by E R Eddison
The Duke said, 'I'll not forget it. I have bespoke a banquet about noon, which I hope your highness and whom you will of your following will honour me to share with us. After that, hold council of war. Midsummer already, and much to do ere we may march in full force. And it were folly think to lead a great army over the Wold once it be turned September.'
The same night, when save for the sentinels upon the walls and at the gates none was astir, Barganax and Lessingham went forth alone together to take the air and so came slowly a mile or more down the causeway from Argyanna southwards, walking and talking. The leavings of sunset, dusky orange-tawny on the horizon, crept slowly round towards the north. Bats skimmed overhead.
'A month to-day, then,' said Lessingham: 'that's the twentieth. In Mornagay.'
Tn Mornagay,' said the Duke. 'What shall we be? Seven thousand?'
'That's not to count the princes and the free towns.' 'We shall be too many.'
'A stroke that shall not miss,' Lessingham said, and they fell silent.
After half an hour they came to a stand. Barganax picked up a stone and tossed it in a reed-bed to wake the reed warblers that forthwith began their chattering. He said, 'What make you of that light, there in the darkest bit among the moss-hags? A pool? A broken goblet throwing back the sky? A broken sword? A whole nation of glow-worms gone astray? A chink in the saucepan lid to let us see 'tis here they brew the marsh-fires?'
‘I think you shall find it but stagnant water if you go to it,' said Lessingham. 'Here, it might be all those things.'
'A light asleep in the dark,' said the Duke. ‘I should like to paint this night,' he said, after a little. 'The past: all gone. The thing to come, crouching in those obscurities of ooze and reed-bed, ready to spring. The thing present: you and me. And that is strangest of all: unpaintable, too, like as are most things worth painting.'
Lessingham was silent.
'Were you a tenderer of your own safety, you'd now leave me,' said the Duke. 'Espousing my cause thus wholly, and enforcing this last settlement of peace upo'n him, you now go naked to his claws. No argument remains of self-interest, as before most strongly served, why he should not destroy you.'
'I have now a kind of freedom,' said Lessingham. 'I'll not give up you; nor I'll not give up him.'
'Pity that savage mare of yours, who biteth and striketh all men else, will not content you.'
'Would she content your grace, and you stood where I stand?'
They began to walk slowly, in their companionship of silence, back again towards Argyanna that stood squat, square, and black, against the sky to the north. They were half-way home when the Duke began to say, under his breath, as if the words had been not words but echoes only, answering the measured tread of his musing footsteps along the causeway.
Earth I will have, and the deep sky's ornament:
Lordship, and hardship, and peril by land and sea.—
And still, about cock-shut time, to pay for my banishment,
Safe in the lowe of the firelight I will have Thee.
Lessingham, who had listened with breath held back lest a word should be lost, suddenly, when the stave was ended, checked in his stride. They halted and faced one another in the stillness. 'Who are you?' Lessingham said at last, staring through the soft darkness into Barganax's face: so like to his sister's, save for the varying characters of he and she, that Lessingham's very being was, for that likeness, confounded within him. Barganax made no answer. The silence was full of bird-voices afar on marshes that never go quite to sleep: now a redshank's cry, now some littie plover. Lessingham said, 'Who made that stave?'
'That? I made it.'
'You?' In the stillness a curlew whistled far away, awake in the night.
'I like it,' Barganax said, 'if for its very vanity.'
'Its vanity!' said Lessingham, and they stood silent.
'Why did you bid me,' he said then, 'to your love-feast upon Ambremerine? Why that night did she draw me through doors? What changed then in your throne-room? Why did she send me to Rialmar? Who is she?' he said, last of all.
Barganax shook his head. ' 'Las,' he said, 'I can answer none of these riddles.' He met Lessingham's eyes through the dark. Inch for inch he and Lessingham stood of a height. It was as if he could not easily resolve to let loose that which was upon his tongue. At last he spoke: 'Lessingham, I can, as I said, answer none of your riddles. But I will tell you this: upon Michaelmas night, taking my ease in a certain house of Vandermast's, I looked in a mirror and I beheld there not my own face, but yours.'
Lessingham neither spoke nor moved.
'Well/ Barganax said. 'What was it? Know you such a house?'
