by E R Eddison
She said: Our Father which watchest out of Ida, most glorious, most great, what is this You have spoken? A dangerous saying; and not Your own, I think. Certainly not Mine. What turn next, then?
He said: My creation-old instrument, Death.
She said: No more than so? O, You have turned up the lights again. Your talk had put a strange thing in Me I could not give a name to, without it were Fear.
He said: Be You not too certain sure. This lust that devours Me, of knowing and doing, burns fiercelier than can be put out with what mortals call Death. I could, before, by that common gate, cross Lethe: even as have not I and You, time unto time and without time, crossing it drunk oblivion? And so, with Our mind as a white paper unwritten, have refreshed Us for life and action in new mansions of this Olympus. In which are many mansions. But what soul-heal is there in that, to redeem this all-knowing knowing? Whereby they are all, here and now, present to Me already: as good go here as there, do this as that: alike it is idleness and vanity.
She said: Do not I, O My Father and My Lover, know them too? Yet there is in My knowing, no stain of this fever, of this unpeace.
He said: Who knoweth better than I, that You know All? But You are of so blest a nature as can be content to know and look on: enjoy, and not meddle: be adored, be had, rest in Your peace: the peace of that which is All, and Enough. But I, by some necessity of My nature, will to go further.
The song had ended. In the moment’s silence, while folk yet sat held with the passion of it and the language and the vision, King Mezentius looked still (as Barganax too looked, but he, for his comfort, with a gaze that sounded not, as his Father’s, the uttermost deeps) on that Dark Lady.
In the sea-fire eyes of laughter-loving Aphrodite, grown gentler now than a dove’s eyes, seeming now to the King to be Amalie’s eyes new-unmaidened in Acrozayana five and twenty years ago, but to Barganax Fiorinda’s, knowledge sat, detached, tolerant, and merciful; and, by reason of its reach beyond infinitude, begat in the secret places behind the all-wielding all-seeing eyes of the King, infinite pity. Pity for Rosma, who could hate well, but not truly love: for Roder, sitting there, a man of common clay destined within a year or two for a bad end: for Styllis, foredoomed, of his rashness and stiff-necked arrogance, never to seize and hold the shining moment to be given him: for the Admiral, good faithful dog whose loyalties and self-misdoubting irresolution in action must yet withhold him from detachment alike and peace of mind; for Beroald, blinded by his own sceptic humours and intellectual ironies to the inmost natures both of Her, his sister in blood, and of the King, his master: for Heterasmene, left now with but memories of her governesship to warm her commonplace marriage: for Emmius Parry, whose greatness could as little reck of other men’s pity as waste his on them: for the great Vicar of Rerek himself, not because of any warring or unhappiness in his self-perfect nature (where there was neither), but because, whereas the King and She understand from within by very feeling what it were to be this man, who all his life must, but for the master-hand upon him, have mischieved all middle earth, yet should the Vicar never understand and contain Their loves as They in a manner do his: pity for the nothings, rests and pauses and unresolved discords necessary in the symphony of this brave world, as for Fiorinda’s ill-starred unsufficient husbands, as well for Valero, for Aktor, for the tragic nothings of Middlemead: for His Amalie, who must tonight be widowed and left to her motherhood and her Memisonian peace: for Queen Stateira, now to lose (except in memory) her very motherhood, and with no memories of true love and perfect, only of Mardanus’s perfunctory transient love, and of her own restless, consuming, never wholly satisfied passion for Aktor: for Vandermast, albeit a contemplative that walked with God, yet exiled (unless through kindly sympathy and back-returns of the mind) from the joys and fevers of youth: for Antiope, fated, as the rock-rose’s queenly blossom, to a tragic ephemeral perfection and tragic death: for Barganax even, and Lessingham, because of the limitations of their beings, not to be wholly Himself: for these nymphkind, dwelling in the superficies and so coming short of Godhead: for every man, woman, child, and living creature in Zimiamvia, because instruments, means, and ingredients to His and Her perfection in action and beatitude: even for Her, as to all eternity unable to be, were it but for a moment, He. Last, pity for that which sat conscient in Her eyes: for His love and Hers, troubled now for sake of God Himself, that He should be choked with His own omniscience and omnipotence here terribly loosed in self-emptying collision within Him: for sake of His loneliness, here where should be His home: that here, through dull privation of that doubt which alone can bring zest to omnipotency in action, He, knowing overmuch, fails of his way.
