by E R Eddison
He strode up and down the room. Gabriel at the table fiddled about his papers: presently looked up. ‘I will yet, saving your worship, say a word of wisdom to you. ’Tis clean out of the ordinary, unbidden guests in Laimak. The Vicar’s highness hath matter enough in hand without you and your private differences. He is wrath already with these importunings. Were I in your lordship’s shoes, out of Laimak I would go while commodity yet is for departing. Till the fury of his highness settle, come not before him.’
‘I’ll have my right,’ said Lord Sorms. ‘If not, I am resolved to hold you all such play as you shall be weary of. And you, master secretary, I do begin to discern for as honest a man as any is in the cards if the kings were out. You and your lord too.’ His jaw fell as, turning to a sound behind him, he faced the Parry in person, come secretly in at a little hidden door.
‘Well, my Lord Sorms,’ said he, with much sweetness of words and amiable countenance, ‘I have read your lordship’s depositions. And well have I in mind the painfulness it must have been to you, abiding here so long, desirous to know whether your matter be in any wise compounded, or like to be shortly compounded, or no.’
‘I thank your excellency. These concerns, be they but a trifle unto you, are to me a thing of good moment and importance. The pleadings, six months now, lie before your court signorial in Leveringay. Your secretary here, since April, hath notice of appeal unto your excellency’s person as Vicar General in Rerek of the King. Nought moves. And now, marvelling not a little of the very frosty coldness and slack remissness shown me, I cannot but, joining words and deeds together, thereby see that all is but finesse. I cannot but think there be practices which—’
‘Ay, practices,’ said the Vicar gently, gently drawing near to Sorms: Gabriel’s ferret eye watched his master’s. ‘And herein is lapped up a very great secret, which ’tis but fair, perhaps, I should now make plain unto your lordship, why I have had small leisure for your domestical concerns. Well, thus it standeth: I, of my envious covetous and vengeable disposition, do now enterprise shortly no less than to usurp and seize, wrongfully and against all right, the whole sovereign power of the King in Rerek. Which to keep safe in your mouth, take this:’ and, leaping like unkennelled Cerberus, stabbed him in with a dagger from his belt, first by the ear, next in the ribs, last down by the collar-bone.
Gabriel, that was small and little of stature, leaned back against the table, watching this business; his teeth, jagged and uneven, showed yellowish betwixt dark beard and mustachios.
‘I’ll teach these little lords,’ said the Vicar, throwing the bloodied dagger on the floor. ‘Come muling to me with their ails and plainings,’ he said, his breath coming and going with the exertion: ‘and me so grieved with so great causes. Come hither, my mopsy.’ Gabriel came: his face grey, his eyes wide with apprehension. The Vicar grabbed his two wrists in a handful, while with the other hand, broad as a dried haddock, freckled, shimmering in the sunlight with reddish growth of hairs, he fingered Gabriel’s weasand. ‘You heard what I said to the scum?’
‘Yes.’
‘You credit it?’ His eyes, searchful as needles, looked down into Gabriel’s.
‘Not till your highness shall say it again to me.’
‘How dare you imagine it other than a lie?’
‘Your highness need scarce be so rabious against me. I daren’t.’
‘And yet, weren’t very so? What then? Speak, filth, or I’ll end you.’
‘Whom have I but your highness? I am yours. You can work me like wax.’
The Vicar’s eyes searched his, as a knife should search a wound. Gabriel held his breath. Suddenly the Vicar drew him to him, like a woman: kissed him. ‘Even you, my little pigsnye, should find it dangerous too surely to know my drifts. I find close habours of discontentment: matters that may be uncunningly and indiscreetly handled: foolish and furious designs. Go, I’ll mell me with no flirtations but them as end in bed. They shall see my back-parts, but my face shall not be seen. And so, walk you eared for attention in my foot-steps, if you hope to live through these next dangerous days. So,’ he said, letting go of him, ‘it is a careful life. Wipe up the mess. Feed that carrion to the dogs. Then attend me at the main gate. We must be by sun-go-down at the place you wot of.’
