by E R Eddison
Rosma in Rialmar
(Chapters XV-XIX)
XV
QUEEN ROSMA
THE king’s thoughts have for some years been drawn toward Meszria. This works well with Emmius Parry’s long-sighted policy, who, independently and with different (but far from hostile) interests, has been steering towards the same mark: namely a nearer and still more exalted connection between the Parry (this time, of Argyanna) and the royal house of Fingiswold.
In 749 the King sends Jeronimy to ask Rosma to receive a visit from the King in person, since they are now conterminous sovereigns and ought to be friends. In late autumn the King comes to Zayana. Purely as a matter of high policy, he proposes marriage. Posing as an unscrupulous politician after her own pattern, he shows in their preliminary conversations a remarkable and detailed knowledge of her history and her polyandrous proceedings. (He is now aged twenty-six: Rosma thirty-five.)
The queen, reflecting on these conversations, has the sensation of having been saddled and bridled: of having been made drunk with the King’s personality and led by that to talk too much. However, it is not her habit to let anything except cold logic govern her actions, and by that test alone his offer is not one to be let go: by it he gains Meszria while she gains Fingiswold and Rerek. She gains, also, what is less to her taste: a master. But this inconvenience may in any case be unavoidable, since the King’s overlordship in Rerek brings nearer home the danger of coercion if she is obdurate. Moreover, although their conversations have throughout been upon the explicit terms that marriage is to entail no relations between them beyond the political, she feels vaguely, as with Beltran, but now at a profounder level with King Mezentius, that here is a man for whose sake she might, if ever she should, which is to her inconceivable, make a fool of herself. After a few days’ consideration, she answers that, on his present proposal, the scales are too much weighted in the King’s favour as against her, since she, as a woman, gives up her independence by marrying. If, however, he will bring Akkama into the dowry, then she will accept.
XVI
LADY OF PRESENCE
MEANWHILE, the King’s heart is set upon Amalie, a young lady of the queen’s bedchamber, aged sixteen, and passionately beloved by this self-willed and bloody woman. He and Amalie do not so much fall in love as have an intimation, at first looks exchanged between them and without word spoken, that they are lovers, and have been so since the beginning; and this, since not in this present (Zimiamvian) life, therefore presumably in some other world, or worlds. This echoes back to the Praeludium: the fifteen years ‘in our own house at Nether Wastdale,’ and his seeing her ‘dead in the Morgue at Paris’. The intimation, sometimes momentary, sometimes longer in duration, is yet fitful and unseizable. Like a perfume, it cannot be revived in memory, but, when present, has the quality of conjuring up in solid actuality of circumstance and detail all that belongs to it. He tells Amalie that he cannot offer her a crown: kings wed for policy, not for love. But he does offer her himself, and on no temporary nor no partial terms. He tells her he is going north on the Akkama business, and that in two years he means to come back, with that accomplished, for her.
In this the King is entirely open with Rosma. He will make Akkama tributary to Fingiswold, and in two years will return to Zayana to claim her hand. Their marriage is to be a purely political relationship: his wife, except in name, will be Amalie. The queen will be free (on sole condition of avoiding public scandal) to console herself as she may please. Rosma laughs. She holds these amusements much over-rated, and is perfectly content with his proposals.
XVII
AKKAMA BROUGHT INTO THE DOWRY
THE king returns north, stopping a few days in Argyanna to confer with his future father-in-law. Preparations last far into the summer of the next year (750). In August, he marches on Akkama with a great army of Fingiswold levies and a powerful contingent from Rerek under command of Supervius Parry, who has with him Horius, his son by Marescia, aged twenty-four, and Hybrastus (Emmius’s son, aged thirty-three). Ercles (aged thirty-two), and Aramond (aged twenty-three), and Valero, Prince of Ulba (aged twenty), are also in this expedition. Emmius had pressed personal participation upon Supervius, both in the family interest and not to be outweighed by the Ercles faction.