And, darkly unspoken in that commerce of eyes, a horror moved; horror not of the unknown, but of the unknowable, the impossible, the unconceivable.
King Mezentius gave command now (for ending of the revels) to bring in the Cup of Memory. A great goblet it was, of rock-crystal, egg-shaped, resting in the grasp of three feet upraised to contain between them the belly of it: feet of pure gold, one in the likeness of the pounces and talon of an eagle, another a lion’s paw with claws expansed, and the third a hippogriff’s hoof, all rising from a nine-sided base of hammered gold bossed with rubies and chrysoprases and hyacinth-stones and pearls. This, being brought in, went round, first at the lowest tables and so in order upwards, until every person in the body of the hall below the dais had drunk of it, each a sip. And each in turn, having drunk, bowed low toward the King. The cup-bearer now, brimming it anew with ruby-dark wine of the Rian, bore it to Earl Roder, who, as captain of the guard, tasted it and with his own hand bore it to King Mezentius. Upon that, all the company below the dais stood up in their places, while the Earl returned him to his chair of state. The King, raising the cup, looked into the wine against the light, savoured it with his nostrils, and so, looking towards the company, drank deep: then said in a great voice, for all in that great banquet-chamber to hear: ‘’Tis time to say goodnight. Rest well, my friends. Our banquet is sweetly ended.’ Upon which word all, save only the company on the dais, bowed low toward the King and so, with that for goodnight, departed. The King meanwhile, wiping the lip of the cup with his handkercher, set it down, yet three parts full, upon the Queen’s table before her.
She, for her turn, lifted it in both hands: drank (as next in order of nobility) to Duke Barganax: wiped, and reached across the King’s table on her right, to have passed it to the Duke. But the King, intercepting it, said lightly, ‘Nay, I will break custom tonight. For good luck, since these be farewell revels, I’ll pledge him too.’
Rosma laid a hand on his arm. ‘Pray you, dear my Lord,’ she said, smiling, but her face suddenly gone grey as ashes: ‘that bringeth bad luck, not good, to drink twice ere the cup be gone round.’
King Mezentius but shifted the cup from his left hand to his right. ‘Fear nothing, madam. Luck, long as I remember me, hath been my servant still. I’ll go my gait, as in great things so here in little, and spite all omens.’
His eyes, while he so spoke, were met with my Lady Fiorinda’s, chilling as snakes’ eyes now or as stones a-glitter with heatless green fire, and saying to Him: What terrible unlawful unimagined lust is this? You are putting Us, both You and Me, and all that proceedeth from Us (or hath, or shall proceed) into deadly danger. Whither do You mean to go? What do You mean to do?
He was at the point to drink. Rosma made a movement so slight as none but his own most eagle eyes might note it, as if ready, in the open sight of the court, to have knocked the cup from his lips; but his great left hand shut, gentle but unresistable, upon her hand, pinning it to the table. He set down the goblet once more, out of her reach. ‘Let’s finish the evening in private. Earl, clear the hall. Let the maids and the music be gone. Set guards without all the doors, and to keep folk from the portico.’
While this was doing, those lords of Meszria and the Lady Heterasmene, in obedience to eye-signs from the King and Queen, bade goodnight, took their lea
ves, and departed. They being gone, Rosma said to the King: ‘Lord, I beseech you, for all sakes’ sakes, bear with my foolish fears. ’Tis the one boon I ask of you tonight and surely ’tis a light nothing for you to grant. There’s a curse in a twice-drunk Memory-Cup. However silly I seem, to take a small matter too heavily, O, tempt no fates tonight. For my sake, Lord. And if not for mine,’ she checked: then finished, looking at Barganax, ‘for his.’
It was grown very close in the hall now, for all that the windows stood open. The long-gathering storm began: a great flash in dry sultry air, near overhead, and deafening peals of thunder: then pitch darkness without, as the thunder rolled away to silence. Barganax looked swiftly from Rosma to the King: from him to Fiorinda, sitting motionless as Aphrodite’s statua: so to the King again. ‘Lord and Father,’ he said, ‘pray you drink it not. The Queen’s highness feareth some practice, I think. ’Twere well send for fresh wine. Let this be ta’en away and examined’; and he took hold on the goblet.
