by E R Eddison
‘That giveth you your date, Myrilla,’ said the Countess Heterasmene, holding out her fingers above a golden bowl for a waiting-man to pour over them water of roses. ‘If my Lord Lessingham will take his lieutenant into Rerek, you will have even just ten days to become weary of your new-wedded lord.’
‘Yes, and you see in this, madam,’ said Amaury, ‘how well the fates have devised for my good. For indeed I have kept me in with a lady ere this for a month may be; and, as modest as I am, I dare think I shall not be out with my Lady Myrilla within ten days, albeit a week longer might strain things.’
‘I’ll stop your mouth: no, not as you’d have it, but thus,’ said Myrilla, sitting next him, and made a dab at it with a piece of marchpane. They laughed, and Lessingham said apart to the Queen: ‘Your highness was well advised to make this marriage up. The Admiral is a man of safe anchorage. Ties of affinity ’twixt him and Amaury will do much to settle friendships.’
‘Lieutenant,’ said the Queen, ‘we will set forward your wedding a day or two: see if two days more may do it.’
Amaury, a little outmatched and put to silence with so many eyes upon him, laughed as for courtesy sake, turned red, and stroked his mustachios. From this abashment he was delivered by a beck from Lessingham: stood up with a by-your-leave to his lady, and went to him. The Queen’s sergeant of arms was behind Lessingham’s chair: ‘—waiteth without, and craveth instant speech with your excellence to deliver it.’ ‘What’s the fool’s secret news?’ said Lessingham: ‘well, if it will not wait, go to him, Amaury. Be eye, ear, conscience, for me: bid him confide in you.’
In a few minutes Amaury came back. ‘My lord, the key fits not. Will say nought to me save that ’tis matter of fieriest urgency, and but for your particular ear. Hath letters too, as I suppose from the Vicar, but these too only to be given up into your very hand.’
‘From Laimak?’ said the Queen. ‘But shall we not make room for him?’
‘With respect no,’ Lessingham said. ‘I know the man: a domestic of my noble cousin’s much used by him upon matters of weight and exact import: one Gabriel Flores. If it please your serenity he be given supper in the buttery, I’ll despatch his business anon.’
‘See to it,’ said she. And the banquet proceeded.
When it was now mid-part done, and cups began to be borne round of Rian wine, and upon golden dishes macaroons, sallets of violet petals, and the conserve that is made of the flowers of marigolds confectioned with curious cookery, Lessingham upon leave given him by the Queen went from table and forth into a certain upper room, having sent word before to Gabriel to attend him there if he desired his conference. ‘Marked you that strange trick of the lights, cousin?’ said the Queen, ‘how, as the Captain-General walked ’twixt table and wall, the things upon the wall seemed to wave their paws as he passed, and grin as they would have eat him?’
‘It is a trick of the lights,’ answered that hamadryad Princess; ‘and your highness has seen it before.’
The Queen turned now, in merry talk as before, to the old knight marshal upon her left, and to Tyarchus and Heterasmene and old Madam Tasmar.
‘In what estate left you his highness?’ said Lessingham, taking from Gabriel the despatch and sitting in a great oak chair with a lamp beside it while he undid the seal. Gabriel stood before him with an anxious pinched look upon his face. ‘I pray you read first,’ he said.
Lessingham read it swiftly, then turned again to the beginning and read it again, slowly, as if to confer and weigh each word; then with a delicate deliberation folded it again: with a sudden movement tossed it to lie beside him on the table, and so sat motionless for a minute, leaning forward, right hand on hip, left elbow on knee, his finger-nails drumming a marching lilt on his front teeth. In the side-shining of the lamp across Lessingham’s face Gabriel could see the eyes of him in that stillness: unrevealing eyes, as if the mind behind them had sounded deep to meditate with itself. Then suddenly in those speckled grey eyes of Lessingham there danced something as if in a round of dancing girls should be glittered forth in advance some triumph.
He sat up, erect. In all his presence there dwelt that sense of abidingness, which is in the steady glitter and conflict, shining still stones and shining ever-churning ever-fleeting waves and eddies, of some watersmeet where two rivers run between green shades of oak and ash and alder, and the banks of water-worn boulders and pebbly granite shingle lie white about that murmur under the power of the sun. ‘Well, good pug,’ said he, ‘you are acquainted with all this?’
