The Zimiamvia Trilogy

by E R Eddison

  ‘Your grace,’ said Medor, ‘is a painter. Well, a picture painted will not change.’

  ‘Give it time, dear Medor, it will rot. And long ere that, you shall find the painter has changed. That, I suppose, is why pictures are so good, soon as painted.’

  ‘And no good, certainly, before they are painted,’ said the Duchess. ‘For is it not but in the painting that a picture takes being?’

  ‘That is certain.’

  Medor said, ‘I have long begun to think, my lord Duke, that you are an atheist.’

  ‘By no means.’

  ‘You blaspheme, at least,’ said Amalie, ‘violet-crowned Kythereia, the blessed Goddess and Queen of All.’

  ‘God forbid! Only I will not flatter Her, mistake Her drifts. She changes, like the sea. She is not to be caught. We needs must believe Her fixed and eternal, for how should perfection suffer change? Yet, to mock us, She ever changes. All men in love, She mocks; and were I in love (which thanks to Her, I am not, nor will not be), I know it in my bones, She should mock me past bearing. Why, the very frame and condition of our loving, here upon earth, what is it but an instrument of Hers to mock us?’

  ‘Is this the profundities your learned tutor taught you, the old grey-beard doctor?’

  ‘No, madam. In this, myself taught myself.’

  Medor smiled:

  ‘Tho’ wisdom oft hath sought me,

  I scorn’d the lore she brought me,

  My only books

  Were women’s looks,

  And folly’s all they taught me.’

  ‘Well, Medor? And what of your young lady of the north, Prince Ercles’ daughter, you told me of? What has she taught you?’

  Medor answered soberly: ‘To keep her out of such discussions.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ said the Duke. ‘I know not what pert and pricking spirit leadeth me by the sleeve tonight.’ He leaned forward to pluck a pallid bloom of the orchid. ‘Flowers,’ he said, slowly examining the elegant wings and falls, domed and spreading sleeknesses: raising it to his nostrils to take the perfume. ‘As if it had lips,’ he said, considering it again. He dropped it: stood up now, leaning lightly against one of those silvery-sparkled pillars, the easier to overlook the company.

  ‘You have out-Memisoned Memison tonight, madam,’ he said presently. ‘And the half of them I ne’er saw till now. Tell me, who is she in the black gown, sequins of silver, dancing with that fox Zapheles?’

  The Duchess answered, ‘That is Ninetta, Ibian’s younger daughter, newly come to court. I had thought you had known her.’

  ‘Not I,’ said the Duke. ‘Look, Melates: for dancing: as if all from the hips downward she had never a joint, but all supple and sinuous as a mermaid. I said I will not dance tonight; but, by heavens,’ he said, ‘I am in two minds, whether not to try, in this next dance following, which will she the rather, me or Zapheles. But that were ’gainst present policy. I am taming that dog-fox now by kindness: to do him that annoyance now were the next way to spoil all.’

  ‘Well, there is Pantasilea,’ said the Duchess, as there now passed by in the dance a languorous sleepy beauty, heavy eyelids and mouth like a heavy crimson rose: ‘a friend of yours.’

  But the Duke’s gaze (which, never so idle-seeming, not the littlest thing escaped) noted how, upon that word, Melates reddened and bit his lip.

  ‘I retired long since,’ said the Duke, ‘in favour of a friend. Now there,’ he said, after a little, ‘is a lady, I should guess, madam, of your own choosing. There: with hair coloured like pale moonshine, done in plaits crown-wise round her head: one that I could paint in a green dress for Queen of Elfland. Is she maid or wife?’

  ‘She is indeed of my choosing: Lydia, wife to a chamberlain of mine.’

  ‘Does he use her well?’

  ‘It is to be hoped so. I think he loves her.’

  The Duke sat down again. ‘Enough. Go, Melates. I shall not dance: I am looker-on tonight. No, in sober sadness, I mean it. But I would have you dance. Medor too.’

  ‘I had liever keep your grace company,’ said Medor. Melates with a low leg departed.

  ‘There is no hope for Medor,’ said the Duke. ‘As good as wedded already.’

  Amalia smiled at the Count over her peacock fan. ‘And looks,’ she said, ‘as who should say, “God send it were so.”’