'And I beheld', said Lessingham, stare for stare, 'your face, not mine. In that house. Upon Michaelmas night.'
He swung round: began walking again homeward. Barganax, at his elbow, heard the gritting of his teeth upon a smothered groan, as a man might grit them with the turning of the blade in a wound. But in time, as they walked on in that commerce of mind with mind in which speech were but a troubling of the stream that else runs crystal clear, Lessingham tasted again, as upon Ambremerine, the leaning of Barganax's spirit towards that seeming woman of his; and strangely in the tasting took balm to his own mortal hurt, until his own spirit within him was borne up on high like a great violent flame of fire, as for the grand last act indeed.
The Duke wrote that night, and sent it south by safe
hand betimes the next morning:
'Righte Expectable and Noble Lady, these to kiss your hands and informe you that matters occurent must hold me in the north now well till autumne. I would be sured therefore that your Ladyship will keep my private lodging as your own upon Akrozayana till these inconveniences be over past. I have todaye with the Parry sealed againe the infringible band of faith, but fear I shall never love him, nor would you, not for the honesty of his conversation neither nice in bodie but grossly sett and thick. And kinde will creep where it may not go, hee is enemy I think to all men save to such as will subject themselves to him. As for I. I doo think your Ladyship knoweth more than I of his affair, I mean not my Sisters parte which was with so much wisedome kept close as never a whisper went on it, I mean things deeper farre than that. My thoughts growe busy that some way there bee iv of us but some way ij only. O beguiler of guiles, opening of your garments, sudden flashing of your Beauty, what webs are these. But no more, it is coriander in swete wine. I shall never have done when I am once in, and never settle my self for want of lipwork in stead of penwork. O Blacke Lily one and onemost, disdainer, and hallower, of all things, blinder of sight, bedde of the dragon and the dove, robe state and crowne imperiall of my desire, in daylight acte my Cynosura, wanting you here, in my dreames I taste you, and wanting wordes to endear you, call you but Mine, me, Yours.'
xxi
Enn Freki Renna
pack'd cards with derxis the thing laid bare to lessingham last clash of the adamants insultans tyrannus the wolf runs antiope in mornagay.
Lessingham, being by the Duke confirmed now in his office of Captain-General, departed next day out of Argyanna about taking order, against the trysting-time set for Mornagay, for yet more forces and muniments of business was he now for weeks journeying without delays or respite through Rerek and the Marches and Outer Meszria, cementing alliances, pacifying squabbles. The High Admiral was rode back to take the water again at Kessarey and so move to Kaima; Zapheles and Melates fared south into Meszria; the Lord Horius Parry home to Laimak. Barrian the Duke sent in embassage to those Princes Ercles and Aramond, to salve their wounds with estates and signiories in the north there, carved out of that great slice which had by the peace of Argyanna been trimmed off from the vicariate. The Duke himself, with the Chancellor, and with Lessingham's thousand horse, lay yet in Argyanna, meaning in time to move north in great strength; and command was that all with their armies should come together the twentieth of July at Mornagay, thence to march north to the Wold, whence tidings now began to be had of
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Derxis's advance southwards, as upon a design for invasion of Rerek ere summer be too far worn.But the Vicar, soon as he was come again to Laimak, retired himself to his private chamber; took from the iron chest, where he kept such matters, the new concordat; sat thinking with himself an hour or two; then sent for Gabriel Flores. 'Come hither, good pug, let's closely to our business. You must north again, "to Megra," as we'll call it: "to Arcastus," we'll say.'
Gabriel waited obedient.
‘I’ll set down nought in writing, no more than I would before. This,' the Vicar flicked the edge of the parchment with a finger, ' 'gins smell too much of the inkhorn already. Get yonder ragman's-roll by rote ere you go: tell it him word by word. Then tell him this pointeth north to his destruction ere he shall be ready to come conquering down hitherward: that, the Queen being dead by some misfortune—how, I know not: miss not that,—and the royal line of Fingiswold come so to an end, this Zayana entirely hath now the love of all nobles, princes, and all other in the realm save mine only, to back his usurpation; and mine but in show and policy. Speak to him so: show him what stark folly 'twere in him to enterprise to seize kingdom here without some bolsterer or comforter in his deed: and for such, he may take me, whose help is worth ten armies; and so on. Speak earnestly, even till his teeth run a water. Let him understand by all means that you are sent to practise my good and his. Then let him -know my easy condition: letters patent under his royal hand and seal confirming me in perpetuity, as for him and his heirs and successors, his Vicar for all Meszria and all Rerek; 'pon receipt of which by your hand, I will, in token of faith and as his loyal obedienciary, shortly send him the heads or other proofs of the taking off of the persons here most disaffected, and these the principal: Barganax, Beroald, Jeronimy. Which I shall find good opportunity to perform ere it be well onward in summer, having lulled 'em into so lethargic a sleep with this,' and he flicked the parchment again, 'and preparing me an occasion.'
