by E R Eddison
‘Because I ask you.’
‘The best of all reasons, madam’: (she interrupted, under her breath, ‘It used to be’): ‘but not a reason of state. Come, come,’ he said, still watching her narrowly, and his brows frowned as with some mounting anger at this insisting, without all reason, upon a thing of so small weight or moment to fool away his time withal: ‘Woman’s nonsense. The boy wants his revenge; wants to be his own again: wants to be king. And all these are appetites make him meat for us. Why, he is the peg my whole design’s hung upon. No need for you to be troubled with him; but I will for no sake let him go. Besides,’ he said, turning again to his papers, ‘I love him well. Were’t but to play chess a-nights with, which is a prime merit in him, I’ll not forgo his company.’
Queen Stateira bit her lip. He reached for the letter from the King of Akkama, took his goose-quill pen and, slowly and awkwardly as with fingers to which such an instrument comes with less handsomeness than a sword or a spear, yet steadily without pause nor doubt, as one under no necessities to search for words to fit his clear-built purpose, fell to drafting of his reply. The Queen, noiselessly on that deep carpet, came round behind him: hovered a moment: bent, and kissed his head. He wrote on, without sign that he was any longer ware of her presence. ‘I must go,’ she said. The King sprang up: undid the doors for her. As she came into the outer chamber, where at a side-table the King’s secretary was setting papers in order, the great iron locks clashed home behind her.
Not until she was well shut in the privacy of her own room, did she unmask. There, thrown, as on a bed of snakes, between (like enough) some drunkenness in her blood strained up by Aktor and (like enough, for the moment) a scalding indignation against the King, she let go all and wept.
V
PRINCESS MARESCIA
THE lord Supervius Parry, albeit with pace slowed by a long train of pack-horses laden with wedding gifts and nine-tenths of Marescia’s wardrobe, came by great journeys south over the wind-scourged wastes of the Wold, and so down to Megra, and thence by Eldir and Leveringay to Mornagay. Thence, taking the bridle-path over the mountains (which is steep, dirty and dangerous, but shorter and more expeditious than the low road south-about by Hornmere and Owldale), he came, after a three-and-a-half-weeks’ journey from Rialmar without stay or mishap, on the afternoon of the seventeenth of April, home to Laimak. Here were preparations already completed for his return, but for the next seven days he set all his household folk to toil and moil as if three-score devils were at their tails, labouring to turn his own private quarters above Hagsby’s Entry into a fit place to lodge a bride in, to whom luxurious splendours were but the unremarkable and received frame proper to ordinary polity and civility. And doubtless it would have ill suited his intents, were his great house of Laimak to show in her eyes as little better than a rude soldier’s hold, or she to suppose him content that here from hence-forward she should live like a hog. By the week’s end, all was altered and nicely ordered to his liking, and the folk about the castle set agog for impatience to welcome home so great and famous a lady as history hath not remembered among those that had been mistress here aforetime.
But as day followed day and yet no word or sign of the Princess, men began to wonder. Nor did they find wholesome nor comfortable their lord’s thunderous silences that deepened and darkened as the days passed; nor his sometimes flashings into unforeknowable violence, which, like flashings of lightning, struck with impartial chanceableness and frightening suddenness who or what soever happed in their path at their blasting-time.
Between sunset and dark on the second day of May, it being a clear evening with the stars coming out in a rain-washed sky after a day of down-pour and tempest, Supervius was pacing to and fro in the great courtyard: slow, measured steps with a swift caged-beast turn-about at either end of the walk. Laughably in manner of a farm-lad who approaches an untethered bull of uncertain temper that may suffer him to draw near, then, without gare or beware, rush upon him and destroy him, came the captain of his bodyguard: said there was a lady below at the gate, alone and on horseback, would answer no questions as concerning her name or condition, but demanded to be brought instant before their master.
Supervius glowered at him. ‘Hast seen the woman?’
‘No, my lord.’
‘You lewd misordered villain, why not, then? Why is she not brought to me here, if she asks that?’
