by E R Eddison
Three of the Vicar's great dogs lay there in the rushes. There was wine upon the table, and drinking-cups: on the settle, the Vicar's armour: goose-feather pens, ink, papers, parchments, all Gabriel's writing-tackle, in a hodge-podge upon the sideboard. Lessingham said, 'Who will write you your so many letters, cousin, whiles your secretary maketh up secret treaties betwixt you and Derxis?'
There was not a tremor in the Vicar's great hand, reaching the wine-jug, pouring a cupful. 'Nimble and quicksilvered brains such as yours need this to settle 'em: quid-dling upon such moonshine.'
Lessingham struck the cup from his hand. 'Did you not hear something cry thump?' he said upon the crash, as the Vicar, eyes aflame, leapt to his feet. 'Come, I'll read it you: here 'tis, under your hand and seal:' he watched the Vicar, at the pulling out of the paper, change colour: 'ay, spittly and slimy too from the beast's mouth I plucked it out on. But legible.'
'Go, you are a fool. Counterfeit letters. My fine device to draw him out.'
'Prettily thought on,' said Lessingham. 'Tell me the crow is white.'
The Vicar, with the table between himself and Lessing-. ham, and eyeing him from beneath bent forehead, began to move with a sidelong motion leftwards towards the door. But Lessingham, swift as a leopard, was there before him, hand upon sword-hilt. His left hand shot home the bolt behind him. 'Had you been drunk so long you'd a done your estate better service. Plot treason? Is't come to this? And with this princox, voice like a woman, this filth of filths, this murderer of—'
'O leave your cackling,' said the Vicar, hand upon sword-hilt, head down, like a bull about to charge. 'Thought you, while you played your games at put-pin, I'd sit idle for ever? I'll tell you, here's been small leisure for kissing and haking in Owldale this five month past, by the Gods!'
Lessingham's sword flamed out: the Vicar's too. 'Loo! Loo! tear him! Pyewacket! Peck-i'-the-crown! tear his lights out!' As the dogs rushed in from the side, Pyewacket, as moved by a friendship strangely struck in that dungeon under Laimak, fastened her teeth in the backside of one, so that, missing of his spring, with a howl of pain he turned to fight her. Another, Lessingham stabbed dead with a dagger snatched left-handed from his belt; but, since a man's eyes look but one way, the Vicar, foining at Lessingham's middle, passed under his guard; but, by good hap, no more than a skin-wound beside the thigh. Amid the rage of the dogs yet worrying and snarling, and the charging against the door by soldiers without, whom the Vicar now in a voice of brass shouted for again and again to come and aid him, Lessingham, free now, albeit hurt, to use his swordsmanship, in a few passes sent the Vicar's weapon flying.
The Vicar, crouching like a cat-a-mountain, seemed for the instant as if he would have leapt onto Lessingham's sword-point. But the hinges began to yield under that thunder of blows, and, as lord of his mind once more, he reared himself up and, stone still and with arms folded, faced Lessingham, who, regarding him again in a high and cool carelessness that was yet alert for all mischiefs, now sheathed his sword. The door gave and fell. A dozen men armed leapt in with it. In the sudden hush of that obstreperous noise the Vicar commanded them, pointing with his finger: 'Arrest me that man.'
For two breaths they stood doubtful. Then, one by one as their glances met Lessingham's, so one by one they were gathered by him and held. 'You have won the wager, cousin,' he said, throwing with a laugh his purse of gold on the table. 'And truth to tell, I feared you would. Not your own men, at your own bidding, will so far forget your highness's edict as lay hand upon the King's Captain-General.'
With swift comprehension, the Vicar, bursting into a great boisterous laugh, clapped him on the back, took the purse, tossed it up ringing in the air, caught it, and thrust it away in his bosom.
When they were alone again, 'Well, fanged adder?' said Lessingham, speaking low; 'so you dare try masteries with me? So you set your dogs on me, ha?' Pyewacket, looking up at him, fawned and wagged her tail; 'set your men on me?'
The Vicar, sitting at the table sideways, left hand akimbo on his hip, right elbow crooked far forward on the table top, the hand a rest for his mighty jowl, looked steadily up at Lessingham. 'You have forgot your part,' he said, and his voice, low and quiet, came like the dank air from some grave. 'And your hand is out.'