‘Lay off your hand,’ said the King, ‘I command you,’
Barganax met his eyes: seemed to hover an instant betwixt unclear contrarious duties: then obeyed. He sat back, eyes flaming, face red as blood. Bringing his fist down upon the table before him with a blow set the plates a-leap and a-clatter, ‘Yet would I give my dukedom,’ he said violently, ‘that your serene highness taste not this again.’
‘I do not care whether you would or no. But you, as all man else i’ the kingdoms, shall do my bidding.’ So saying, the King, taking the great goblet betwixt his hands and looking down into the wine, swirled it about: a whirlpool in little. Presently, laughing in his black beard, ‘Moonshine in water,’ he said to the Duke. ‘Have not she and I drunken o’ this same pottle already? Were aught amiss with ‘t, we were both of us sped ere now.’
Queen Rosma said, and her voice shook: ‘Nay then, myself, I do seem now to find, I know not what, but an after-taste in it: something sluggish in its working, may be. By heavens,’ she said suddenly, ‘I accuse this Roder. A meant it for Lord Barganax.’
The Earl stared at her like a startled bull.
‘Come,’ said the King, ‘this is fits of the mother. A most strange, most unmerited, brainless accusation against a true, tried servant of ours,’ he said, with a glance at Roder, whose eyes were now boiling out of his face: then turned him once more to Rosma. ‘No more fooleries. A curse in a twice-drunk cup? You are much mistook, madam. This, I pledge you my kingly word for ’t, is nectar.’ While she sat unpowered to move or speak under the tyranny of his eyes upon her, he drank. ‘To your deepest wishes, my Rosma. Which have, e’en at such times as least you dreamed it, galloped in harness with mine.’
He wiped the brim: set the half-empty cup on his table within her reach: then, his eyes meaningly and steadfastly on hers but without all note of menace or blame or resentment in them, held his handkercher to the candleflame. Being well alight, he dropped it to burn out on the table-top: of panteron stone, in some part black, in other part green, in other part purple, which is said to bolden a man, and make him invincible. The Queen, those words echoing in her ears, those things done before her eyes, that understanding in the King’s eyes upon her, sat stone still.
At last, sweeping her gaze round upon Barganax, Beroald, Fiorinda, Roder, Jeronimy, to end upon the King again, ‘Yes. Well,’ she said, ‘it is true. It is nectar’: then thrust aside her table, rose to her feet and, facing him, seized the cup. ‘But I meant it for that whoreson, that calleth himself Duke of Zayana.’ Standing so before them, she drained it, no trickle left: turned again with a hideous cry: fell with a crash in the half-moon space before the tables, without a struggle, stone dead.
Barganax spoke silence: ‘God’s precious Lady be thanked then, your highness swallowed it not.’
King Mezentius gave him his eyes for an instant, undisturbed, resolute, but, save for their good will, unreadable: then, turning to the Admiral and Lord Roder, ‘Take up the Queen’s body,’ he said. ‘Sit it in her chair of state.’
When they, in a maze and rather in manner of contrived automatons than of waking men, had done his bidding, he stood up, somewhat slowly, from his high-seat and, taking from his own head the crown of Meszria, set it on hers. ‘I’ll view it again thus, where it belonged when first I had sight of it. Who loveth me, remember her greatness, and her father’s. Put out of mind aught you may think she did amiss. She has paid for that, and as no skulking cheater, neither, nor in no false coin. Sorely tried she was, and, i’ the end, no unnoble daughter of the Parry. Few there be that I shall gladlier shake by the hand, beyond the hateful river.’
He looked at Fiorinda: saw how her eyes rested constant on Barganax.
‘You may see,’ said the King, seated again and surveying Rosma’s face, undisfigured and wearing a peace and a majesty not known there in her life-days, ‘that here’s no villainous discountenancing poison, to mar that which God Himself hath made, and send us aboard of Charon’s ferry as puff-balls swol’n up and bursten. ’Tis a clean death, and worthy of royal Princes.’
Outside, now, a gale was raging from the west: rushings of rain, and the huge belly of darkness continually a-rumbling with near and distant thunders. The windows of the hall flickered blue with the ceaseless lightning.
‘Beroald,’ the King said, ‘you are a brave man and a discreet, and a friend of mine. You are instantly to take boat, then saddle and ride your swiftest to Zayana. This ring,’ here he took the great Worm-ring from his thumb; ‘give it to her grace. She’ll know the token. Say to her I have yet a few hours to live, but I am dog-weary, and it is no more in my power to turn this destiny.’