‘It is took down from his highness’ mouth, and in my own character which I think is known to your lordship.’
‘How comes it I am told nought of this before? Despatches two a month, good as clock-work, as if all’s well, sailing fair with wind and tide: then sudden this turn: the whole boat upset; Meszria lost us and the March too: says great men hath late assembled from all the land over, offering ’pon some lying rumour of her highness’ death (pray Gods forfend the omen!) the throne to her brother Barganax: Laimak close invested, and like to be smoked out of it as boys take a wasps’ nest. Who heard the like? And screameth now for me to pick him out of this pot of treacle the Devil only and he know why a hath fallen in’t. By my soul, I am well minded let him stay there.’
‘’Tis his great pride, said Gabriel. ‘Would not ask your help till need drove him to it. Fed you, it is true, with figments and fittons and leasings to keep you here in Fingiswold. You will belie your greatness if now in his sore need you will upon such pretexts refuse him.’
‘Flatter not yourself, and your master, to suppose,’ said Lessingham, ‘that I am a child, with no more means of intelligence but such advertisements as he shall think good to send me. It is true, my news is three weeks, or may be a month, behind yours: I much fear a messenger hath miscarried this last journey, fallen into Prince Ercles’ claws, like enough, under Eldir. Howe’er it be, I am six weeks away, so tell me. And forget not this, my pug,’ said he, as Gabriel cast a sheep’s eye at him, ‘if I shall take you lying to me or hiding aught, not you alone will smart for it.’
‘Well, this your excellence knows, as I judge,’ said Gabriel: ‘the bloody inrush into Kutarmish of the accursed bastard—’
‘When you speak to me of great men,’ said Lessingham, ‘speak with respect, be it friend or unfriend, and with just titles of honour. I’ll have you flogged else.’
‘The bloody inrush of his grace of Zayana,’ Gabriel said with a snarling look, the teeth gabbing out of his mouth. ‘And sweet doings there. Lord Roder ta’en and strapped in a big chair, open in the market-place, and a lad with a sword ground to a good edge: swash and away, head him like a pig, and all the sight-gazers to see it; and justly rewarded so, or why did a not hold better watch on the gates and all the treasure and goods his highness lost there? and himself too might a miscarried, intending for Kutarmish—’
‘Leave particularities. I know all this.’
‘And the Admiral gone over, heard you that (mid-January, that was), hand and glove to the Duke’s allegiance?’
‘That I knew not till I read this letter,’ said Lessingham. ‘Nor, till then, of the Chancellor: last news was he yet wavered.’
‘Your lordship’s intelligence was eight weeks stale ’pon the one, and three weeks ’pon t’other. As for my lord Chancellor, seemeth that when a had lodged himself safe in Argyanna, a sent for his learned books out of Zayana, whistled to him from all the three kingdoms a dozen doctorable men, legists, sophisters, whate’er to call ’em, and set ’em down to ferret him out colourable reasons for what, you may make no doubt, if you know a fox by’s furred tail, a was all the time resolved to do. You may wager their reasons had taken water: rotten ere they might come to shore. Howso, found him the thing he asked for. Cometh out then, smooth-tongued as a dancing-madam, with item this, item that, as pretty as you could wish: conclusion, Barganax rightly called King as in male descent, and – to make all sure, if this false report of the Queen’s decease, ha
tched up, as ’tis thought, by that Barganax’ – (‘Have I not warned you?’ said Lessingham) – ‘by that Duke, to give colour to his usurping: to make all sure, if this report be shown without contradiction false – some reputed law dug up out o’ the dust-heaps of two centuries past to say females shall not hold kingdom in Fingiswold: thus even so securing him in’s usurpation, and prefer his bastard blood before her birth noble.’
Lessingham rose from his chair: took a turn or two about the room, stroking his beard. Gabriel with little swinish eyes watched him eagerly. ‘I was hard put to it to a come through to your excellence,’ he said after a while: ‘what with their armies set down before Laimak, and then those princes in the north that this Duke feedeth with his gold to countermand his highness’ will and check his friends: do gather a power of men too. Arcastus durst not trust his nose outside Megra walls. I know not, my lord, if you have such force as that you can keep such curs in awe, to come through them?’