The sun was of that same day now near upon setting when Count Mandricard drew rein, coming out of the wood onto the northern edge of the clearing before a certain old waste and broken house desolate among pine-forests a mile above the little village of Gilgash, that lies just within the limes of Rerek. He was a big man, dull-eyed, horse-faced, with brown leathery wrinkled skin and long straggly beard with never a curl in it. There seemed a great stillness in the clearing. Westwards, gleams of the sunset pierced here and there the purplish-greenish obscurity of pine-frondage and close-set upright trunks. Presently he walked his horse up to the house door. Nettle-beds crowded up to the walls on either side. The windows were shuttered. He edged his horse round, and so, leaning sideways from the saddle, reached to give the door a great thump with the pommel of his sword. The stillness settled yet deeper after the sound of that blow and of the scutter of little feet (rats, may be) that followed it. Mandricard waited a minute, then, growling some obscenity, swung from the saddle, tried the latch, went in. The house was empty, of a displeasant odour of dry-rot and of spiders: odour of grave-mould. He spat and came out again: swung up again into saddle. Dusk was gathering swiftly and the last embers of the sunset dying between the boles: blood among gallows-trees. ‘Some and some is honest play,’ he said in himself. ‘Snick up. If I take heed to come to the Devil’s banquet pat o’ the hour appointed, why not they?’ He spat. ‘Clavius,’ he said in himself: ‘a young sly whoreson. In all abomination of life, brisk as a body-louse, but I’d ne’er trust him unless held by the ears. Why he will use him’s a wonder: having took his father’s head, too, for letting himself be so bediddered in the Ulba enterprise, and he Lord President of the Marches. Then Gilmanes. Well, a man that could betray his own brother-german to him, to be cut in pieces in Laimak dungeons, I suppose a may trust him after that. Fellow’s jealous as a kite, too, of Ercles and Aramond: knows that, long as the Parry sits firm in Rerek and favours him, himself’ll be left in peace to keep his claws on Veiring and Tella which else must straight fly back to allegiance to Prince Ercles. Knows, too, should a been unlorded long since, outed of all his hopes, for’s misgovernment, but the Vicar pled for him: rubbed it off. Well, a may count on Gilmanes. Stathmar – well: albeit I’d fear his goodness. No moving, though, without him. Who hath’s buttocks firm in Argyanna may with one finger sway the march-lands. Olpman: I count him but a daw. He’s no starter. Arquez: I hate Arquez: what’s he but a common ruffian or thief, grown fat with the usurping of others’ rights? He hath used him afore, true enough; and meaneth (it is in every man’s mouth) to uncastle Sorms for him. – And there’s the sum. I think he hath need of better tools to make such a frame perfect.’
He let the reins hang loose on the pommel. The soft measured noise of champing of grass carried in that ugly stillness a threat, as of Time’s sands running out. As if it were said: How if all this were but to feel our affection to his person? Not meaning to strike, but first – having summoned us together here, in this outest corner of the realm – to choose out, snap in two, throw on the midden, any blades of meaner mettle? Strange how all we cannot but entirely love and cleave unto him, like unreasoned beasts, that himself is evermore false and double. May be there’s a design in these chance delays: heaven’s design or his. Perilous, too, to be unobedient to the sovereign – ‘Howsoever, I’ll think so,’ said Mandricard suddenly. ‘Pack while we may.’ And so, giving the reins a shake, rode away through the woods northwards.
He was departed but a few minutes when the others began to come in: Prince Gilmanes first, on a white horse: overtaking him, Count Olpman.
‘Your excellence rides well armed, I see.’
‘You too,’ said the Prince.
‘Whom must we m
eet tonight?’
‘Yon can answer that as well as I can.’
‘Our host, our two selves, and four besides of his picking. How like you of those four?’
‘Tell me their names first.’
Olpman smiled craftily. ‘With your excellency’s leave, I’ll see ’em afore I name them.’
‘God’s death!’ said the Prince, ‘are we children, to beat about the bush when each knows, and each knows t’other knows? No matter: ’tis safest may be. How like you of them?’
‘Trust him to pick sound.’
‘Trust? Sounds strangely after such talk; and in the mouth of a man of law.’
‘When time comes for action, no moving save upon some hazard.’
‘I’ll tell you, Olpman, wherein I’ll put my trust. In hate sooner than in love, and ambition than loyalty, and commodity than either. ’Tis therefore I trust the Vicar.’
‘Why? Because of commodity?’