To Lessingham, thus looking down into the eyes of his cousin, it was as if their hard and adamantine lustre and wicked fires should have been but the image upon a still water, in depths whereof, were no image there to veil them, deadlier matters should have been beheld. And now, as upon that surface, memories stirred like a flaw of wintry air, blurring the image: memories of a voice which, a year ago, borne up loud and hoarse over water, had unsphered a summer night and withered fair flesh to a mountain-lynx's pelt and sinew and claw.
The Vicar seemed to wait. There seemed a contentment in his waiting, as of one that had weighed all and all determined. But to questioning eyes his countenance showed no answer. As well might a man, looking from the fields across to Laimak, have hoped to divine, only with such looking, the prison-houses that lay quarried in the rock's bowels: the prisoners, their names, qualities, aspects, and conditions, who rotted in those prisons: the deaths some died there.
'By God, then, I will teach you,' Lessingham said. 'By God, I will tread you under feet. Come, you shall be my secretary. Write,' he said, thrusting from Gabriel's table the means before him, and taking out, to read from it, the damning document: ' 'tis well enough worded, do it out fair. "Unto the most high king"—foh! the words foul my mouth. On then: your own invention: out with it: all the sweet persuasive points, the special trust and affiance he hath in you, as fitted by nature for rapes and treasons and all villany: let not the filth be in doubt, you are his good jade, hate us all, too, 'cause of your quondamship: let him but trap you in gold, quid pro quo, vicariate and so forth, as here set down, and you'll have us all murdered with bodkins pat o' the eve of his coming south hither: and now, time that for Mornagay, night o' the first new moon in August. Write,' he said, and it was as if the rehearsing only of the thing had blown his cooling rage to great flames again within him. 'We shall be ready. O this is double treason! lure him like a polecat to the gin.'
The Vicar in all this moved not at all. Only across his eyes, adder-like, resting on Lessingham, it was as if a film had been drawn, veiling the unfoldings of his thought; and along the lips of him something, the scales whereof glinted colours of mockery, gaiety, and disdain, seemed to draw its subtle length. At last, taking up the pen, he with awkward slow unclerkly fingers began to write under Lessingham's eye. When it was done he pushed it towards Lessingham, who took and read it 'Is it fit?'
Lessingham read. 'It will serve.'
'Reach me the wax,' said the Vicar. 'A candle: so.' He Sealed it. 'What safe hand now have you to bear it? There's heading business in this were't wrongly handled. Where's Gabriel?'
'Give it to me,' Lessingham said. 'I'll be bearer of both.' The Vicar gave it in silence. In silence their eyes engaged. Then first this paper, then that (which Gabriel had disgorged), Lessingham held in the candleflame: scornfully beheld them catch fire, curl up, flare, burn down, fall in black ashes. 'Ah, cousin, am I yet to teach you,' he said, 'that I do that I will do, not upon condition of this and that, as use your bungerly foul plots, but in my own way, and with clean hands?'
He turned and went. The Vicar, watching his passage to the door, the sweep of his cloak, the carriage of his head, the swing of his gait to the clanking of golden spurs, narrowed his lids to a gaze serpently shrewd. So, left alone, in a sullen grandeur of storm-tormented sea-cliff against which every great wave that rides crashes and falls broken, he sat, and waited.
In the same hour came Gabriel Flores. The Vicar sat yet in his chamber. Gabriel came tiptoe to the table. 'Highness, spake my Lord Lessingham aught to you of the letter I bare? Upon my soul, I would a died sooner—'; here, upon his knees he blubbered out the story.
'Well,' said the Vicar when it was done: 'give you your due, you did all you might.
This but shows I'd better a holden to my resolve, spite of all, to put nought in writing.'
There's this,' Gabriel said: 'not a soul hath knowledge of the thing except you and me and his lordship. Not Amaury, I know: they spake not together but in my presence, I swear to you, and then one rode north, t'other south to you. Hath your highness the paper?'
‘I have both had it and burnt it.'
'Good so far,' said Gabriel; then paused. His furtive gaze came again under his master's eye. 'Lord, I pray you, 'tis but my love and service speaketh: be not angry. But must your highness not fear lest he will not thus leave you, nor your part in this, undiscovered?'