Lessingham stopped by the table, took up the Vicar’s letter, perused it again, laid it by, then stood looking down upon Gabriel with a disturbing smile. ‘Your chickens, my little Gabriel, are not yet hatched. And for my intents in this pass your lord hath brought himself unto, you might more easily guess their drift if the ability were given you to look men in the eye.’
‘Nay,’ said he looking and looking away: ‘your worship hath an eye to shine down basilisks. I can’t abear it.’
Lessingham laughed. It was as if from a waiting-place above the watersmeet a sea-eagle had stooped: feinted: resumed his waiting.
Gabriel thrust out his chin and came a step nearer, looking down and tracing with one finger, while he spoke, rings and crosses on the corner of the table. ‘I would your noble excellence could a seen what I have seen,’ he said: ‘these six weeks. No more o’ this lukewarmth then, I dare wager my head. Great men ’gainst great odds in my day have I seen, but never as this. The undutiful and traitorous affection borne against him by these lords, the more it drew men from him, made shrink his armies, disappoint his designs, the more would he give ’em still lill for loll. It is a world to see him. With but a thousand men, made a great stroke in the western Marches and then, when that Chancellor thought to a closed him in between Fiveways and the Zenner, marched sudden round his flank, then north-about by night, catched Melates ’pon a foray into Rerek, made him eat lamb-pie. And later, shut up in Laimak with the leavings of his army, and six times his numbers barking like midden tykes at’s doors but e’en so durst not come at grips: scarce a day but out he cometh with a sally, ever himself i’ the front to lead it: does ’em some hurt, fetch in provisions, slay some men, what not.’ He ceased, his finger still fiddling on the table’s corner. Suddenly he looked up, met Lessingham’s eye, avoided it: with a gowked movement grabbed at Lessingham’s hand and kissed it. Lessingham, as if strangely touched and ill at ease with such a homage from such a suppliant, took away his hand. ‘You shall have your answer tomorrow,’ he said; and so dismissing him returned to the banquet-chamber.
And now as Lessingham walked between table and wall, beholding the Artemisian loveliness of her where she sat sweetly talking, it was as if in the tail of his eye he saw monstrous paws brandished, and mouths of beastly great murdering teeth ready to come nigh to her.
He and she looked at one another as he resumed his seat. Amid the general talk none noted, unless it were Zenianthe and Amaury, that for a minute neither Lessingham spoke nor the Queen. Nor none guessed (unless it were these) that she and Lessingham, while they seemed for that minute but to sit silent and thoughtful at that banquet-table, had in truth retired themselves to a more privater council-chamber; where, in that which is to outward sense but the twinkling of an eye, days, weeks, and months and the changing seasons can act their slowed passage like the opening of a white rose; and thither many a time since that first night last Michaelmas had Lessingham and the Queen retired them, to pursue their noble wishes, and dwelt there in love together.
The learned doctor, standing with Zenianthe in a grassy hollow of the hill where her oak-woods upon their furthest limits face the afternoon, shaded his eyes. The sun was so far declined as barely ride clear of a fir-wood which followed the shoulder of the hill where it rose beyond the pond a stone’s throw from the doctor’s feet. Black against the sky was that wood, but upon the hither side of it and its cast shadow the edge of the green hill was in brilliant light. Below that band of brilliance, hillside and pond were as a curtain of obfuscate golden obscurity which yet, with a hand to shade the eyes of him that looked, became penetrable to sight, revealing detail and contour and varied growth of herbage, and the pond’s surface below, smooth and still. The figures of Lessingham and Antiope coming down out of the fir-trees’ shadow into the band of sunshine were outlined about their edges with a smouldering golden light, so that they seemed to burn against their background of the black wood. The sound of their talk, as it became audible, seemed the translation into music of that smouldering light and of the sun and the shadows within shadows and water and green hillside about them: not into words, for words were not yet to be distinguished; nor laughter, for they did not laugh: rather the notes and rhythms that noble voices borrow from that inner vein of laughter, which enriches the easy talk of minds so well mated that each being true to the other cannot but so be true to itself.
