Mistress of mistresses

by E R Eddison

  Vandermast answered and said, ‘I have an eye to find out good, even as the margaret is found growing in the meat of certain shell-fishes, in howsoever curious a sort it shall disguise itself. Therefore, be at ease, young gentleman.'

  But even while he so spoke with Amaury, the eagle glance of him was busy with the faces of the great men met about that table, and most of all with the Duke's face and the Lord Lessingham's. The Duke, under his cloak of disdainful ease, seemed as if gathered for his spring. Lessingham, stroking his black beard, looking through half-dropped lashes now at the Duke, now at the Admiral or the Chancellor, and still at the Duke again, seemed waiting for that spring should land the springer in a pit he himself had digged for him.

  'Will you speak first, my Lord Lessingham?' said the Duke.

  'Willingly,' answered he, with a grave inclination of the head. 'But it can but be to invite your grace to set forth the business you have called us to consider of upon so much urgency.' There was in his voice as he spoke a lazy bantering music, full of charm, redolent too of sleeping dangers. Amaury, that had been bred up with him to manhood, knew it like his native air. Vandermast knew it too, but not till now in a man's voice. For it bore, even as the troubled image in a lake at midnight to the star it mirrors, some kinship to that languorous mocking lazy music that awoke so often in the Lady Fiorinda's voice; and Vandermasrthought he knew, looking at the Duke, that the Duke too felt the spell of it, albeit without recognition, as a man listening to an air which he knows yet cannot place.

  'It is now going upon the eleventh day', said the Duke, that your lordship hath gladdened us with your company. In respect of persons, we could wish no end to't But in respect of matters of state 'tis not convenient.'

  'For your princely entertainment I am greatly beholden,' answered Lessingham. 'For the delays, they are none of mine. So far forth as it lay in me to do it, all might a been done and good-bye the first morning.'

  'Yet it draggeth on,' said the Duke. 'And thence ensueth idleness. And from idleness, mischief. My lord, I mean this offer of yours unto my lord Chancellor: I but heard on't this morning.'

  'Your grace will not hold me answerable', said Lessingham, 'for this failure to tell good news round the family. Howsoever, I've not been answered yet;' and he turned to Beroald.

  'There, my lord, is my answer,' said Beroald; and gave it him across the table.

  Lessingham took the letter: 'Is it yes?'

  Beroald replied, 'Your lordship hath the wit to know very well 'tis no.'

  'That is by so much the worser answer for us all,' said Lessingham, 'by how much it is the shorter: by a letter. What next, then? May be your grace hath thought on some way to please us all?'

  Barganax sat suddenly forward in his chair. 'We shall now', said he, 'play no more at fair-and-softly, or king-by-your-leave. The Vicar's offers please nobody. You are grown too bold, my lord. Or did you think I should sit content ever in my curious pretty gardens, my delicate groves, while you fob me up with fair speeches? lie sunning myself for ever, while you hawk the regency about the town to find a higher bidder? Will you not offer it to my Lord Roder next? There he is. Come, ask him.'

  Lessingham said nothing, but folded his arms.

  Barganax said, 'You shall find my patience but a gathering deadly cloud. And thus it lightens into action:— These great officers of state to right and left of me, bound by old allegiance to uphold the house of Fingiswold, stand in firm league with me to say nay to the Vicar when he requireth abatement of our powers for his behoof, whom we do utterly refuse and mistrust. Under the threats and wrongfulness of whose tyranny, the lord Admiral hath solemnly resigned and given over into my hand the regency of Meszria by testament royal conferred upon him. My Lord Lessingham, I take up that regency, but under suzerainty of no man. If the Vicar will receive me as his equal, lord of Meszria as he of Rerek: good, we are at one. If not, shortest is to say to him that I will maintain my dominion in his despite: in the midst of all his bloody ruff, I'll cope with him.'

  Lessingham, albeit strangely surprised and put out of his reckonings by this sudden turn, yet kept his countenance, thinking swiftly with himself. He swept his gaze from one to other, facing him across that table: the Duke like a warhorse that sniffs the morning: the Chancellor, lean-visaged and inscrutable, sitting upright and staring straight before him: Jeronimy with downcast look, elbows on table, his left hand propping his chin, his right twisting and untwisting a strand of the lank spare hair above his forehead: Roder, black and scowling: Barrian with flushed countenance, playing with his pen: Zepheles with jaw thrust forward, looking steadily at the Duke: Melates, half sprawled on his folded arms upon the table, looking steadily at Lessingham. 'My lord Admiral,' said Lessingham at length, 'what will you say to this?'