The Vicar looked down upon him. 'The Duke,' he said, *with five thousand men, will be here afore sunset.' He paused. Gabriel met his eye and trembled. 'And so, my nobs and cony sweet, infix your mind to virtue and prudence: employment in a work shall please your disposition, and upon a very small warning. Look you, the skies do thunder. My cousin Lessingham: let not the Duke nor any of these come at him, on your life.'
Gabriel bared his teeth like a stoat. 'What means shall I use?'
'All means, so nor you nor I be not seen in it. Give me notice in some secret sort when you have prepared the thing.'
Gabriel gave a little laugh. There was a fell and ugly look on the face of him.
'How now?' said the Vicar, 'are you afeared?' 'Of your highness somewhat. Not of aught else.' 'The deed is meritorious.'
'Ay. I trow it should not much go to my heart so that another did it. But would your highness would give a name to the deed. I durst not go by guess.'
'Will you play bodger with me, you scurvy scrub? Is not your life mine? Standeth there aught but my might and my name 'twixt you and a hundred men that have no dearer wish than your heart were leaping in their hand? Will you traffic with me, filth?'
'Your highness knoweth my inward mind,' replied he. 'I would but be sure you know your own: will not repent and tear me in pieces, who did you this service, when 'tis done.'
'Go, I'll tell you,' said the Vicar. 'There is i' the camp here, and walked from this chamber not ten minutes since, one that hath to-day with so many and vile injuries abused me and borne me such derision as, not were he set upon the inflexible purpose to destroy himself might he a done more. I will use him no longer. Choose your instrument: let him think this is done i' the Duke's service; that there have been promises he caused to be performed in these late peace-makings to the feeblishment of the duchy; that the Duke will reward it if the person be made away.'
Gabriel looked at him: ran his tongue along his lips. 'I have a lad for the work, manful of mind,- but as wise as a woodcock. How likes your highness this pleasantness, to do it in sight of the Duke before they may come to speech together? and I being by, soon as the stroke is struck, will, in a seeming indignation to revenge it, stab the striker, and so, sith dead men tell no tales—?'
'Enough. Away and to it. And the Devil and the whirlwind be your helpers.'
Gabriel went. The Vicar, sitting awhile in his melancholy with the westering sun beginning now through the window to shine into his eyes, yielded his hand to Pyewacket's nuzzling cold nose and restfully with his fingers searched her jowl and behind her ear. 'Ay, my brach,' he said in himself: Til not blame you to a ta'en his part, all and it had been easier otherways. Dead men, quotha?' he said in himself after a minute, and the wings of his nostrils hardened suddenly. 'May be, poor pug, you counselled me more wholesomely than you bargained for.'
The day was near spent when the Duke with the forward of his army began their winding ascent by the Killary road towards Mornagay. The Vicar, with Lessingham and a dozen other of his gentlemen about him, came a little upon the road to bring him in with honour. Before the hostelry where they lodged, a score of trumpeters took their stand, and bagpipers wearing the Parry's livery of russet and purple, and drummers, and fifty spearmen to be a guard of honour, and bearers of the banners of Fingiswold and Rerek: all in a golden magnificence of the declining sun, and in a windless summer stillness. The Vicar was in his robes of state, and bare-headed, save for his circlet of gold: Lessingham, upon his right, went armed to the throat, but without his helm. Gabriel Flores, like a shadow, kept step with his lord, a little behind, and betwixt the two of them.
'You look merry, cousin,' said the Vicar as they walked.
'Not merry,' Lessingham answered: 'contented.'
'With that you have? or with that you look to?'
'Contented,' answered Lessingham, 'that all sorteth now to wished effect: power where, were it mine to give, I would give it; and our sword, not now to be escaped neither eluded, lifted up against our enemy.' Upon that word, there seemed a triumph to clothe him, such as stars wear riding between clouds in a gale at sea, when all perils of night and shipwreck are become but a carpet unrolled for those flaming feet to walk on. His eye, as from that pinnacled certitude, met .the Vicar's, that till now had avoided the encounter.
