by E R Eddison
XXI
ENN FREKI RENNA
PACK’D CARDS WITH DERXIS • THE THING LAID BARE TO LESSINGHAM • LAST CLASH OF THE ADAMANTS • INSULTANS TYRANNUS • THE WOLF RUNS • ANTIOPE IN MORNAGAY.
LESSINGHAM, being by the Duke confirmed now in his office of Captain-General, departed next day out of Argyanna about taking order, against the trysting-time set for Mornagay, for yet more forces and muniments of war. Upon which great business was he now for weeks journeying without delays or respite through Rerek and the Marches and Outer Meszria, cementing alliances, pacifying squabbles. The High Admiral was rode back to take the water again at Kessarey and so move to Kaima; Zapheles and Melates fared south into Meszria; the Lord Horius Parry home to Laimak. Barrian the Duke sent in embassage to those Princes Ercles and Aramond, to salve their wounds with estates and signiories in the north there, carved out of that great slice which had by the peace of Argyanna been trimmed off from the vicariate. The Duke himself, with the Chancellor, and with Lessingham’s thousand horse, lay yet in Argyanna, meaning in time to move north in great strength; and command was that all with their armies should come together the twentieth of July at Mornagay, thence to march north to the Wold, whence tidings now began to be had of Derxis’s advance southwards, as upon a design for invasion of Rerek ere summer be too far worn.
But the Vicar, soon as he was come again to Laimak, retired himself to his private chamber; took from the iron chest, where he kept such matters, the new concordat; sat thinking with himself an hour or two; then sent for Gabriel Flores. ‘Come hither, good pug, let’s closely to our business. You must north again, “to Megra”, as we’ll call it: “to Arcastus”, we’ll say.’
Gabriel waited obedient.
‘I’ll set down nought in writing, no more than I would before. This,’ the Vicar flicked the edge of the parchment with a finger, ‘’gins smell too much of the inkhorn already. Get yonder ragman’s-roll by rote ere you go: tell it him word by word. Then tell him this pointeth north to his destruction ere he shall be ready to come conquering down hitherward: that, the Queen being dead by some misfortune – how, I know not: miss not that – and the royal line of Fingiswold come so to an end, this Zayana entirely hath now the love of all nobles, princes, and all other in the realm save mine only, to back his usurpation; and mine but in show and policy. Speak to him so: show him what stark folly ’twere in him to enterprise to seize kingdom here without some bolsterer or comforter in his deed: and for such, he may take me, whose help is worth ten armies; and so on. Speak earnestly, even till his teeth run a water. Let him understand by all means that you are sent to practise my good and his. Then let him know my easy condition: letters patent under his royal hand and seal confirming me in perpetuity, as for him and his heirs and successors, his Vicar for all Meszria and all Rerek; ’pon receipt of which by your hand, I will, in token of faith and as his loyal obedienciary, shortly send him the heads or other proofs of the taking off of the persons here most disaffected, and these the principal: Barganax, Beroald, Jeronimy. Which I shall find good opportunity to perform ere it be well onward in summer, having lulled ’em into so lethargic a sleep with this,’ and he flicked the parchment again, ‘and preparing me an occasion.’
‘Your highness hath forgot to name one name,’ said Gabriel, ‘will, for the king’s jealous hate and spleen, weigh with him ’gainst these as gold against feathers.’
‘And whose is that, my pigsnye?’
‘Your highness will not wish I should name it.’
The Vicar’s eyes narrowed upon him. ‘No, or may be I’d tear your tongue out.’ With such a sudden fury he hurled the inkpot, that Gabriel was barely in time to save his teeth, or may be an eye, by swift raising of his arm.
‘Meddle not beyond your commission,’ said the Vicar, while Gabriel mopped the ink-splashes with his handkercher and looked to his bruised arm. ‘Sit down. Study your part. I’ll hear it over ere you go.’
Gabriel was ready to set forth that evening. The rather not to be remarked, he made himself like a peddling chapman; took a spare horse and some huckstering wares, put on coarse blue country-garb, trimmed his hair shorter, and dyed that and his beard and eyebrows with henna. Ere he took horse, he was sent for again to the Vicar’s chamber. ‘Well, scab, are you busked and ready?’