'Your highness hath forgot to name one name,' said Gabriel, 'will, for the king's jealous hate and spleen, weigh with him 'gainst these as gold against feathers.'
'And whose is that, my pigsnye?'
'Your highness will not wish I should name it.'
The Vicar's eyes narrowed upon him. 'No, or may be I'd tear your tongue out.' With such a sudden fury he hurled the inkpot, that Gabriel was barely in time to save his teeth, or may be an eye, by swift raising of his arm.
'Meddle not beyond your commission,' said the Vicar, while Gabriel mopped the ink-splashes with his handkercher and looked to his bruised arm. 'Sit down. Study your part. I'll hear it over ere you go.'
Gabriel was ready to set forth that evening. The rather not to be remarked, he made himself like a peddling chapman; took a spare horse and some huckstering wares, put on coarse blue country-garb, trimmed his hair shorter, and dyed that and his beard and eyebrows with henna. Ere he took horse, he was sent for again to the Vicar's chamber. 'Well, scab, are you busked and ready?'
'So please your highness.'
'Come, you shall drink some malmsey for stirrup-cup:' he poured it out, gave it him with his own hand. He put, when Gabriel set down the cup, a great arm about his neck, drawing him to him, and so looked down into the weasel eyes of him: 'I did wrong to strike at you. There,' he said, holding him off at arm's length: 'when, until now, said I ever to you or any man that I was sorry for aught I'd done? But truth is, you were right in reason, my pug. And truth is, I cannot well digest reason in this particular, for truly I cannot root out of me the liking I have for the man; having both already made my profit by him and wishing still so to do; and yet, little commodity I see in't, as things sort. And yet,' he said, 'I have a kind of love for the man.'
Gabriel stood awkward, listening to these words, that seemed as the rumour of some fight conduced in the very soul of his great master.
'Fare you well, then,' said the Vicar.
‘Highness, farewell,' said Gabriel. 'And as for loving,'
he said, as upon a sudden bursting of the doors of speech, 'be certain of this: your highness cannot now afford to bear love or liking to any: no, not even to me.'
It was now upon mid July. The Vicar, with some thousand heavy-armed troops of Rerek, was come up to Mornagay. Here Gabriel, back from his mission, was two days closeted with his lord. None knew, nor none guessed nor sought to know, what might be there a-hatching between them; for in all things, in peace as in war, it was the Vicar's custom so to deal closely with this man or with Lessingham if he were at hand, but with others seldom or never.
Upon the thirteenth, Gabriel rode north again, now in a new disguise and with beard and mustachios shaved clean off. That same day, as the Gods would have it, came Lessingham riding post from Bardardale. He took day-meal; would not tarry, spite of the Vicar's wish to stay him, but saddle up again and on northward; being by appointment to meet with Barrian and Prince Ercles beyond Swaleback, for concerting of certain movements against next week's beginning of the great march north. This the pretext: but the true necessity was upon word from Barrian that this should do great good now, if Lessingham might but with the sunbeams of his countenance be finally his own peacemaker for all back-reckonings those princes yet held noted against him, as for plunder of Bagort that spring and the bad entreaty Ercles had had at Leveringay.
Lessingham rode with but five-and-twenty and Amaury. About the fifteenth mile, midway on from Leveringay to Eldir, they happed upon Gabriel, pricking fast, two or three hundred paces ahead. He, when he saw them, turned out of the road and made down towards that boggy bottom where a bridle-path, going among fields and then among woods, cuts off a large loop of the main north road. That, if the waters had not been up, had been the best way: but not so now. All saw him, but through that disguise Lessingham only knew him. Lessingham said apart to Amaury, 'This jackal hath seen us: it is plain he would be glad to avoid me. I like not that.' He bade the others wait while he alone galloped after Gabriel. Gabriel, when he saw he was followed and could not escape, drew rein and waited.
