The Zimiamvia Trilogy

by E R Eddison

  ‘Where indeed? But I am not for your political chessboard, in whichever capacity: to be moved about. I begin to find I have an appetite,’ she said, in a pensiveness now, delicately inclining to stroke her horse’s neck, ‘to be my own self-mover.’

  That same day at evening, upon bidding goodnight, Beroald said to her, ‘I will make you a promise which, until this unlucky turn this morning, I’d have thought needless between you and me. It is this: never to use you, unless of your own free motion or consent, for a means to ends of mine.’

  In Fiorinda’s eyes was a twinkle of the mind between sceptic caution and comical intuition, touched with a kind of love. ‘Thanks, noble brother: let’s make this bargain mutual. And hold me not ungracious that I do fear th’ engagement may prove harder for you to abide by than for me ’twill be.’

  ‘Come, be just to each other. For me, what is’t but stick to what hath become my natural habit since first you could prattle?’

  ‘I think,’ said she, playing with his fingers, ‘you may find it less easy now.’ Then, looking up, and very demurely and sweetly putting her arms about his neck: ‘We understand each other?’

  As a sophister should at need speak smooth words at the Sphinx, ‘I think so,’ said the Chancellor; and so saying, with an unbelieving twist of his lean lips, beheld shadows of things past all understanding, unmapped stars of bale and of bliss, come and go in the profundities of his young sister’s eyes.

  ‘Good,’ she said, and kissed him. Laughing, they took hands, and so goodnight. He watched her go up the shining staircase; a beauty of motion that was intertangled as in counterpoint with the beams of lamplight and candlelight faintly swaying; then, with the same unbelieving smile on his lips, betook him to his study.

  The Lord Baias’s wooing, thus hastily begun and ever the more furiously urged and with an impatience the angrier and the sharper set as it became more manifest what dance his mistress meant to lead him, dragged and tarried through the summer. In the end (more, it was commonly suspicioned, with a mind to humour her brother than for any inordinate liking for her suitor’s person), she accepted him. A few days later (early September) they were wed in Krestenaya with circumstance and ceremony befitting their noble station, and so with honour and rejoicing brought home to Masmor.

  After the first month guests began to be received, and greatly was Baias envied his fair and lovely bride. Some, with more inquiring eyes and shrewd minds observing the climate, tasted uneasiness in the house, spite of all outward gaiety. It was noted moreover that Baias and his lady seldom accepted invitations in the countryside but kept much to their own society, and that she, for her part, was never seen in Zayana. Some that were very knowing said, wagging their beards, that the Chancellor’s hand was in this, contriving, through Baias, to continue still his old policy of seclusion. Howsoever, it was the household folk at Masmor that had best commodiousness to acquaint themselves with these affairs, and with other little things besides. And now, as the season drew on toward mid November, it began to be merrily whispered among them that not only had her ladyship had since some time past her own chamber, but her lord was nowadays not seldom exiled to his own bed for several nights together.

  These misspeakings coming at length to Baias’s ear, he took marvellous displeasure at them: let seize three of the girls deemed guilty of such tittle-tattle: duck them in the castle pond; then scissors, for well shorting and clipping away of their garments to large show of their naked thighs: for last disgrace, off with their hair; and so, in that dishonest and ugly pickle, pack them home. Whether upon suspicion of this talk’s having a higher source than the mouths it had been heard drop from, or whether for a spite fed by deeper springs wholly removed from these, he now upon some slight unclear pretext sent for Anthea and Campaspe. These maidens being come before him he used very roughly, speaking doggery at them: calling them a pair of fleering slavish parasites, whose jibes behind his back (because he was not book-learned) he highly disdained any longer to endure: bade them therefore within one hour void clean out of the castle and no more resort to the same. ‘Any she that disobeys, her hair goes off for it. That’s blushed your cheeks, ha? And not to be compounded by a minute’s perfunctory scissoring such as sufficed this morning. O, no: you ladies would be honoured with very respectful care and tendance: have it close shorn to begin with: then the razor. Fear nothing; you need but dispose yourselves as convenience of shaving may require, and so sit still, gently resigned up to have it taken so, with extreme particular dainty, everywhere all completely off, quite and clean. Ponder on that. If you have no desire for such a needful service to be done unto you, study to meddle with your own business and obey my command. And now begone. Nay then, come you back a moment, you laughing minxes: one more word. Flatter not yourselves with the vain conceit that being gentlewomen exempts you from the barber. Were you never so noble born, upon my honour as a Meszrian lord I swear to you, it should off. Trespass you but once; clipped, soaped, and faithfully shaven you shall be, nesh and smooth as two little sea-pigs. Except your eyelashes, for I’ll not be cruel, there’s not one hair shall remain upon.’