‘Because of your lordship’s command, that no unknown person shall be admitted without your lordship’s pleasure first known. ’Twas referred to me by the officer o’ the guard for tonight, to learn your will, my lord, what he must do with her.’
‘I would the Devil had her, and you to the bargain.’
The captain waited.
Supervius took another turn. ‘Well, why is she not fetched up?’
The captain, with a low leg, departed: came again the next minute with the Princess Marescia Parry in pitiful disarray. Supervius looked at her, and the whole poise of his body seemed to stiffen. ‘Leave us,’ he said, resuming his to’s and fro’s. When they were alone he came to a halt and stood there, looking at her. Not a muscle in him stirred, save that a quick ear might catch a thickness and a tumultuousness in his breathing and a keen eye note the eyes of him in this half-light, while he watched her as a trained dog points at game. The Princess, for her part, held a like silence and a like stillness. Even in this gathering dusk it was easy to see she was as a very dowdy or slut, dirted and dishevelled with long hard riding, and hard lying may be, in the open field; and, for all she bore herself bravely enough, there was that in her that said, for all her speechlessness and the firmness of her lip, that she held it good her travels were over and she, howsoever miserably, here at last. With bull-like deliberation he began now to move towards her: then, as he came near, seized her in like sort and to like purpose (but with all unlike effect) as Tarquin seized Lucrece. Marescia was a big woman and a strong, but in a twinkling he had her up in his arms and in under the huge shadowy archway of Hagsby’s Entry. Thence, without pause for breath, and despite her inarticulate protests and gusts of astonished half-smothered laughter, he carried her up the dark stairs of his own chamber trimmed up on purpose for her with those sumptuous costly furnishings he had brought south with him, and there, without ceremony, and quite unregarding of the pickle she was in, rain-soaked riding-habit and muddied boots, disposed her on the bed.
‘Nay, and now tell me, you sweet-breath’d monkey,’ said Supervius, upon his elbow, and with his face at near range looking down at hers. She lay there supine: outplayed and tamed for the while: closed eyes, half-closed lips: head turned away, exposing so into view her throat, smooth, sleek, white, like some Titan woman’s, and the pulse of blood in it: one hand twining and untwining and straying and losing itself in the curled masses of his great red beard, the other yet straining down on his hand which rested upon her breast.
‘Shorn of my train,’ she answered presently, in a sleepy voice that seemed to taste pleasure in its own displeasure: ‘tooken like a common cut-purse by my own folk: should a been clapt up in prison too, I think, and I’d not given ’em the slip. I hope you deserve me, my lord: so good faithful a wife, and a so quick contriver of means. There’s this in you, that you love me impatiently. I’d ne’er stomach you less than greedy.’ Then, suddenly springing up: ‘In the Devil’s name, how much longer must I famish here without my supper?’
‘Shall be here in the flick of a cat’s tail.’
‘Well, but I’ll dress first,’ said Marescia.
‘Meantime, tell me more. So far ’tis the mere chirping of frogs: terrible words I scantly believe and can make no sense of.’
‘I’ll dress first,’ she said, opening a cupboard or two and, with some satisfaction, seeing her clothes hang there that came on before with Supervius. ‘Nor not with you for looker-on, neither, my lord. Who suffers her husband in her dressing-chamber, were as good turn him off to go nest with wagtails. Where did I learn that, think you? From my
mother’s milk, I think. ’Tis native wisdom, certain.’
Supper was in the old banquet-hall, that was built in shape like an L, having a row of great windows in the long north-western wall, a main door, opening on the courtyard, at the far end, and a door going to the buttery and kitchens at the end of the shorter arm of the L. On the inner angle was the hearth, capacious enough to roast a neat, and a fire burning, of mighty logs. The walls were of black obsidian stone, and upon all save that which had windows were huge devilish faces, antic grotesco-work, cut in high relief, thirteen, with their tongues out, and upon each tongue’s tip a lamp; and the goggling eyes of them were of looking-glass artificially cut in facets to disperse the beams of the lamplight in bushes of radiance, so that the hall was filled with light that shifted and glittered ever as the beholder moved his head. Long tables ran lengthways down the main hall, one on either side, and here the Lord Supervius’s home-men were set at meat.