The campaign of 750 ends with a severe reverse: Supervius Parry killed in battle; Ercles taken prisoner. But the King after a few months retrieves all and, taking Akkama by surprise by a winter campaign (a thing unheard of in that part of the world), crushes all resistance after three or four big battles, the last one about mid-February 751.
Throughout this decisive war, Horius Parry distinguishes himself both as soldier and as counsellor: an old head on young shoulders. He on land and Jeronimy at sea are (after Supervius’s death) the King’s chief lieutenants. Prince Valero, a protégé of Emmius Parry’s, also does brilliant work. Seeds of ill will are sown in Horius’s secret heart against Valero.
During four months’ intensive work in subdued Akkama a violent quarrel comes to a head between Horius and Hybrastus Parry. Hybrastus palpably in the wrong bids his cousin to the duello and is killed. Horius, with great courage and judgement, obtains leave to go south immediately to make his peace with his uncle Emmius. He comes to Argyanna, outspeeding all rumours, armed with a letter from the King that gives the facts, and in effect offering Emmius ‘self-doom’.
Emmius, partly for love of bravery in a man, partly for deep and sound reasons of policy, magnanimously forgives his son’s death, but demands from Horius, by way of atonement, material guarantees in the March of Ulba, including possession of the fortress of Kessarey and the personal right to appoint a Lord President of the Marches. He appoints Count Bork. The result is that politically as well as strategically Emmius will now be all-powerful (under the King) in the whole region of the Zenner.
Horius Parry succeeds his father in Laimak. He remains on good terms with his uncle (now aged sixty) but chafes at his power, likely to be greatly increased as the King’s father-in-law as well as by this new agreement. As his personal agent and intelligencer at Emmius’s court in Argyanna, Horius maintains one Gabriel Flores (aged twenty-two), a low-born adventurer whom he seduced from Ercles’s service a year or two back when Ercles had placed Gabriel, as his spy, in Laimak.
With his own elder half-brother, Geleron Parry, who sits like a thorn in Anguring, Horius is on terms of thinly disguised hostility. Geleron (as son to Supervius by his first wife Rhodanthe, whom Supervius put away to marry Marescia) thinks he ought by rights to have Laimak, but Supervius left it by will to Horius.
XVIII
THE SHE-WOLF TAMED TO HAND
THE king returns at midsummer, five months before the date appointed, to Zayana – and to Amalie. He weds Rosma, in great state and with public acclamation and rejoicings, on the terms agreed upon.
The Queen, in spite of her view of such ‘amusements,’ cannot upon actual experience brook Amalie’s position as the King’s mistress in Zayana. Her attitude in this is complex, and her grievance not so much that Amalie is her rival in the King’s affections (which she at this stage cares nothing for) as that he has taken Amalie away from her. At the Yule feast, December 751, Rosma tries to burn the King and Amalie together; but in this she is thwarted by the King, who also succeeds (almost beyond belief) in keeping the whole affair secret so far as Rosma’s share in it is concerned.
After this, he tells the Queen that Meszria is not good for her, nor she for Meszria: to save her face, she had better give out (as her own proposal) that she desires a change of residence, and that the Queen of the Three Kingdoms ought to live in the chief seat-town, namely Rialmar. As underlining the fact that she must play second fiddle (politically), the King says he proposes to install Jeronimy in Meszria as Commissioner Regent.
Rosma is at first mad wroth at all this, and the King with great difficulty prevents her from hurting herself or him. However, he keeps his temper; and the end of it is that she, savouring curiously on her palate a
new pleasure (of a man that can master her and also laugh at her), falls in with his plans.
This is the beginning of a closer and deeper relationship, almost of friendship, between the King and Rosma. She now resides permanently in Rialmar, while he divides his time between the three countries in turn.
XIX
THE DUCHESS OF MEMISON
THE Queen Mother, distasting the prospect of continuing in Rialmar, where she must now yield precedence to a daughter-in-law whose reputation and capabilities she reviews with dismay, resolves to leave Fingiswold. In the spring of 752 she moves south to Lornra Zombremar, in a high eastward-facing valley on the far side of the great snow ranges that enclose Meszria from the east. In this mountain retreat at the edge of the world, in a ‘house of peace’ built for her by art of Doctor Vandermast, she now lives retired from the busy life of courts and the restlessness of great men.