  My Lady Fiorinda took no overt notice of this undecent severity against her domestics nor of the dismissal of her waiting-gentlewomen, as though she would have it supposed that she thought it best to suffer the order of the world to manage her, for this present, without further inquisition. In truth, she herself was put to but very slight inconvenience; for Anthea and Campaspe, unshaping their bodies to their customary disguise of beast or bird, were able at all times of day or night to be present at need in Masmor. It is not to be thought that their nymphish minds misdoubted their lady’s inward peace; for how (they might in their innocency question) should She, that holds in Her own self the world everlasting and unbegotten, She for whom all worlds are made, behold or know unhappiness? For all that, they scented trouble. Many a time, as the days grew shorter and the sap sunk and even in these soft sea-lands of South Meszria light ground-frosts sometimes sharpened the breath of night, Mistress Anthea licked her lips and, as frost makes the fire glow brighter in the grate, so the upright slits of her eyes burned with a more fulvid splendour. Many a time too, in her lynx-dress, she frighted her sister, chasing her for her sport. And had Baias been a man of less lion-like metal, having the ordinary aptness to obey the heart-emptying touch of fear, he were like to have been frighted too: beholding from the solitude of his bed, and not once or twice only, during these nights of the dying year in the chill betwixt midnight and dawn, those beast-eyes stare upon him, out of the black and silent darkness. The third time, a little before Yule, he said to Fiorinda at breakfast that albeit she seemed, for reasons of her own, to prefer to sleep a-nights oftener with her mountain cat than with him, himself had no such preference; and unless she would promise to kennel the beast henceforth and to give him her company nightly, as of old, as a wife should, he would without further warning dispatch it with his hunting-knife. The lady listened, her green eyes cold upon him as frozen pebbles on a sea-beach under the moon. She replied: ‘“First serve, syne suit,” I’ve heard say. But that is no maxim of yours, my lord, as I have found from the beginning, more’s the pity.’ With that, she left the table.

  Late the same afternoon, Baias being ridden abroad upon some business and not expected home before supper-time, my Lady Fiorinda was walking her alone in the borders of those great oak-woods that train southwards along the skirts of the hills from Masmor. Here she was met with the learned doctor. After greetings they stood silent awhile, Vandermast’s eyes from beneath their jutting thatch of white eyebrow searching her face in the uncertain and now fast fading light under the trees.

  ‘Your ladyship walks alone?’ he said presently. ‘Where be my little disciples?’

  ‘You must not ask me questions to which you already know the answer.’

  ‘Nay, I worded it amiss, my mind being wholly taken up with your ladyship’s affairs and forgetting that sometimes it is right and needful we attend to matte
rs contingent. I know they are in Lornra Zombremar, having myself, by means of a certain crystal, beheld them there this morning. But I would have asked why.’

  ‘I sent them away after breakfast, with order to dwell for a while in their true shapes, sometimes there, sometimes in Memison, and not to return, in whatever dress, until I shall send for them.’

  ‘You are all alone, then?’

  ‘All alone, with my lord. The time has come when it is best for us to be alone.’

  Doctor Vandermast regarded her narrowly. Then he said: ‘Res nullo modo neque alio ordine a Deo produci potuerunt, quam productae sunt: Things were not able to be brought to being by God in any other manner, nor in any other order, than as they have in fact been brought. And yet this thing is, to my confined and but part-conceiving intellects, absurd: an irrational uncogitable. I mean, your ladyship’s having art or part in this Baias.’