They were come down now. Lessingham with a nod acknowledged the doctor’s salutation, sat himself down upon an outcrop of stone, and there seemed fallen into a study. Anthea, erect, statuesque, with hands clasped behind her back, stared at the sun. Campaspe, in a soft clinging dress of watered chamblet coloured, like certain toadstools that grow on dead thorn-trees, of delicatest pale rose-enewed madder brown, and wearing a white lace hood, from beneath which dark curls of her hair escaping shadowed throat and cheek, and on the left her bosom, busied herself with finding flat stones to play ducks and drakes. Ever now and then the pond’s still surface was broken with the scuttle and skim of her stones. Swift and dainty and mouse-like were all her movements, as a little dunlin’s tripping the sky-reflecting mud-flats of tidal creeks on a sunny evening in autumn when the sea is out.
Antiope stood with the doctor and Zenianthe. Their eyes were on Lessingham, where he sat looking into the sun-path. Vandermast spoke: ‘You have debated all fully, then, and determined of somewhat?’
Antiope answered, ‘We have nothing debated, and determined all.’
‘That is better still,’ said that ancient man.
For a while, they kept silence. Vandermast saw that her gaze rested still upon Lessingham. It was as if she slept where she stood. Vandermast said, in a voice still and warm as the innermost unpierced shades of those oak-woods behind her, which outwardly the sun bathed with so lovely a splendour of golden green: ‘I have opined to your ladyship ere this, that there is but one wisdom. And but one power.’
Antiope stood listening as if for more. ‘I wonder?’ she said at last.
Vandermast said: ‘It is your own doing, this: a dress of Yours. You choose this. He chooses it with You, whether he know or not, willing it for Your sake. That loftiest of all Your roses, to pluck it for You.’
She said: ‘I know.’
Vandermast said: ‘For my part, I had sooner die with your ladyship than be made immortal with—’
She said, ‘Well? Who is my rival?’
Vandermast said, ‘You have none: not one: with Your starry beauties to make paragon.’
She waited. The Knidian mystery lay shadowy about Her lips. ‘Before the day was,’ She said.
The silence trembled.
Vandermast said: ‘Yours is not as our choosing, who out of many things choose this thing and not those others, because we judge this to be good. But Your choice maketh good: higheth the thing You choose, were it very nought before, to outsoar all praises.’
She said: ‘And yet every time I pay for it. The mere condition of being, this of he and she: did I not choose it? Should not He, as easily, had I so chosen in
stead, have created and made Me of His omnipotence self-subsisting and self-sufficing? But this I chose rather: to be but upon terms to be loved, served, made, recreated, by that which is My servant. How were love serious else?’
Vandermast said: ‘Death: a lie: fairy-babes to fright children. From within, sub specie aeternitatis, what is it but vox inanis, a vain word, nothing?’
She said: ‘And yet, how were it possible to love entirely except some living being which liveth under the terror of those wings? Else, what needed it of love?’
Vandermast said: ‘And time: what evil was there ever but time sowed it, and in time it hath root and flourisheth?’
She said: ‘And yet, without time what were there? The crack-brained ecstatic’s blindation of undiscerning eyes upon me: the music of the spheres condensed to a caterwaul. Or how else should beauty round her day? How else should he tell my lip from my eyebrow, but in time?’
Vandermast said: ‘The passing and the vanishing: what else beareth witness to the eternal?’
She said: ‘This will-o’-the-wisp of power: that other, scorning of certainties which abide safe and endure—’ Her voice vanished as, out to sea, a questing tern vanishes as the sun leaves it.
Zenianthe, with oak-leaves set round her lovely hair, said, laying a hand on the doctor’s arm: ‘Are you part of Her? as I am?’
Vandermast said: ‘No, dear lady of leaves and squirrel-haunted silences. I am of that other kind.’
Zenianthe said: ‘But if the house be part of who dwells therein? If my woods be part?’
Vandermast shook his head: made no answer.
Antiope said, startling as a sleeper wakes: ‘What is it, cousin? What have I spoken? You can witness, I never walked in my sleep till now?’ Her eyes were troubled. She said, and her words came slowly as if with night-groping: ‘A black lady. I have never seen her.’
