baits.’
‘Well?’
‘Well: Sail Aninma.’
The Chancellor’s lip curled. ‘So your lordship knew of that? It was propounded to me upon terms of secrecy, and indeed I urged him keep it so. Yet in a ten days’ time I found my lady sister knew it, and had inspired the Duke and his mind incensed to have made it matter of open quarrel with the Vicar. But he was not to be moved: laughed at it: said I would never take it.’
‘And I doubt said rightly so?’
‘Such horses,’ said the Chancellor, ‘are not to be looked too near in the mouth.’
‘Perilous counsel. Consider Kessarey: it is good, but I am not deceived. My lord, these things are writ big, in a manner, for our instruction: that he, yes, as long since as August, I say, hath said in his heart, “’Tis time now: all lets removed: now, in the happy absence of this Lessingham, divide et impera.” Why, the action walketh apparent, smelleth so rank a perfume of supposed seduction the gorge clean sickens at it: holding out of himself to me with such crude blandishments as disinterested noble guardian of her highness’ rights: blackening the Duke to me with such palpable lies and wrestings of plain honest – Faugh!’ he said, checking in his walk; ‘design is, gull and flatter us to the top of our bent: crush the Duke: that done, crush us. The wind setteth where last May it set; and ’tis that voyage over again: same lee shore, same weather, same tide-race ’twixt skerry and skerry. With the Duke of our side, and with right of our side – well; but, fail either condition – good night! My lord Chancellor, forget not that.’
‘I forget nothing,’ said Beroald. ‘I know the Duke. More, know my sister.’
‘And did your lordship foresee,’ said the Admiral, ‘upon that knowledge (as, by my soul, I think few else did), that patience and loyalty whereby he did last month do homage, meeting of him in the Salimat? ’Fore all the folk assembled acknowledging him and swearing fealty? Even to taking in that ceremony the Vicar’s horse by the rein and humbly, while that other sat in the saddle puffed in his insolence, leading it north to south over the beck in token of submission? Did not that argue, in this loose age, a wonderful exampleless example of noble truth and word-keeping? But I say ’tis the blood determines it. Royal blood: and that will out.’
‘It was the act,’ answered the Lord Beroald, ‘of a disciplined and law-abiding person.’
‘Ha, and, for law-abiding, what of those late proceedings in my own vicariate, a month or so ere that? and of the Queen’s highness no more mention made than had the vile murderer, by will deputed overseer of our estate, been crowned King and all?’
‘That too,’ said the Chancellor, ‘is not to be forgot.’
‘I wish,’ the Admiral said, after a silence, ‘your lordship would, in a manner, throw back flat this offer of Sail Aninma: might give him pause, where all till now hath swum too easy.’
‘It handsomely becomes you, my lord Admiral, with Kessarey and the half of Meszria into your hand, to lesson me in self-sacrifice.’
‘O take me not so thwart. You do know I mean not thus. More power to your hand, the better for us all. But this, a fief in South Meszria: ’tis stamp on Barganax’s sore toe: ’tis wrongful, too, clean ’gainst the Concordat—’
‘Not so fast,’ said the Chancellor. ‘Hath been matter of legal controversy these three generations and more, of the right status of Sail Aninma, whether of Meszria, whether a demesne
apart and of itself. Do me so much right as not imagine I’d trespass one iota beyond the law.’
‘Then let only policy determine, and effect upon the Duke, already tried near patience’ ending. You have your own man holdeth Argyanna as governor, and that is key of south Rerek, like as Kutarmish is and Kessarey of the Meszrian Marches. So, and with Roder in Kutarmish, and me in Kessarey – albeit Roder, I am sometimes apt to doubt, useth a little too much security in feeding on these morsels from the table of Laimak—’
‘My good lord Admiral,’ said the Chancellor, ‘I do fear your eye so vigilant bent on Laimak importeth your too much negligence toward Zayana.’
They came to a stand. The High Admiral, leaning with his elbows on the bulwark, clasping and unclasping his hands, gazed landwards. ‘Your lordship is known,’ he said, ‘for the flower of legists in these days. And I applaud your politics. But remember, my lord, neither to you is it given to see all and err never.’
The tide was running. Like white horses ridden at barriers, now here now there all the sea-length of the mole, breakers plunged and tossed mast-high in the wind manes of spray. The castle, built of mighty blocks of sandstone mottled with lichen and sea-scurf, stood bare and square upon the seaward point of the low long shattered headland from which the mole, built of the like stone, takes a sweep, first west and then south-about to the line of skerries, giving so a sea-mile and more of sheltered water with good anchorage and safe riding in all weathers. The ships of the fleet, a score of them besides lesser craft and a few great carracks laden with costly treasure of merchandise, lay outward from the Admiral’s that was anchored scarce three hundred paces from the land. And now those two lords, looking shorewards so through that flurry of wind, saw where an eight-oarer put out from the quay under the seawall of the castle and began to row towards them. Swiftly she rowed, as upon some urgency. ‘Why,’ said Jeronimy at length, as she drew near, ‘’tis his grace’s friend, young Barrian;’ and made ready to welcome him aboard.