  ‘Indeed it is certain,’ she said, turning her colour and with a curl of the lip, ‘he is, albeit a man of great birth and courage, very smally sensed; save in one particular and there he is a mere commonplace fellow and little deserving of so sanctified a gift: an enslaver of women, hapt in a most unlucky hour upon one he hath not the art to enslave. The nearer known, the more unsufferable he is, I think.’

  ‘Beloved and honoured Mistress,’ said the doctor, ‘being yours while life swayeth within me, and knowing your ladyship, may be, better than sometimes you do know yourself, I consider not of this. For to you there is nought uneasy to achieve. But when I consider of these honest humble harmless children, the great offences and misbehavings he hath done against them as lambs voiceless before their shearer, and abominably purposeth the like against my pretty nymphs—’

  ‘Mew!’ said she, breaking in upon him: ‘these are light occasions of small moment. But if you must know, no harm’s done. My lord Chancellor, by my request, harboureth them in Zemry Ashery: when fit to be seen again, will be ta’en into his household there. There are other privacies committed to my charge more troublesome and of far weightier import than these. As by proof will appear. And if you think not, reverend sir, your love towards me is not such as our watchful friendship towards you hath deserved.’

  Vandermast held his peace. For a minute in silence now, that lady steadily beheld him. The hueless cold light of the winter sun setting unseen behind thick cloud-banks was yet strong enough for his eyes, gazing into hers and upon her countenance, to see, for that minute, the truth of her: her eyes tender as a dove’s: in the bird’s-wing curve of her eyebrows a timeless question that seemed to attend no answer: in her nose, a critical outward-regarding superbity that judged without appeal, and an all-transcending power dwelling serene in each exquisite line (carved by Him who carved the lily’s purity) of bridge and tip and wing and thought-disclosing nostril. Her lips were lightly pursed together, as in a divine demur between doubt and unrelenting will: their sudden up-turns at the corners held, through these strained moments, a gravity of annealed barbed hooks forged from a half-regretful gentleness: turtle’s breast changed to adamant by infection of some unturnable spirit that informed the strength of her underlip, clear-cut and level above the slender firmness of her chin. Worlds’ wonder and heaven’s uncloying commonplace seemed, on these lips, to lie stilled in immortal meditation; wherein, as things partly asleep, love and scorn, and a high Olympian quintessence of inward laughter, and those hearts of pity and ineffable sadness that throb unseen beneath all glory and honour and beauty and beyond all worlds’ endings, seemed to rest, and, as Gods may grieve, to grieve.

  ‘Is it not the way of Them that keep the wide heaven,’ she said, and her voice was gentle as falling shadows of night, ‘to give scope to whomsoever shall require it of Them, that none may needlessly perish? But there cometh always an hour of decision. Lest eternity itself be parcelled out in too unprofitable leases.’

  ‘The ways of Her are unscrutable,’ said that old man, slowly and softly, after a long pause.

  ‘Your deep discerning wisdom,’ she answered, ‘has never disappointed me.’ She was wearing, against the wintry weather, a great cloak of rich black sables fastened at the throat with clasps of hammered silver. She opened it: flashes, under his eyes for a timeless instant, Her beauty that can by its glory darken heaven and consume to ashes all worlds: then, muffling her cloak again about her, was gone: through the trees, back to Masmor.

  Left so, the aged doctor stood fixed: blinded for the while, uncertain of his direction, as a man whose light has been suddenly blown out stands lost in pitch darkness; but Vandermast, for all his darkness, stood rapt in that vision that never until today (he said to the self within himself) was vouchsafed to mortal eye.

  Ten days later, upon New Year’s Eve in Masmor, supper done and the guests departed, her ladyship was sat idly reading before a fire of cedar-wood in her own bower that opened off the main hall. To her left, upon a three-legged table of walnut inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl and arabesques of silver, nine candles in a great crystal candlestick gave a gentle and companiable light, pleasant for reading. These, and the lamplight, and the firelight, and the transmuted splendours, begotten of all three, which glowed in the inwards of the twin escarbuncles, big as gold-crest’s eggs, at her ears and sparkled from the facets of the pendant of the same blood-dark stone that slumbered above her breasts, seemed to be things without substance save as part of her: part of her body’s grace: visible emanations of the spirit that informed that body so that it held within itself (mixed and made one, as stillness and the extreme of ruinous power unite at a great whirlpool’s centre) the ruin of worlds and the untarnishable eternity of every world’s desire.