  'You were best address yourself to me, my lord,' said Barganax. 'From henceforth it is me you have to do with.'

  But Lessingham said, 'Under your favour, my lord Duke, I must press this. You, my lord Admiral, not his grace, are named regent in the testament.'

  'I have resigned it up into his grace's hand. That, in a manner, endeth it,' said Jeronimy. He did not raise his eyes to meet Lessingham's levelled steely gaze.

  Then said Lessingham to the Chancellor, "Your lordship did write me a letter. By his grace's leave I will read it.' He spread it upon the table and read it out ‘I note this,' he said, 'in the Chancellor's letter: that it dealeth not at all with the point of law.'

  Beroald said: 'It did not need.'

  'No,' said Lessingham. 'Yet to have argued the thing unlawful should much have strengthened it. My lord Chancellor, did you leave out that argument, because you were satisfied that the Vicar's claim of suzerainty is right in law?'

  Beroald, looking steadily before him, made no reply.

  'Much lieth on this. I pray you, answer,' said Lessingham.

  Beroald said, ‘I am nowise bounden to advise your lordship on points of law.'

  'That is true,' said Lessingham. 'And it must have tried your temper very much, my lord, when they whom you do, as in duty bound, advise, do the one (I mean my Lord Jeronimy) take your advice but durst not act upon't, whiles t'other doth but put it by like idle chatter, and acteth clean contrary.'

  The Chancellor said in an acid voice, 'By these ifs and supposings you may gather against us what proofs you list. But since your lordship hath not had my advice upon these matters, nor any authority whereby to conclude what my advice would be, your lordship's observation wanteth substance, whether in fact or probability.'

  'My lord, I would but have your answer on point of fact: were you, or were you not, satisfied?' The Chancellor held his peace.

  'No need to bandy words on this,' said Barganax, to end it. 'We will not take our law from the Vicar.'

  'Nor from my lord Chancellor neither, as now appeareth,' said Lessingham.

  Out of an angry silence, Jeronimy spoke and said, 'It is, in a manner, clean 'gainst all likelihood, nay, and not to be imagined, the King should have given over clean everything unto his Vicar, seeing the unkindness there was between them. Even grant the law were in a manner doubtful—'

  But Lessingham brake in upon these pleasantnesses. 'My lord Duke,' said he: 'I stand upon the law. Be not angry if I leave velvet words and oily compliment, and talk open. You have set at naught the King's testament. You have brow-beat the High Admiral until he is become your tool. The Chancellor will not answer me, but his silence hath damned by default your rotten pretences before all the world. Be not deceived,' he said, and in the pauses between his words men were ware of each other's breathing: 'the beginnings of things are weak and tender; but I do very well discern your grace's end and purpose, and it is to usurp the whole kingdom 'gainst your harmless sister. It resteth with my noble kinsman, as Lord Protector, to foil you in this. Your answer to me is war. In his highness' name, the Vicar, I do defy you. And I do call upon these great officers, (upon you, my lord, and you, and you), to come back to their true allegiance unto the Queen's serenity, to
the overthrow of you and your, unlawful usurpation.'

  Now ever as he spoke, for all the heat of his words and violence, his perceptive mind was cool and busy, marking how much and in what diverse ways these sayings wrought alteration in them that heard them: what jealous mutual doubtings and inward questionings arose to insinuate, like ivy-shoots betwixt the stones of some tottering wall, divisions betwixt the Duke and his sworn confederates: how, perceiving such rifts to open or but the danger of their opening, the Meszrian lords seemed to draw back and view again their own security: how in the Admiral's eyes, as in an open book, was writ in great characters the digging up again of all the old doubts he had but so lately buried, of the Chancellor's truth and of the Duke's: and how, as unkind and nipping winds will find way through every cloak, the Duke himself seemed to be touched, behind all his jaunting bravery, by such unspoken uncertainties in these that he needs must trust to. These effects Lessingham, while he spoke, conjured and swayed but with the spell now here, now there, of a justly chosen word or look; not otherwise than as a master playing on the treble viol will lead the whole consort and build up so a living presence of music: from the deep theorbo such a figure, from the recorders such, and so the treble lutes to take up the canon, and the hautboy, the dulcimer, and the rebeck, every one in his turn, and so with a ritornello, each thus and thus, and always even exact as he, leading the broken consort, would have it Even so, perceiving these motions, these ruinous doubts and questionings, leap to life at his touch, did Lessingham taste in them a delicate pleasure.