When the great leaved doors were flung wide and the Lady Marescia Parry, for this her first time, entered in state, gorgeously attired now in her bridal gown of white chamlet and lace of gold and with her yellow hair braided and coiled in bediamonded splendour above her brow, every man leapt from his seat and stood up to honour her and to feast his gaze upon her; while she, not a filly unridden but with the step and carriage of a war-horse and with bold chestnut eyes flashing back the bright lights, passed up between the benches on her lord’s arm to take her place with him at the high table, which stood alone upon a dais in the north corner opposite the fire. Here, in sight but out of ear-shot of all other parts of that banquet hall, were covers laid for two.
‘And now?’ said Supervius, when they were set. He brimmed his goblet with a rough tawny wine from the March lands and drank to her, pottle-deep.
‘And now?’ said she, pushing her cup towards him. ‘Well, pour me out to drink, then. Is these Rerek manners? a man to bib wine while’s wife, out of a parched mouth, shall serve him up tittle-tattle?’
He filled. She swallowed it down at a single gulp, first savouring it curiously on her tongue. ‘To go to the heart of the matter,’ she said, ‘as touching mine own particular, I long since took a mislike to that Aktor. The Queen I love well, albeit but cousins by affinity (not german, as I was to the King). And in this pernicious pass, with the whole land in a turmoil, besides fury and sedition of the rude people grown in the late unhappy accident, methought it likely Aktor would use her for his fool: she being caught in a forked stick betwixt doting of him (as I, of my quick sense, have precisely long suspected) and fearing for her son, and thus uncapable of firm action; while this hot-backed devil, under colour of her authority, more and more carrieth the whole sway of the court. So, to cut the Gordian knot and do for her (no leave asked) what, might she but be unbesotted, she must know to be most needful, I fled with the King before a soul could note it, meaning to have him away with me hither into Rerek. But they caught me in two days: took the child back to Rialmar, and would—’
‘A burning devil take you!’ said Supervius, breaking in upon this: ‘what misty Tom-a-Bedlam talk have we here? of Aktor: and the Queen: and you ran with the King’s highness to Rerek? Are you out of your wits, woman? Are you drunk?’
Marescia stared as if stupefied at his amazement. Then, clapping down her hand on his where it grasped the table’s edge, ‘Why, is’t possible?’ she said, her sight clearing. ‘I’m yet here faster than news can travel, then? Faith, I’ve lost all count of time i’ this hugger-mugger, and know not what day it is. Hadn’t you not heard, then, of King Mardanus’s death: tenth day after our wedding?’
Supervius sat for a moment like a man stricken blind. ‘Dead? On what manner? By what means?’
‘Good lack, they murdered him up. By a hired rascal from Akkama stol’n into Teremne. So at least ’twas given out. But (in your secret ear) I am apt to think ’twas Aktor did it. Or by Aktor’s setting on.’
The Lord Supervius drank deep. She watched him turn colour, pale then red again, and his brow became as a storm-cloud. She said, ‘I see’t hath troubled you near. Say you: begin you now to think that was an ill cast you threw then, when you married with me?’
‘O hold your tongue with such foolishness: I think no such matter.’
‘That’s as well, then. I gave you credit for that.’
Supervius, as brooding darkly on this new turn, ate and drank without more words said. The Princess followed suit, now and then casting a glance at him to see, if she might, what way the wind was shifting. After a long time he looked at her and their eyes met. Marescia said, ‘Yet I’m sorry they got the child Mezentius from me. Better he were here, for his and our most advantage, rather than with’s mother, if Aktor must rule the roast there. And yet, ’tis a roast we may yet draw sustainment from, God turning all to the best.’
Her lord looked still at her with an unmoved stare that, from a bullish sullenness, changed by little and little to the stare of a proud ambitious man at a looking-glass that glads him with the express counter-shape of his best-loved self. ‘Come sweet heart,’ he said then, ‘we will closely to these matters. And somewhat we’ll presently devise, doubt it not, much to our good. But I’ll take my brother Emmius with me, or I move one step on the road I seem to see before me.’