  Baias, in a seeming discontent and irresolution, paced the room, his eyes returning to her as moth to candle-flame. ‘What were you and Melates discoursing of?’ he said, coming to a stand at last over against her, his back to the fire.

  ‘Pleasant nothings,’ she answered, without looking up.

  He came and sat on the arm of her chair. ‘Talk some to me.’

  ‘I pray you begin, then,’ she said, continuing her reading.

  ‘’Twill be a pleasant change when you do as I wish, for once in a while,’ said he: then noting the little mocking lift of her head, snatched her book and threw it on the floor. ‘We might agree better that way.’

  Fiorinda rose, saying under her breath, ‘Oh how long? how long? It is half a death to me, this.’

  ‘What do you mean, “this”?’

  ‘If you would be answered, let go of my skirt.’

  ‘Sit down, then,’ he said, letting go, and sitting himself in her chair. ‘Here.’

  She remained standing, looking him steadily in the eyes.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, and stood up again: thrust his face close to hers. ‘You like to stand, ’cause you are more than common tall? Beware, though, how you look down on me.’

  ‘Don’t touch me, you were best.’

  ‘I haven’t, for a fortnight. That were a pleasant change, too.’

  ‘To you, maybe. We have our several tastes in these matters.’

  Upon that he seized her: mouth kissing her fiercely, her throat, her eyes, her lips, and between her breasts: hands greedy upon her: while she like a very dead thing abode in his arms, suffering all, inert, hard, and without response. After a while he desisted: swung round from her and, under the sting and fury of that flesh-enraging madness, kicked the table over.

  Fiorinda, standing where he had left her, hair fallen down, dress disordered, yet in an imperial immobility, looked on. ‘Poor table. What had that done to be kicked? Have you hurt your toe?’

  ‘Pick up those candles. Would you have us all burn?’

  She remained without stirring. Baias, halting on his right foot, set in order table and candles again: then stood glaring upon her. ‘Fut, I cannot fathom you: this strained modesty: counterfeit coyness. Or is it some prank, some new fantasticness of whorism? What end do you look of it? Are you a woman? Or a tormenting Fury, sent to mak
e me kill you and then myself? Were we wed for that?’

  ‘Perhaps we were. You know better than I.’

  Sitting him down again in her chair, ‘Get you to bed, madam,’ he said, avoiding her gaze. ‘I’ll give you ten minutes for unreadying of yourself. Then I’ll follow and make my peace; and an end so, I hope, of these jars and bickerings.’

  That lady, looking down on him, searched his face for a moment, but still his eyes avoided hers. She turned and, with head bowed, walked very slowly to the door: paused there, and with head erect looked on him again. Their eyes met. ‘You desire me,’ she said, ‘but you do not know, nor desire to know, how to make love to me.’ He glowered upon her in silence, the sweat shining on his brow, the great veins standing out thick and hard on his temples. ‘And,’ she said, her hand behind her on the door-latch, ‘so it has been from the beginning: a disableness in you, I suppose, to understand what things, and when, please me, and what displease.’ She opened the door: then, turning her again to face him: ‘In brief, you are a gluttonous and malignant fool.’

  With that, she was gone.

  Baias sat still as death. His hands, that had a sheen on the backs of them of delicate golden hair, were clamped upon the chair’s arms. His eyes were on the clock. When it was a little past eleven he stood up and with firm but noiseless tread went from the room and so upstairs, and, being come to his lady’s bedchamber, tried the door. It was bolted on the inside. Smoothing the accents of his voice, albeit like a hot proud horse his high blood quivered in them, ‘Open,’ he said, ‘my love, my dew-pear, my earth’s delight. Open, and I will you the order of all that I have. Let me in. I love you.’

  He stood listening: not a sound from within. So still it was, he might hear the clock ticking in the hall below. He shook the door. She said, from inside, ‘No opening of doors to you tonight, my lord.’ And, upon his shaking it again: ‘If you look for any more love-liking, in your life, betwixt you and me, importune me no more tonight’