  With those last words spoken he ended, and the voice of his speech was like the rattle of iron swords. The Duke, whose chin had risen little by little higher and yet higher as, with smouldering eyes fixed on Lessingham, he had hearkened to these injuries, stood up now with the smooth and measured stateliness of a leopard rising from sleep. With a high and noble look upon his friends to left and right of him, 'Is my hand the weaker,' he said, 'because it is divided into many fingers? No, 'tis the more strongly nimble.' So saying, and turning again to Lessingham, he now with a formal courtesy unsheathed his sword, raised it point upwards till the hilt was level with his lips, kissed the hilt, and laid it naked on the table with the point-towards Lessingham. Lessingham stood up in silence and, going through the like ceremony, laid his bare sword beside the Duke's, pointing towards the Duke. So for a minute they stood, facing each other across that table, eye to eye; as if the levin-shot dark splendour of a storm-cloud, towering from the east, faced across listening earth the many-coloured splendour of the westering golden sun. And when at last the Duke spoke, it was as out of that unfathomed harmony which is at once condition of such discords and by them conditioned; ensphered and incarnate by them to a more diviner music. There were but two only at that table who, hearing him so speak, were not taken with wonderment, or with fear, or dismay: and that was Lessingham and Doctor Vander-mast

  The Duke said, *My Lord Lessingham, sith our friendship must be but a summer friendship and its leaves drop off in autumn, let's end it as fitteth persons of our quality. Let us trust each to other's honour until noon to-morrow: you to me, that I will do no dastard's work against your life or freedom: I to you, that, whether by word nor deed, you will meddle no more with these high matters until this day's truce be past.'

  'My lord Duke,' said Lessingham, ‘I am content.'

  Then said the Duke, 'I do intend a masque to-night, and a water banquet upon the lake. Will your lordship honour me to be my guest, and lie to-night in Acrozayana? Until to-morrow at noon we will expel all affairs of state, chase all difficulties from our society: one more day to sun it in pleasures in this hot summer-blink, last merriment 'fore winter. Then you must go. And thereafter we shall bloodily try out by war these differences we have these ten days to so little purpose debated.'

  Amaury said in Lessingham's ear, 'Beware, my lord. Let us be gone.'

  But Lessingham's eye still met the Duke's, and he remembered the counsel of Doctor Vandermast. 'This offer,' answered he, 'is what was to be looked for in so high-minded a prince, and I embrace and accept it. I well think there is not any other prince extant should have made me the like offer, nor at whose hand I would have accepted of it.'

  vii

  A Night-Piece on Ambremerine

  zayana lake at evening campaspe: commerce with a water nymph moonrise queen of night the philosopher speaks song of the faun our lady of blindness anthea: commerce with an oread the nature of dryads, naiads, and oreads the dead shadow divine philosophy counsel of vandermast.

  Peace seemed to have laid her lily over all the earth when, that evening, eight gondolas that carried the Duke and his company put out from, the water-gate under the western tower and steered into the sunset. In the open water they spread into line abreast, making a shallow crescent, horns in advance, and so passed on their way, spacing themselves by intervals of some fifty paces to be within hail but not to the overhearing of talk within the gondolas. Three or four hundred paces ahead of them went a little caravel, bearing aboard of her the Duke's bodyguard and the last and most delicate wines and meats. Her sweeps were out, for in that windless air her russet-coloured silken sails flapped the masts. From her poop floated over the water the music of old love-ditties, waked in the throb of silver lute-strings, the wail of hautboys, and the flattering soft singing of viols.