He bade his steward, supper now being done, dismiss all the company. And so, private in that banquet-hall hour by hour, till the lamps began to flicker and go out and only the glow of embers on the hearth showed them each other’s faces, he and she sat long into the night, talking and devising.
VI
PROSPECT NORTH FROM ARGYANNA
EMMIUS Parry had sat now more than four years in Argyanna, keeping house there in so high a style as not in all Rerek had its example, but yet to compare with Rialmar in the northlands or Zayana of the south it should have seemed no such great matter. It was thought that, need arising, he could at any time upon three days’ notice set forth an army of a thousand men weaponed at all points and trained in all arts of war: this not to reckon two hundred picked men-at-arms whom he maintained under his hand at all seasons, for show of power and to keep order, and in readiness for any work he might assign them.
For three or four generations this lonely out-town, set in strength amid untranspassable fens, had been to the Parry in Laimak as a claw stretched forth southward upon the batable lands watered by the river Zenner: an armed camp, governed by the lords of Laimak through officers who were creatures of theirs and servants but never until now men of their own blood and line, in case, from the great strength of the place, it might grow to be a hand which someday, turning against the body it longed to, might break down the whole in ruin.
From Sleaby and Ketterby on the northern part and thence, west-about by the Scrowmire and east-about by the Saylings, to Scruze and Scrightmirry on the south, the Lows of Argyanna lie ten miles long and as many in breadth. In these Lows is going neither for man nor for beast (be it more than a water-rat or an otter): only the water-fowl inhabit upon that waste of quaking-bogs. The harrier-hawks share out their dominion there by day: the owl (which the house of Laimak have for their badge or cognizance) hunts there by night, when all feathered living beings else are at roost, except the night-jar who preys on night-flying moths that breed in the fen. And through the night hobby-lanterns flicker, hither and thither in the mist and the darkness, above scores of thousands of acres, unpathed, quicksandy, squeltering in moss and slub and sedge.
In the middle of this sea of quagmire is a lone single island of sure footing and solid ground, watered with streams that have their source in a tarn of which no plummet has found the bottom: an unfailing source that puts up pure, cold and sweet from the under-rocks, not surface water from the highlands of old Rerek such as feeds the marsh. The firm land stretches a five miles’ length north-west to south-east, with a biggest width of about three and a half: all of rich well-husbanded grazings and ploughlands which train upwards towards the north, but nowhere to rise more than twenty foot at most abo
ve the marsh-level; except at the head of the land north-westward near the tarn where the northern scarp comes up gently to a flat of perhaps twice that height, to fall again abruptly in a low cliff on the west; and here, wholly ringed about with walls of great thickness and strength, lies Argyanna. The highway from the north, coming down by Hornmere and Ristby and so south through Susdale, strikes the Lows two miles south of Sleaby, and is carried south across them, straight as a carpenter’s rule, to Argyanna and so on south to Scrightmirry, by a ten-mile causeway of granite which rests upon oaken piles through mire and ooze to bed on the rock. This road, where it crosses the tongue of land that lies out westward from the fortress, runs along the moat for several hundred paces, and so close under the walls of the main keep that, granted good natural munition and aptitude and a favouring wind from the east, a man on the battlements might spit on a passer-by. The Lord Emmius, when after his father’s death he moved household and came down hither from Sleaby, built gate-houses astride of this road: one where the road comes upon the tongue, and that almost within stone-cast of the town wall, and another somewhat farther off where the road leaves land again for the marsh: this the greater and stronger of the two as a hold against the south should occasion require it. In time of peace the gates stood open, and travellers whether rich or poor had free entertainment there and a night’s lodging if they would, and all with the greatest openhandedness and largesse.
Upon the fifth of May, Supervius came with his lady to Argyanna about midday and there had good welcome. When they had eaten, Emmius took them to walk in the sunshine upon the wide paved walk that runs full circle round the top of the keep between the battlements and his private lodging which stood back, full circle, in the midst of it.