  Their talk drifted idly on.

  Below, in a pause between the dances, Mistress Pantasilea waited, on Melates’s arm, for the music to begin again. ‘You came this evening with the Duke?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He and his father: very unlike.’

  Melates raised his eyebrows. ‘Very like, I think.’

  ‘One red: t’other black.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘One all for love: t’other all for doing.’

  ‘I have two spears,’ said Melates: ‘each of gold and iron: the one with main show of iron, t’other of gold. Yet are both fair to look on, and each fit for the business at need.’

  ‘This one hath a more speeding trick, I would warrant, to lay down ladies than to govern a kingdom.’

  ‘You do belie him,’ said Melates. ‘Say rather, he grounds himself thus early in a wide apprenticeship to both these noble arts.’

  ‘Come,’ said she: ‘while you defend and I accuse, mischief is we both needs must love him.’

  Now began, stately and slow, a pavane. Barganax, on his feet again, still idly watching, bent over now and then to his mother’s ear or to Medor’s or to one of her girls’, to ask or answer somewhat or let fall some jest. But now, at a sudden, upon one such motion, he stopped short, hand flat-palmed against the pillar, bending forwards a little, following very intently with his eye one couple amongst the dancers. The Duchess spoke. He made no reply. She looked round: saw that he had not heard: saw the fashion of his gaze, tense, like a bowstring at stretch: saw the direction of it: followed it. For well two minutes, very discreetly not to be observed, she watched him, and (hidden behind her eyes that watched), with a smile of the mind.

  ‘Do you remember,’ Mary said, ‘that dance at the Spanish Embassy?’

  ‘Do I remember!’ said Lessingham, while, under his gaze, the quiver of velvet darkness within the sapphire deepened to the shadow or rumour of some profounder and living presence: as of all eyes and lips that have been man’s since the world began: blinding themselves there, swept down there, drowned there to a kiss.

  ‘It was curious,’ Mary said, very low: ‘our first meeting: not to have known.’

  The Duke spoke, suddenly down into Medor’s ear, that was nearest: ‘What is she?’

  Medor looked where the Duke gave him the direction. Something blenched in his eye. ‘I cannot tell. Till now, I have never seen her.’

  ‘Find out, and tell me,’ said the Duke, head erect, feeding his eyes. Under the upward curl of his mustachios the lamplight rested upon the Olympian curve of lips which, unlike other men’s, the hotlier blown upon in the fires of luxury the finer ever and more delicate became their contours, and the subtler and the more adamantine their masterful lines of strength and self-domain. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘I would be informed of name and quality of everyone here tonight: ’tis as well, that the Duchess be not put upon by outsiders and so forth. Get me particulars.’

  The Duchess Amalie, in the mean time, very slowly and equably fanning herself, abode (in all beseeming) utterly remote and unaware.

  It was after midnight now, and between the last dances. The Duchess and her ladies were, the most of them, now retired, and most of the guests departed. The full moon, riding in her meridian but low down in Capricorn, flooded the out-terraces westwards above the moat with a still radiance of silver. The Duke with slow, measured paces came and went with Melates the length of the terrace to and fro, two hundred paces, may be, to every turn. Eastward, the lights about the summer palace glimmered beyond the yew-trees: there was no music: no sound, save the crunch of the gravel as they walked, little night-sounds in the leaves, and, from below
beyond the moat, a loud singing of nightingales. The path was white under the moon: the shaven grass of the borders on either hand wet with dew: the clumps of giant pink asphodel that, at spaces of ten feet or so, rearing their lovely spikes taller than a tall man, lined the length of that terrace on either hand, were blanched too to an indeterminate immateriality of whiteness.

  And now as they walked, they became ware of two other persons come upon the terrace at the further end: a man and a woman, she on his arm, moving now slowly towards them. Midway, they met and passed. That lady’s smile, as she acknowledged Barganax’s lifted bonnet, came like the flashing, in a vista parted between blood-red lilies, of the deadly whiteness of some uncharted sea-strait.

  ‘Do you know that lady?’ said the Duke as they walked on.

  Melates answered, ‘I know her. But name her I cannot.’

  ‘I can tell you who she is,’ said the Duke. ‘She is young sister to my lord High Chancellor.’