They halted. The Duke on his white pawing stallion, with the Chancellor upon his right and the Meszrian lords in great splendour about him, was approached now within twenty paces and still came on. Trumpeters sounded the royal salute. In Gabriel's secret ear the Vicar flung a sudden word: ‘I have changed my mind. Prevent it.' In this, at ten paces' distance, Barganax and Lessingham met eye to eye. And even as Barganax a year ago in Acrozayana had, upon such an eye-glance, seemed to behold very incarnate in Lessingham the masculine of his own dark lady and queen of his desires, so Lessingham now, in a slow astonishment to master body and soul, beheld in Barganax the like marvel; and then, in a moment, as night is opened for a flash with lightning, not that masculine, but, as to carry perfection beyond perfection, her, very Antiope: given back, for that flash, in this world-without-end sunset hour of Mornagay, this place of beginnings and of endings.
Gabriel was too late. The murderer, shouting, 'This from the great Duke of Zayana!' sent it down a foot deep into Lessingham between neck and gorget. In the same instant Gabriel, swift upon his cue, had despatched the doer of the deed beyond justification, repentance, or confession. The Vicar, amid the sudden huge turmoil, smiting left and right with his hand-mace, struck with the one stroke his kinsman's slayer, that reeled butchered already by Gabriel's sword, and with the other his last imaginable danger extant and repository of his secret treason: Gabriel Flores. Whose brains, as serviceable unto this extremity, but now no further, to the master he had so faithfully nursed and obeyed, were thus, for last warranty of that master's safety, spattered unregarded upon the grass.
But the Vicar, that had for this safety so much adventured and so much cast away, looking up, swift from these strokes, into Barganax's face, stood as a man at whose feet suddenly opens the abyss. For there glared upon him out of that face not Barganax's eyes, but eyes speckled and grey: the eyes of Lessingham.
And Barganax, in a voice like a great crack of thunder, commanded them, 'Take the Vicar!'
xxii
Zimiamvian Night
antiphone to dawn her infinite variety 'more than was promised or was due' moonset between the worlds.
Fiorinda, in the Duke's private lodging that looks from the citadel over Zayana lake, set down her crystal, having beheld that end. The eye of day stared red now from a split in the clouds that shrouded up the evening, west over Ambremerine; in which glare of settle-gang, all the element was become as a flame: tongues of it licking the folds and falls of the damask table-cloth: sparks of it in momentary death and birth upon every shining surface of knife or fork, goblet, platter, or smooth-skinned fruit: smoke of it invading the dimness of Barganax's bedchamber which, within part-opened folding doors, stood void and dream-fast as upon memories of so many sunsets, and of lamplight times, and pleasure, and sleep, and dawn, and the long interludes of clear daylight emptiness which is, for beds, their night-time and time of reposing. And in the proud pallour of that lady's brow and cheek, and in the exaltation of her carriage, the glory sat throned, gleaming again from her jet-black seat-waved hair
; and of it some touch or savour was in the terrible and unfathomable eyes of her, as she stood so, and upon such tidings, gazing from that high western window into the conflagration of the west.
So she stood, while night gathered. Colour began to fail before the shades, both here in the room with its so many rarities of gold-broidered curious hangings, rich and costly treasures of furniture, and lilied golden chapiters of pillars and gold-wrought ceiling; and, without, in the lake stretching dim, and in the mountains companying with clouds and frozen immensities of night, and in the flowers of Barganax's gardens folding their petals for sleep. 'So falls a thundered tower,' she said. From some pine-branch in the garden beneath, a nightjar thrilled. 'No self—but All,' she said.
She took a taper: lighted it where the fire was dying on the hearth: lighted the candles. Wine was on the table, and crystal beakers. She filled one and held it up, crowned with foam, between her eye and the candles, watching the beads mount upwards: through a golden element, atomies of golden fire. She quaffed it down and turned to the looking-glass. And now, with movements swift, yet of an easy staid nobility of sequence as when the leafage of a wood sways to the wind in summer, loosing of girdle and brooch and pin, she put off her ruby-spangled red silken dress and all raiment else, and so, in that mixed light of candles and afterglow, fronted in a stillness her own image in the glass. With a strange look she beheld it, like as a year ago last May, in that other great mirror within, at dawn she had beheld it, upon the morrow of his twenty-fifth birthday: a distant, appraising, look. With such an eye might her lover himself have considered not her, but one of those many portraitures he painted of her and had smudged then or slashed to oblivion, as being not her, or at least not her enough. But not with such lips. For that which, sleeping or waking, held licence of the lips of that lady, inhabiting the corners of her mouth: a thing once bottled by him in paint but straight let out again: this woke and viewed in the glass now its own superlative, which thence, with a sidelong look, acknowledged her.