'If I could know you under these mumming weeds, and beardless as a pig,' Lessingham said, 'you sure knew me? Why run away then? what hath so uncivil'd you?'
'Nay, by the Gods I knew not your worship.'
Lessingham's glance seemed like that winter wind that will go clean through a man, clothes and body and all. 'So you begin with a lie, my Gabriel? We'll talk further, then: see wherefore truth's so coy to-day.' At first Gabriel's answers came pert and pat: then he began to trip amid the threads of his own invention: at last, tied up in a knot of plain contradictions, could no more, but stood ridiculous with all the tangle of his lies made manifest. Then, to cap ill with worse, he upon a swift chance struck spurs into his horse to flee. In a moment Lessingham had ridden him down: caught him by the collar. 'I smell a pad in the straw: come, we'll search you.' Gabriel, while this went forward, by a swift sleight crammed a crumpled paper in his mouth. Lessingham forced open his mouth: made him spit it out like a dog: took him such a cuff across the head as knocked him half-stunned from the saddle: sprang to earth, secured the paper, spread it and read it. Gabriel, standing up quakingly and gathering his senses, shrank under Lessingham's look; for there was in the countenance of Lessingham as he laid up the half-chewed paper like some jewel in his bosom, that blazing of eyes, that same deathly white paleness of terrible anger, which Gabriel had once before beheld; and that was when Lessingham, chained and under the strength of six men's hands, had been, in that helplessness, shamefully by the Vicar stricken across the face with the Concordat of Ilkis.
'This is private,' said Lessingham, ' 'twixt your lord and me. No living soul else shall know on't. So much for your ease of mind.' So saying, he caught him by the throat: shook him thrice and again until the eyes of Gabriel began to bulge from his blood-boiled choking face, then threw him cruelly on the ground. 'When I break my rod,' he said, 'it shall be on a bigger back than yours.' Gabriel, may be as conceiving it safest to feign death, did not move till Lessingha
m was mounted again.
Lessingham rode but a score of paces to have sight again of his folk, where they waited some quarter of a mile away: made sign to Amaury he should come alone; then leisurely returned to where Gabriel stood afeared. Amaury galloped up to them: halted, looked obedient at Lessingham, then fierce at Gabriel. 'Tell them, Amaury, this was but a messenger sent to seek me and had missed us in the way, so luckily overtaken, with word from my lord Chancellor upon which I must myself return for a night. You and the rest, ride forward; bring my excuses to Prince Ercles. Expect me in two days at most in Memmering.' Amaury read notice, in his lord's mask of careless ease, of some great matter toward: read notice, too, not but at his peril to be called in question, that in this thing his part should be but to hear exactly and exactly to obey. Lessingham with a light word farewelled him, and turned south again at a walking-pace alone. When they were out of sight, he touched rein, whispered Maddalena: she carried him south like the wind.
In the long meadow-close below the northerner of the out-farms of Mornagay, as Lessingham rode in, were Rossilion, Thrasiline, and others, casting at the mark with javelins for their sport. 'Why, 'tis like a masque,' said Rossilion: 'one fresh pageant after another. First, but an hour since, message to say the Duke and all his great army, seven days afore the day appointed, is come up now and shall be before sunset here in Mornagay; and now, back cometh the Captain-General.'
'The eagles gather,' said Thrasiline. 'Sure, now shall be do somewhat.'
The Vicar came by as Lessingham dismounted before the hostelry. In Lessingham's look he might read no danger, nor (knowing of old these sudden swift turns and changes of settled order) need he marvel if, set forth but three hours since for the north upon urgency and in company, Lessingham were now in great haste come south again. 'Cousin, there is a business I must utter to you. Will your highness give me private audience?' The Vicar consenting with a shrug, they retired themselves to that same upper room where, more than a year ago, Lessingham and Amaury had supped that night when news came of King Styllis dead, and all the balance of affairs tipped above new deeps of peradventure: a room of beginnings and of memories.