  ‘Why, then, I know where ’twas I saw her. He has kept her exceeding close: never till now at court, I think: certainly I ne’er saw nor heard of her at your presences, my lord Duke, in Zayana.’

  ‘Myself,’ said the Duke, ‘I ne’er saw her till tonight I saw her dance the pavane, with this man that is, I am told, her new husband.’

  ‘Your grace will remember, there was a notorious murder. True, it was never brought home where it belonged.’

  The Duke was silent for a minute. Then, ‘Your great men, Melates, have commodity for bringing to pass suchlike a needful thing, when need is, without all undecent show or scandal.’

  ‘There was show enough here,’ said Melates: ‘six hired cutters to make sure of him in broad daylight, in Krestenaya marketplace. And yet none durst name my lord Chancellor in it, nor her, save in a whisper and curtains drawn: and then, as your grace knows, there were pretty tales told.’

  ‘I’ve heard ’em.’

  ‘And yet,’ said Melates, ‘for less matter, himself hath ere this headed or hanged, in this time, scores of common men.’

  ‘The way of the world,’ Barganax said. ‘And some will say, best way too: better a hundred such should die, than one great man’s hand to be hampered.’

  ‘But, too cruelly practised,’ said Melates, ‘may breed such discontent as should pluck us down, as history hath ere now remembered.’

  ‘There was never yet great men plucked down by the common riff-raff,’ said the Duke, ‘but they had first of their own selves begun to fall from their greatness. Never in this world, Melates: nor yet in any world. For that is a condition of all possible worlds.’

  ‘Your grace speaks wisely. Did your secretary (and late your tutor) learn you this? Doctor Vandermast?’

  ‘I have learned much from the learned doctor: as this, for example – whenever you seem to speak wisdom, never to tell who taught you. Observing which, I shall doubtless in time have got a white beard and reputation of a great wise man. Unless indeed, which is likelier, cold steel—’ the Duke waited as they met and passed, now the second time, that lady on her husband’s arm: the green glint of her eyes in the moonlight, looking steadily before her: the glint of the moon on her teeth as she spoke some answering word to her lord: the carriage which, lily in crystal, became itself the more for the gown that veiled it, less like to natural woman’s walk than to the swaying on languid stem of some undreamed-of flower, beside those curled and sweet-smelling darknesses those orchids upon the inner terrace should seem work-a-day hedgerow weeds. ‘Or unless the bite of a she-puss,’ said the Duke, when they were out of hearing, ‘should first be cause of my death.’

  They walked on, silent, till they came to the south end of the terrace. Here, in the shadow of a holm-oak, the Duke stood a minute, watching the moon through the leaves. ‘The King my father it was,’ he said, watching the moon, ‘that would needs have this woman in Memison. The Duchess would not have her at first.’

  Melates held his peace.

  ‘He likes it that beautiful woman should be here,’ said the Duke. ‘I grant, he has an eye for them. Well,’ he said, looking round at Melates: ‘is it not fit that he should? Answer me. It is not for me to talk always and you stand mum.’

  ‘It is not for me, my lord Duke, to judge of these high matters.’

  ‘So? I think there is some devil of folly in you I must exorcize. Out with it: will you say the Duchess my mother were wiser make ’em all pack, show them the door?’

  ‘I beseech your grace: this is not my business.’

  ‘By God,’ said the Duke, ‘I can smell your thought, Melates; and hath the stink of a common horse-boy’s. I say to you, her grace, my lady mother, is a queen rose; a goddess among them. By heavens, it were give small regard to her own quality or to the King’s highness’ discerning judgement, were she with timorous jealous misdoubts to let overcloud the sweet weather we have here. This that I tell you is truth. Will you believe it? Study your answer: for, by God, if you will not, you are friend of mine no more.’

  But Melates, as who would please one that is out of his princely wits, answered and said, ‘Your grace hath most unjustly mistook me. I believe, and did ever believe it. How else?’

  They turned to walk north again between the dewy grasses and the uncertain whispering darknesses. Before them as they walked, their cast shadows flitted, hard-edged and black against the moon-flooded pallour of the path.

  ‘Were you ever in love, Melates?’

  ‘I have tried to follow the fashions your grace sets us.’

  ‘Fashions in love?’