  North and north-eastward, fainter and fainter in the distance, the foot-hills took on purple hues, like the bloom on grapes. High beyond the furthest hills, lit with a rosy light, the great mountains reared themselves that shut in the habited lands on the northward: outlying sentinels of the Hyperborean snows. So high they stood, that it might have been clouds in the upper air; save that they swam not as clouds, but persisted, and that their architecture was not cloud-like, but steadfast, as of buildings of the ancient earth, wide founded, bastion upon huger bastion, buttress soaring to battlement, wall standing back upon wall, roofridge and gable and turret and airy spire; and yet all as if of no gross substance,- but rather the thin spirit of these, and their grandeur not the grandeur of clouds that pass, but of frozen and unalterable repose, as of Gods reclining on heaven's brink. Astern, Acrozayana faced the warm light. On the starboard quarter, half a mile to the north, on a beach at the end of the low wooded promontory that stretches far out into the lake there towards Zayana town, two women were bathing. The sunset out of that serene and cloudless sky suffused their limbs and bodies, their reflections in the water, the woods behind them, with a glory that made them seem no women of mortal kind, but dryads or oreads of the hills come down to show their beauties to the opening eyes of night and, with the calm lake for their mirror, braid their hair.

  In the outermost gondola on the northern horn was Lessingham, his soul and senses lapped in a lotus-like contentment. For beside him reclined Madam Campaspe, a young lady in whose sprightly discourse he savoured, and in the sleepy little noises of the water under the prow, a delectable present that wandered towards a yet more delectable to come.

  'The seven seas,' he said, answering her: 'ever since I was fifteen years old.'

  'And you are now—fifty?'

  'Six times that,' answered Lessingham gravely; 'reckoned in months.'

  'With me,' she said, 'reckonings go always askew.' 'Let's give over reckonings, then,' said he, 'and do it by example. I am credibly informed that I am pat of an age with your Duke.'

  'O, so old indeed? Twenty-five? No marvel you are so staid and serious.'

  'And you, madam?' said Lessingham. 'How far in the decline?'

  'Nay, 'tis me to ask questions,' said she: 'you to answer.'

  Idly Lessingham was looking at her hand which rested on the cushion beside him, gloved with a black scented gauntlet with falling cuff of open-work and flower-work of yellow zircons. ‘I am all expectation,' he said.

  Campaspe stole a glance at him. Her eyes were beady, like some shy creature's of the fields or woods. Her features, considered coldly one by one, had recalled strange deformities as of fr
ogs or spiders; yet were they by those eyes welded to a kind of beauty. So might a queen of Elfland look, of an unfair, unhuman, yet most taking comeliness. 'Well,' said she: 'how many straws go to goose-nest?'

  'None, for lack of feet.'

  'O, unkind! You knew it afore. That cometh of this so much faring 'twixt land and land: maketh men too knowing.' After a little, she said, 'Tell me, is it not better here than in your northlands?'

  ' 'Tis at least much hotter,' said Lessingham.

  'And which liketh you better, my lord, hot or cold?'

  'Must I answer of airs, or of ladies' hearts?'

  'You must keep order: answer of that you spoke on.'

  'Nay,' said Lessingham, ' 'tis holiday. Let me be impertinent, and answer of that I set most store by.'

  'Then, to be courtly, you must say cold is best,' said she. 'For our fashion here is cold hearts, as the easier changed.'

  'Ah,' he said: ‘I see there is something, madam, you are yet to learn.'

  'How, my lord? i' the fashion?'

  'O no. Because I am a soldier, yet have I not such nummed and so clumsy hands for't as tell a lady she's out of fashion. I meant 'tis warm hearts, not cold, are most apt to change: fire at each fresh kindling.'

  'Here's fine doctrine,' said she. 'Do you rest it, pray, upon experience?'

  He smiled. ' 'Tis a first point of wisdom', he replied, 'to affirm nought upon hearsay.'

  Campaspe sat suddenly forward, with a little murmur of pleasure: 'O, my friend!' addressed, as Lessingham perceived, not to him but to a lady-duck with her seven young swimming close by in column ahead. For a fleeting instant, as she leaned eagerly across to watch them, her hand, put out to steady her, touched Lessingham's knee: a touch that, sylph-like and immaterial as a dream, sent a thousand serpents through his veins. The duck and her children took fright at the gondola, and, with a scutter of feet and wings, left a little wake of troubled water which showed the better, as a foil sets off a diamond, the placid smoothness of that lake.