‘Yes. Commodity: to me in him, to him in me. You I’ll trust, ’cause of the hate you bear to Beroald.’
‘Well, your excellency too, I think, hath small reason to love that one.’
‘For respect of what?’
‘Yonder lecherous and bloody woman. Your nephew sticked with daggers at Krestenaya.’
The Prince gave a little shrug of the shoulders. A haughty unkind cold melancholy man he seemed, not without charm of manner. ‘O as for that, I know not. The like occasion had egged us to the like cruelty. Yours, my lord, is the more unfallible ground: beholding this Beroald, your sometime pupil, ten years your younger, preferred, ’gainst all justice and reason, to this high place, of great Chancellor of Fingiswold. They ought not to think it strange if we shall otherwise provide for ourselves, and join with other, when we find no conformity nor towardness with them. – Here’s Arquez and Clavius. ’Tis fear holds those two.’
‘Fear, ’cause the matter he knows against ’em?’
‘Aye. And ’cause he can break them in pieces when he will. – Here’s Stathmar. Good. I smell comfort in Stathmar.’
In the failing light it was barely possible to know faces now, the moon yet unrisen. The Vicar himself on a great chestnut stallion rode in last: Gabriel at his elbow on a brown jennet and with a led horse in his hand laden with saddle-bags and two hogsheads of wine. ‘God give you good e’en,’ said the Vicar, leaping from horseback and passing the reins to Gabriel. ‘Five. Well, go we in. Every man his own horse-boy tonight. Turn ’em into the yard behind the house: we’ll take no chances where unreadiness might undo all. Gabriel, shutter the windows i’ yon chamber: darken the chinks with cloaks: then light candles, set the wine on the table and the meat pies. We’ll confer whiles we sup.’ Then, under his breath, unobserved, to Gabriel, ‘And forget not,’ he said, ‘the word I gave you: in case.’ Gabriel answered with a little swift weasel-glance, secret, gone the next instant, sufficient.
They sat about a bare trestle table: the Vicar at the near end by the door, Olpman upon his right, armoured to the throat, and Stathmar upon his left, with bold honest brown eyes, square brown beard and shaven head, a big man and a strong, may be forty years of age. Huge in bulk, upon Olpman’s right, sat Arquez, with tiny piglike eyes buried in rolls of flesh; then, at the table’s end facing the Vicar, Gilmanes, with Clavius on his right, and so again Stathmar. Youngest of them by much seemed this Clavius, of a malapert and insolent carriage, fluffy yellow beard, and pale fish-like eyes. Gabriel by the Vicar’s command was ever in and out, to keep watch: held his meat in one hand, his sword ready in the other, and took his sup of wine between-whiles.
The Vicar sat uncloaked now, in tanned leather jerkin armed all over with scales or sequins of polished iron and with golden buckles at neck and waist and a gorget of iron plate damascened with gold and silver. Bolt upright, his hands flat-palmed before him on the table, he went over his company man by man. ‘You have begun ill with me, Prince,’ he said for first word, thrusting out his jaw at him: ‘broke faith ere we be set at table.’
Gilmanes changed colour. ‘I know not what your excellency means.’
‘Bring a train of soldiers with you, when I made it condition all should come alone. I saw ’em myself in Gilgash.’
‘I’m sorry. ’Twas but three or four only, for safety of my person.’
‘I can care for your person, my lord. Robbers and reivers walk not here at liberty uncorrected, in South Rerek, as in your northern parts they do use. If I am to trust a man, a shall trust me, tit for tat. Who else hath done like that? Olpman, I noted your badge on half a dozen buff jackets as I came through the village.’
‘Your noble excellence will pardon me, I hope,’ said the Count, ‘if I mistook the condition.’
‘If me no ifs. All this is against you, and shall be, till you make it good.’
‘I thought we were free to bring ’em up to Gilgash so we came alone hither to Middlemead.’
‘The Devil dirt in your beard. You deal like the fish sepia, you lawyers: ever smother your traces in voidance of too much ink. Stathmar?’
‘Not an one, my lord.’
‘There speaks a man. Clavius?’
‘I dare not venture myself unmanned on the Meszrian border: by cause of Ibian.’