  ‘I know not.’

  ‘Fashions to keep out of it.’

  Slower and slower they walked, step with step. And now, forty or fifty paces ahead, they saw those others coming towards them: saw him suddenly break from his lady, run to the parapet on the left above the moat, clap hand upon the balustrade and make as if to vault over. Then back to her, and so again arm in arm.

  Encountering now once more in mid-terrace, both parties, as upon a mutual impulse, stopped. Some puckish spirit danced in Barganax’s eye. ‘I am glad, sir,’ he said, ‘that you thought better of it: resolved after all not to drown yourself.’

  The lady abode silent: motionless too, save that, upon some slow, exquisite, half amused, half in derision, little condescensions of her head, she seemed to note the words: as if here were some strayed divinity, elegantly indifferent, noting these things from above. The fingers of her hand, in the crook of her lord’s arm, lay out silver-white under their shimmer of jewels: a sensitive, beautiful hand, able (by the look of it) as an artist’s, with sure and erudite touch, to set deep notes a-throb, attemper them, weave them to unimagined harmonies. So she stood, leaning sideways on that man, quiet and still in the unclouded serenity of the moon: virginal-sweet to look on as a wood-lily; yet with a secret air as if, like Melusine in the old story, she could at seasons be snake from the waist down.

  The man smiled, meeting the Duke’s bantering gaze. ‘If you did but know, my lord Duke,’ he said, ‘what I was in truth a-thinking on in that moment!’

  And Barganax was ware suddenly of that lady’s eyes resting on himself, in a weighing look, completely serene, completely impenetrable. Deeper than blood or the raging sense, it seemed to touch his face: first his cheek below the cheekbone; then from head to foot the touch of that look seemed to go over him, till at last it mounted again to his face and so to his eye, and came to rest there with the same sphinxian unalterableness of green fires that slept.

  ‘Curious our first meeting: and not to have known.’ Very low Mary had said it at first; and now, this second time, so low, so withinward, that the words, like a kestrel’s nestlings that flutter at the nest, unready yet to trust themselves to wings and the untried air, rested unuttered within the closure of her lips. But, ‘Yes,’ it was said now, as if by some deeper abiding self that had lain asleep till now within her: ‘I knew. I singled you out then, my friend, as I now remember, though at the time it was almost unconsciously: yes, completely uncon
sciously. I knew, my friend. And knew, too, that you did not yet know.’ And about the words was a shimmer like the shimmer of the sun upon the tide off Paphos, the unnumbered laughter of ocean waves.

  They were departed, two and two again, on their several ways. When at last the Duke spoke, it was as a man who would obliterate and put out of memory the flaming semblant, and grapple himself safe to common waking fact. ‘Shall I tell you, Melates, what was in truth in the man’s mind, then when like a jackanapes he ran and skipped upon the parapet? It was the thought that this instant night, within this half hour maybe, he should have that woman where he wished.’

  They walked on in silence. At length, ‘What will you call her?’ said the Duke.

  ‘Call whom?’

  ‘Whom else do we talk on? That woman.’

  Melates said uncourteously, ‘I should call her a dog-fly.’

  ‘A dog-fly!’ With the moon behind them, the Duke’s face was unreadable. ‘Well, Goddess hath borne that word from Goddess ere this.’ And he began to laugh, as it were privately to himself.

  They looked round and saw that the terrace was empty now, save for themselves only. ‘Leave me,’ said Barganax. ‘I have a business to consider with myself. I will study it here awhile alone.’

  But that Lady Fiorinda, walking now in an obscurity of yew-trees, with that unconsidered arm to lean upon, turned Her mind to other thoughts. At Morville’s third or fourth asking, What was she meditating upon so quiet? she answered at last, ‘Upon certain dresses of mine.’

  ‘Dresses. Of what material? Of what colour?’

  ‘O, of the most delicatest finest material.’ The man saw snicker in her mouth’s corner that little thing that neither now nor ever would heed nor look at him, but seemed always as if playing devilishly apart with some secret, boding no good. ‘And for colour,’ said she (noting, from above that mantelpiece perhaps, through Anne Horton’s side-bended eyes, these lovers): ‘of a red-gold fire-colour, as the extreme outermost tongue-tip of a flame.’