In April 752, Barganax is born in Meszria, and Amalie is made Duchess. On learning of this, the Queen offers divorce; but the King has no intention of making Amalie a queen, nor has she any ambition to be made so. From this arises a strengthening of friendship between King and Queen.
This same year Lessingham is born at Upmire, posthumous son of Romelius, a lord of Rerek who had married in 751 Eleonora, grand-daughter of Sidonius Parry. When in 726 Supervius had put away his wife Rhodanthe (Eleonora’s aunt and Geleron’s mother) in order to marry the Princess Marescia, this sowed enmity between his uncle Sidonius and the house of Laimak; and in that tradition Eleonora of Upmire now brings up her son.
The next few years are years of peace and consolidation, during which the personal hand of the King is felt everywhere throughout the realm.
The Queen indulges in underground political intrigues with her cousins Horius and Geleron Parry, Valero and others. She tries, more from spite than from policy, to set the King against Horius. None of these practices is hid from the King, who cannot resist teasing her; yet their queer friendship (and his and Horius Parry’s) persists and grows. With unseen hand, the King fans the rivalry between the two brothers for his deep purposes.
BOOK FIVE
THE TRIPLE KINGDOM
ARGUMENT WITH DATES
Beltran returns
Birth of Fiorinda
End of Geleron Parry
Barganax and Styllis
Barganax and Heterasmene
Barganax made Duke of Zayana
Prince Valero
King Mezentius and Duchess Amalie visit Queen Stateira
Edward Lessingham and Lady Mary Lessingham
Rebellion in the Marches
Overthrow of Akkama
(Chapters XX–XXVII)
XX
DURA PAPILLA LUPAE
IN August 755, Beltran (now aged forty-three) appears in Rialmar, under an assumed name and in disguise, while the King is in Memison. He discloses himself to the Queen and makes fierce love to her. Rosma, who is now forty-one and in a perilous state of boredom, is at first infuriated but at last, saying she will ne’er consent, consents. Then, in a revulsion as much savager than sixteen years ago it had been in Zayana as her present surrender has been deeper and more passionate, she murders him.
The King, returning, smells out this secret. At length Rosma, knowing herself with child and thoroughly frightened at the King’s enigmatical bearing, confesses all. He receives it with so much humour and magnanimity that she is, for the time at least, bound to him as never before. His only condition is secrecy: if ever she suffers her amours to become public, that will be the end of her. Rosma thinks he means, cut her head off. The mere suggestion (of mutilation of a woman) sickens him. No; but he would make her drink a lethal draught.
On midsummer night 756, Fiorinda is born to Queen Rosma in Rialmar. This child she would have killed or exposed, but the King, employing Anthea for the purpose, and with the help of Beroald, places it, without trace of origin, with the same suppositious parents in Meszria as Beroald was foisted upon, sixteen years ago.
XXI
ANGURING COMBUST
ABOUT April 757, Horius Parry’s feud with his half-brother Geleron comes to a head (not without fostering by the King’s unseen hand). The immediate occasion is Horius’s discovery of foul play between his wife and Geleron. He kills his wife and burns Anguring, destroying Geleron, Geleron’s wife, and their sons and daughters. This hellish deed both rids away, in Geleron, a turbulent and tiresome vassal and puts Horius under yet closer obligations to the King; for the King by a sudden swoop catches him outside his safe hold of Laimak and by pardoning the fratricide (by law, punishable as parricide) tightens the bonds of allegiance that bind Horius to the throne, impressing him at the same time with the sense of being, as it were, in the hand of God.
Rosma finds the King’s handling of this episode after her own heart. It brings her, at this late date, furiously in love with him, partly because of his magnanimity, partly because she is seized with a sudden hankering to give an heir to the Triple Throne, and with the feeling that time is running short if this is to be done. The King, now aged thirty-three, does not trouble himself much about this. If he ever thinks of the succession, his attitude is coloured with the conviction that kings must be kings by competence, not by birth merely, and with an inclination to toy with the idea of Barganax’s possible fitness. Constitutionally, the King is but lightly interested in posterity, intent on building his own edifice of power in his own lifetime: fate and his successors must settle what comes after.