‘Your old kind Meszrian host? Go, I think you’ve reason.’ The Vicar laughed, a single crack betwixt a snarl and a bark. If I’d been so unkind as give you bound to Ibian when he asked me, go, I’d wager five firkins of muscatel ’gainst a couple of peasen you’d ne’er gone gulling again. – Arquez?’
Arquez sullenly answered, ‘No.’
‘What’s no? I say you brought men, contrary to troth plighted ’twixt us. Answer me directly without colour whether it be so or not.’
‘I say directly, your highness, it is not so.’
A combust black choler seemed to darken the Vicar’s eyes glaring upon him. There was silence a minute. Then the Vicar spoke again, sitting back in his chair with folded arms. ‘By the ear-feathers of Sathanas! I’m heartily minded to a done with you all. My Lord Stathmar and I come hither alone, as articled:’ (here Gabriel, passing in his hithers and thithers out of the door, with none to mark him, laughed in his sleeve): ‘the rest break faith, e’en in so slight a matter, quick as a dog will eat a pudding.’ Like rabbits under the menace of the stoat, those great lords sat mum, meeting one after the other the eye of him upon them. ‘Where’s Mandricard?’ None could tell. ‘If he hath turned tricksome – go, they say kings have long hands: a shall find that I have longer. I’ll have him caboshed like a stag and bub my wine from’s brain-pan. Look you,’ he said, and a sudden great clattering blow of his fist on the board made all leap in their seats, ‘If there be any here doubteth to confide himself to me in this business, let him go home now. I’ll take it upon my honour I’ll bear him neither grudge nor disfavour. So only it be now o’ the instant; for, after this business be opened, to turn back then shall cost a man nothing but his life.’
But they, as with one mouth, with most vehement heat of oaths and promises, pledged him their fealty.
‘Then,’ said he, ‘to proceed with frankness to the matter. There’s not a man here but of Rerek born and bred. In this land of our fathers hath changes come about, these ten years or more. We be loyal liege subjects all unto our sovereign Lord the King (Gods send he live for ever). For all that, we feel the changes: feel the foreign hand upon us. Instance myself: Laimak since thirty generations her own mistress, but now fief royal: we must do suits and services. For the lesser fish i’ the pond, where were they today if I had not stood ’twixt them and forfeit of their privileges? Where were Mandricard? County Olpman, where were you? With the headsman’s hands already fumbling at your neckband, whose mercy, say, save mine could have availed to keep that head of yours upon your shoulders? Ay, and a dozen more i’ the like despaired condition, attainted after Valero’s treason? You, and you too, my Lord Stathmar, are witness to the sharpness of my correction of that traitor: to the sharpness too of my dealing with some that, se
eing the realm fallen in a roar, thought it time to oppress their neighbours. But I shaved their beards right smooth and clean – insolents, o’ the kidney of yonder office nobility we see puffed up now, Jeronimy, Beroald, Roder, and their kind: crammed till they belch again with the rightful sustenance of better men. So help me, I’ll pluck down some or another of them too, ere I come to my grey hairs. Then you, Gilmanes. Be you remembered the King took Kaima from you, the most rich and precious stone out of your princely coronal, ’cause of this matter of your brother Valero; but by my procurement, was given you back again. I helped you ’gainst your neighbour Princes, Ercles and Aramond, that, of their long accustomed malice many years rooted, so vexed you in your borders. ’Twas thanks only to my speedy intelligence but last winter, in your little beggarly town of Veiring, that you ’scaped there unmurdered. I have still helped and upholden you in correcting of the mutiny of certain cities in your parts, which were dread in time to allure and stir the more part of the other cities to the like. To you, Arquez and Clavius, I say but this: I have in a casket matter against you enough (should you displease me) to send you to them that shall cut out the head, gammon, and flitches, and hang up the rest pro bono publico.
‘Broach some more wine, good pug,’ he said to Gabriel. ‘So much friendly exhortation marvellously dries the throat.’ He thrummed a morris dance on the table with his fingers while the wine was pouring. When he looked up, the thunder-clouds had left his face. ‘We be loyal liege subjects all,’ he said. ‘But sad ’tis and true ’tis, no King lives for ever; and ’tis mere prudence to ponder what waits us round the next turning. ’Twere no great wonder if some that have well and truly served King Mezentius should boggle if it were to come to King Styllis.’