‘So please your highness.’
‘Come, you shall drink some malmsey for stirrup-cup:’ he poured it out, gave it him with his own hand. He put, when Gabriel set down the cup, a great arm about his neck, drawing him to him, and so looked down into the weasel eyes of him: ‘I did wrong to strike at you. There,’ he said, holding him off at arm’s length: ‘when, until now, said I ever to you or any man that I was sorry for aught I’d done? But truth is, you were right in reason, my pug. And truth is, I cannot well digest reason in this particular, for truly I cannot root out of me the liking I have for the man; having both already made my profit by him and wishing still so to do; and yet, little commodity I see in’t, as things sort. And yet,’ he said, ‘I have a kind of love for the man.’
Gabriel stood awkward, listening to these words, that seemed as the rumour of some fight conduced in the very soul of his great master.
‘Fare you well, then,’ said the Vicar.
‘Highness, farewell,’ said Gabriel. ‘And as for loving,’ he said, as upon a sudden bursting of the doors of speech, ‘be certain of this: your highness cannot now afford to bear love or liking to any: no, not even to me.’
It was now upon mid-July. The Vicar, with some thousand heavy-armed troops of Rerek, was come up to Mornagay. Here Gabriel, back from his mission, was two days closeted with his lord. None knew, nor none guessed nor sought to know, what might be there a-hatching between them; for in all things, in peace as in war, it was the Vicar’s custom so to deal closely with this man or with Lessingham if he were at hand, but with others seldom or never.
Upon the thirteenth, Gabriel rode north again, now in a new disguise and with beard and mustachios shaved clean off. That same day, as the Gods would have it, came Lessingham riding post from Bardardale. He took day-meal; would not tarry, spite of the Vicar’s wish to stay him, but saddle up again and on northward; being by appointment to meet with Barrian and Prince Ercles beyond Swaleback, for concerting of certain movements against next week’s beginning of the great march north. This the pretext: but the true necessity was upon word from Barrian that this should do great good now, if Lessingham might but with the sunbeams of his countenance be finally his own peacemaker for all back-reckonings those princes yet held noted against him, as for plunder of Bagort that spring and the bad entreaty Ercles had had at Leveringay.
Lessingham rode with but five-and-twenty and Amaury. About the fifteenth mile, midway on from Leveringay to Eldir, they happed upon Gabriel, pricking fast, two or three hundred paces ahead. He, when he saw them, turned out of the road and made down towards that boggy bottom where a bridle-path, going among fields and then among woods, cuts off a large loop of the main north road. That, if the waters had not been up, had been the best way: but not so now. All saw him, but through that disguise Lessingham only knew him. Lessingham said apart to Amaury, ‘This jackal hath seen us: it is plain he would be glad to avoid me. I like not that.’ He bade the others wait while he alone galloped after Gabriel. Gabriel, when he saw he was followed and could not escape, drew rein and waited.
‘If I could know you under these mumming weeds, and beardless as a pig,’ Lessingham said, ‘you sure knew me? Why run away then? What hath so uncivil’d you?’
‘Nay, by the Gods I knew not your worship.’
Lessingham’s glance seemed like that winter wind that will go clean through a man, clothes and body and all. ‘So you begin with a lie, my Gabriel? We’ll talk further, then: see wherefore truth’s so coy today.’ At first Gabriel’s answers came pert and pat: then he began to trip amid the threads of his own invention: at last, tied up in a knot of plain contradictions, could no more, but stood ridiculous with all the tangle
of his lies made manifest. Then, to cap ill with worse, he upon a swift chance struck spurs into his horse to flee. In a moment Lessingham had ridden him down: caught him by the collar. ‘I smell a pad in the straw: come, we’ll search you.’ Gabriel, while this went forward, by a swift sleight crammed a crumpled paper in his mouth. Lessingham forced open his mouth: made him spit it out like a dog: took him such a cuff across the head as knocked him half-stunned from the saddle: sprang to earth, secured the paper, spread it and read it. Gabriel, standing up quakingly and gathering his senses, shrank under Lessingham’s look; for there was in the countenance of Lessingham as he laid up the half-chewed paper like some jewel in his bosom, that blazing of eyes, that same deathly white paleness of terrible anger, which Gabriel had once before beheld; and that was when Lessingham, chained and under the strength of six men’s hands, had been, in that helplessness, shamefully by the Vicar stricken across the face with the Concordat of Ilkis.