As if the forked lightning-flame had with these words leapt among them, all, save only the King and my Lady Fiorinda, sprang to their feet. The Duke said, out of a deformed silence:
‘But the counterpoisons your highness hath alway taken?’
‘Without ’em, I were gone, her way, at first sip. Look to the ring on her finger: undo the bezel: so: it is empty, but for specks of this greenish dust. This was her aunt’s first wedding-gift, Lugia Parry’s; and ’gainst that masterpiece, wetted or ta’en by the mouth, all counterpoisons in the world are naught: save to delay. She had it in her handkercher.’
‘Send for leeches.’
‘They can do nothing. Begone, Chancellor: your speediest.’
‘Shall I bring her noble excellence back with me?’
‘No. Though my salvation hung on’t, I would not hazard her safety in such a storm. But it were a hell to me to die and no word from her to speed me. Begone, Beroald, and swiftly back. Haste, haste, post haste. Worketh already, dull in my feet.
‘Earl,’ he said, as the Chancellor, with face like a stone, strode swiftly down the hall, ‘fetch me my armour; and the triple crown; and my robes of state. Kings ought not to die lying on their backs.’
‘And fetch leeches, for God sake, quick,’ said Barganax swiftly in the Earl’s ear. ‘All blame’s mine, if ’s highness mislike it.’
Within five minutes, the Chancellor put out upon the firth in the fury and height of the storm: himself at the tiller, and two boatmen to take turns at oars and bailing. There was but a mile to go, but they were not gotten half way when a tremendous sea breaking over the stern swamped the boat and left them to swim or drown. By strength and by heart, but most (it seemed) by some over-riding fate of necessity, they made land, but on a lee shore, much east beyond the right landing-place and set about with sharp rocks and skerries. On the teeth of these one of the boatmen being dashed by a wave was knocked senseless and, taken by the undertow, no more seen. His fellow won to safety, but with ’s leg broke. The Lord Beroald, bruised and cut, came aland a little farther east and, with but a tatter of soaked rags left to cover his nakedness, part walked, part ran, till he was come to the little township and fishing-harbour of Leshmar. Here the Admiral’s bailiff found him dry clothes and a horse: sent, by his bidding, to bring in the wounded boatman: and so, scarce more than an hour from his leav
ing of the banquet-chamber, the Chancellor rode up into Acrozayana.
‘Dying, and past hope of mending?’ said the Duchess when he told his tale. ‘God’s precious Dear take mercy then of this land of Meszria, mercy of our dear son, mercy of us all. You have spoke to me killing words, noble Beroald. O, I am very sick.’ And throwing herself face downward upon the great brocaded couch between the windows she fell into an unmasterable great passion of tears. The Chancellor, that had never seen her weep, turned him away and, with folded arms and iron-lipped, unmoving as stone, stood looking on her picture above the mantel, a master-work of Barganax’s painted five years ago, and so waited till this tempest should blow itself out.
Presently she stood up and dried her eyes.
He turned. ‘I was to take word back from your beauteous excellency.’
‘Word? You are to take me, my lord. Have you not yet given order for my horses?’
‘There is a dangerous sea running in the firth tonight. The King’s highness did expressly command you must not adventure it.’
‘Pray you, pull me that bell-rope.’
Beroald looked at her. Something glinting in his cold eye, he went to the window, drew back the curtain, threw open the casement. The wind had dropped. Westward, over Zayana lake, was clear weather and moonlight. He came back to her beside the fire-place, reached hand to the twisted rope of honey-coloured silk and gave it a jerk. ‘The Duchess intends for Sestola tonight,’ he said to the waiting-woman: ‘taketh but one maid and a portmanteau. Her grace’s horses are at the Kremasmian gate already, waiting with mine.’
Amalie gave him her hand.
‘To be great-hearted,’ he said, kissing it, ‘is a lovely virtue. And loveliest in woman; ’cause least of course.’
When the Duchess, with the Chancellor carrying her cloak, was come into the banquet-chamber, King Mezentius sat yet in his high-seat, clad now in all his royal habiliments and ornaments of majesty. Above him were seated the Admiral, Earl Roder, Duke Barganax, and my Lady Fiorinda. The body of the Queen had been taken away to lie in state. The Duchess, very white and with eyes only for the King, came up that great empty hall almost as a woman walks in her sleep, but noble of mien and carriage as a tall ship dropping silently down the tideway at evening before a light breeze. So, mounting the dais, she stood before him.