Rosma addresses herself to fascinate him. He is at first repelled, then amused, and finally touched. He suddenly looses himself in a fierce passion for this tiger-cat of his: a kind of lustful camaraderie, involving no disloyalty to the Duchess.
In January 758, Styllis is born in Rialmar. The Queen, full of philoprogenitiveness for her first legitimate offspring, is full too of jealousy against Barganax on her son’s behalf. As Styllis grows up she neglects no occasion to set him against his half-brother.
Beroald, now aged nineteen, studies law under Count Olpman.
XXII
PAX MEZENTIANA
DURING the next twelve years (758-770) of Pax Mezentiana, underground strife still smoulders in Rerek, with constant friction between the Parry and the princes, the free cities putting up their favours by auction to the highest bidder.
In 760, another child, the Princess Antiope, is born to Rosma in Rialmar.
Emmius Parry, looking ahead, in 766 makes Horius his heir. The King, disliking the prospect of so much personal power in one hand (Laimak, Argyanna, Kessarey, and the Marches), also looks ahead. He now declares Megra, Kaima, Kessarey, and Argyanna fiefs royal, but this is not to operate as regards Kaima or Argyanna so long as Gilmanes and Emmius Parry are alive. He puts his own lieutenants in the other fortresses: Arcastus in Megra, Roder in Kessarey. (Arcastus is grandson to Morsilla Parry and her first husband, Caunas, and therefore by tradition opposed to the Pertiscan branch. But Horius Parry captivates his fancy, and he always remains Horius’s loyal supporter.) The fact that Emmius accepts without cavil the position as regards Kessarey, is an evidence of the strength of the friendship and understanding between Emmius and the King.
Beroald (aged twenty-seven) takes, thanks to Jeronimy’s support and recommendation, a large part in advising on the administrative, diplomatic and legal problems involved in this settlement. The King, much taken with his character and abilities, makes him lord of Krestenaya, and presently joins him with Jeronimy as Commissioner Regent in Meszria.
Horius Parry is not best pleased about these arrangements; but the King, admiring the way he accepts them, promises him (and confirms it under seal in his favour) inheritance under his uncle’s will, except as for Argyanna which on Emmius’s death will revert to the crown. Horius, when he succeeds, will thus be all-powerful in the Marches (subject however – a weighty exception – to the key fortress of Argyanna), but is deprived of Megra and (of course) of Kessarey. He (in common with most of the great vassals of Rerek and Meszr
ia) inclines to dislike Beroald and the Admiral and Roder as ‘office nobility’ and upstarts.
XXIII
THE TWO DUKES
BARGANAX, at fifteen, is as big and as strong and well grown as any young man in the land three years his elder. His first love is Heterasmene, a young widow and lady of honour at the Duchess’s court in Memison. Heterasmene for her part greatly enjoys this worship but, when he makes violent love to her, thinks it her duty to inform the Duchess. Amalie, judging it an admirable education for her son and making sure that the lady scoffs at the very thought of marriage with a boy half her age, rejoices that Heterasmene should at once amuse herself and bring up Barganax in the way he should go: an arrangement which works to their mutual benefit and, after a year or two, ends gradually: friendship preserved and no hearts broken. The lady, in return for this kindness, is made Countess in her own right by the King, and soon afterwards weds a lord in Rialmar.
In 770 Barganax, being now eighteen, comes of age. The King creates him Duke of Zayana, the title formerly held by heirs apparent to the old kingdom of Meszria. Rosma dislikes the implication. On Barganax’s induction into his dukedom, Doctor Vandermast (hitherto his tutor) assumes the post of secretary. The King assigns to Barganax an apanage with lands extending far beyond the limits of the dukedom. Styllis, incensed at this, nurses his old jealousies and old and new grievances, which the Queen his mother does not neglect to influence.
XXIV
PRINCE VALERO