‘This is private,’ said Lessingham, ‘’twixt your lord and me. No living soul else shall know on’t. So much for your ease of mind.’ So saying, he caught him by the throat: shook him thrice and again until the eyes of Gabriel began to bulge from his blood-boiled choking face, then threw him cruelly on the ground. ‘When I break my rod,’ he said, ‘it shall be on a bigger back than yours.’ Gabriel, may be as conceiving it safest to feign death, did not move till Lessingham was mounted again.
Lessingham rode but a score of paces to have sight again of his folk, where they waited some quarter of a mile away: made sign to Amaury he should come alone; then leisurely returned to where Gabriel stood afeared. Amaury galloped up to them: halted, looked obedient at Lessingham, then fierce at Gabriel. ‘Tell them, Amaury, this was but a messenger sent to seek me and had missed us in the way, so luckily overtaken, with word from my lord Chancellor upon which I must myself return for a night. You and the rest, ride forward; bring my excuses to Prince Ercles. Expect me in two days at most in Memmering.’ Amaury read notice, in his lord’s mask of careless ease, of some great matter toward: read notice, too, not but at his peril to be called in question, that in this thing his part should be but to hear exactly and exactly to obey. Lessingham with a light word farewelled him, and turned south again at a walking-pace alone. When they were out of sight, he touched rein, whispered Maddalena: she carried him south like the wind.
In the long meadow-close below the northerner of the out-farms of Mornagay, as Lessingham rode in, were Rossilion, Thrasiline, and others, casting at the mark with javelins for their sport. ‘Why, ’tis like a masque,’ said Rossilion: ‘one fresh pageant after another. First, but an hour since, message to say the Duke and all his great army, seven days afore the day appointed, is come up now and shall be before sunset here in Mornagay; and now, back cometh the Captain-General.’
‘The eagles gather,’ said Thrasiline. ‘Sure, now shall be do somewhat.’
The Vicar came by as Lessingham dismounted before the hostelry. In Lessingham’s look he might read no danger, nor (knowing of old these sudden swift turns and changes of settled order) need he marvel if, set forth but three hours since for the north upon urgency and in company, Lessingham were now in great haste come south again. ‘Cousin, there is a business I must utter to you. Will your highness give me private audience?’ The Vicar consenting with a shrug, they retired themselves to that same upper room where, more than a year ago, Lessingham and Amaury had supped that night when news came of King Styllis dead, and all the balance of affairs tipped above new deeps of peradventure: a room of beginnings and of memories.
Three of the Vicar’s great dogs lay there in the rushes. There was wine upon the table, and drinking-cups: on the settle, the Vicar’s armour: goose-feather pens, ink, papers, parchments, all Gabriel’s writing-tackle, in a hodge-podge upon the sideboard. Lessingham said, ‘Who will write you your so many letters, cousin, whiles your secretary maketh up secret treaties betwixt you and Derxis?’
There was not a tremor in the Vicar’s great hand, reaching the wine-jug, pouring a cupful. ‘Nimble and quicksilvered brains such as yours need this to settle ’em: quiddling upon such moonshine.’
Lessingham struck the cup from his hand. ‘Did you not hear something cry thump?’ he said upon the crash, as the Vicar, eyes aflame, leapt to his feet. ‘Come, I’ll read it you: here ’tis, under your hand and seal.’ He watched the Vicar, at the pulling out of the paper, change colour. ‘Ay, spittly and slimy too from the beast’s mouth I plucked it out on. But legible.’
‘Go, you are a fool. Counterfeit letters. My fine device to draw him out.’
‘Prettily thought on,’ said Lessingham. ‘Tell me the crow is white.’
The Vicar, with the table between himself and Lessingham, and eyeing him from beneath bent forehead, began to move with a sidelong motion leftwards towards the door. But Lessingham, swift as a leopard, was there before him, hand upon sword-hilt. His left hand shot home the bolt behind him. ‘Had you been drunk so long you’d a done your estate better service. Plot treason? Is’t come to this? And with this princox, voice like a woman, this filth of filths, this murderer of—’
‘O leave your cackling,’ said the Vicar, hand upon sword-hilt, head down, like a bull about to charge. ‘Thought you, while you played your games at put-pin, I’d sit idle for ever? I’ll tell you, here’s been small leisure for kissing and haking in Owldale this five month past, by the Gods!’
Lessingham’s sword flamed out: the Vicar’s too. ‘Loo! Loo! Tear him! Pyewacket! Peck-i’-the-crown! Tear his lights out!’ As the dogs rushed in from the side, Pyewacket, as moved by a friendship strangely struck in that dungeon under Laimak, fastened her teeth in the backside of one, so that, missing of his spring, with a howl of pain he turned to fight her. Another, Lessingham stabbed dead with a dagger snatched left-handed from his belt; but, since a man’s eyes look but one way, the Vicar, foining at Lessingham’s middle, passed under his guard; but, by good hap, no more than a skin-wound beside the thigh. Amid the rage of the dogs yet worrying and snarling, and the charging against the door by soldiers without, whom the Vicar now in a voice of brass shouted for again and again to come and aid him, Lessingham, free now, albeit hurt, to use his swordsmanship, in a few passes sent the Vicar’s weapon flying.
The Vicar, crouching like a cat-a-mountain, seemed for the instant as if he would have leapt onto Lessingham’s sword-point. But the hinges began to yield under that thunder of blows, and, as lord of his mind once more, he reared himself up and, stone still and with arms folded, faced Lessingham, who, regarding him again in a high and cool carelessness that was yet alert for all mischiefs, now sheathed his sword. The door gave and fell. A dozen men armed leapt in with it. In the sudden hush of that obstreperous noise the Vicar commanded them, pointing with his finger: ‘Arrest me that man.’
For two breaths they stood doubtful. Then, one by one as their glances met Lessingham’s, so one by one they were gathered by him and held. ‘You have won the wager, cousin,’ he said, throwing with a laugh his purse of gold on the table. ‘And truth to tell, I feared you would. Not your own men, at your own bidding, will so far forget your highness’s edict as lay hand upon the King’s Captain-General.’
With swift comprehension, the Vicar, bursting into a great boisterous laugh, clapped him on the back, took the purse, tossed it up ringing in the air, caught it, and thrust it away in his bosom.
When they were alone again, ‘Well, fanged adder?’ said Lessingham, speaking low; ‘so you dare try masteries with me? So you set your dogs on me, ha?’ Pyewacket, looking up at him, fawned and wagged her tail; ‘set your men on me?’
The Vicar, sitting at the table sideways, left hand akimbo on his hip, right elbow crooked far forward on the table top, the hand a rest for his mighty jowl, looked steadily up at Lessingham. ‘You have forgot your part,’ he said, and his voice, low and quiet, came like the dank air from some grave. ‘And your hand is out.’
To Lessingham, thus looking down into the eyes of his cous
in, it was as if their hard and adamantine lustre and wicked fires should have been but the image upon a still water, in depths whereof, were no image there to veil them, deadlier matters should have been beheld. And now, as upon that surface, memories stirred like a flaw of wintry air, blurring the image: memories of a voice which, a year ago, borne up loud and hoarse over water, had unsphered a summer night and withered fair flesh to a mountain-lynx’s pelt and sinew and claw.
The Vicar seemed to wait. There seemed a contentment in his waiting, as of one that had weighed all and all determined. But to questioning eyes his countenance showed no answer. As well might a man, looking from the fields across to Laimak, have hoped to divine, only with such looking, the prison-houses that lay quarried in the rock’s bowels: the prisoners, their names, qualities, aspects, and conditions, who rotted in those prisons: the deaths some died there.
