by E R Eddison
"You are unsupportable," he said. He raised her hand, hot in his, to his lips: it drew a finger against his palm: then lay still. From her mouth's corner that thing eyed him, a limb-loosening equivocation of mockery, intoxicating all senses to swimmings of the brain. He kissed the hand again. "Unsupportable," he said: looked in her eyes, wide open suddenly now, strained to his in an unsmiling stilled intention, eyelids of the morning: beheld, in unceasing birth and rebirth through interkindling and gendering of contrarious perfects, the sea-strange unseizable beauty of her face: the power enchantment and dark extremity of her allurement now plainly spread in the brightness of the sun. He said: "O abominable and fatal woman, why must I love you?"
"Is it, perhaps," she replied, and the indolent muted music of her voice, distilling with the sweets of her breath on the air about him, wrought on the raging sense to upsurgings of subterranean fire: "Is it, perhaps, because to your grace, unto whom all others your best desires, spaniel-like, do come to heel, this loving of me is the one only thing you are not able to command?"
37 - Testament of Energeia
IN SESTOLA that same day toward evening, the Chancellor and Earl Roder, being come to council a little before the due time, were waiting the King's pleasure in the great stone gallery that served there as antechamber.
"Mean you by that, she has been forbid the council?" said the Earl.
"That's too rough a word."
"Pray you amend it."
"A bird peeped in mine ear that his serene highness graciously excuseth her from attendance today, and at her own asking."
"Is that help to us or hindrance?"
The Lord Beroald shrugged his shoulders.
"You think unlucky?" said Roder.
"I think it of small consequence whether her highness be there or no. Yet I would she'd stayed in the north. We'd then a been spending our time in Zayana 'stead of this stony den of Sestola: fitter for a grave than for living men to dwell in." He cast a distasteful look up at the high lancet-shaped windows whose embrasures, spacious and wide enough here withinward, narrowed to slits in the outer face of the huge main wall: slits to shoot through at assaulters from without, rather than windows to light the gallery.
"We grow customed to strange choices this twelvemonth past," Roder said.
Beroald's nostrils tightened, with a thinning of lips below close-clipped mustachios.
Roder said, "Know you for certain what way she inclineth now, i' this thing we have in hand?"
"No. Nor much care. Strange your lordship should ask me this, who are far more in her counsels than ever I have been."
"She is too unnatural with me of late," said the Earl: "too kind. Smiles at me: gives me honeyed words. Makes me afeared may be his serene highness listeneth to her more readily than he will listen to us."
"No need to fear that."
"No? Well, be that as may, I'm glad she cometh not to this meeting. God shield us from women on our councils of war, I never could argue with a woman. Besides, I mistrust Parry wolvishness. And bitch-wolf was ever more fell than dog-wolf, as the more uncorrigible and unforeseeable in action. Your lordship frowns? Said I not well, then?"
"Too loud. Walls have ears."
"True. But it's commonly thought those ears are yours, my lord Chancellor." The Earl stretched his arms with clenched fists above his head, strained wide the fingers and yawned. "My sword is rusting in its scabbard. I hate that. What latest smelling by your blood-hounds?"
Beroald patted a bundle of dispatches under his arm. "You shall hear all in good tune, my lord."
"Nay, I seek no favours. So it be there, well. Let it wait due audit." He stole a look at the Chancellor's face. "You and I are still agreed? O' the main point, I mean?"
"Surely."
"The Admiral is with us, think you?"
"We have but the one arm," answered Beroald: "all three of us."
"Ay, but 'tis readiness counts. What's aim, if - blow hang i' the air?" Then, after a pause: "I dearly wish the Duke were expected now."
Beroald curled his lip. "Which Duke?"
"Not Zayana."
"I thought not," he said dryly.
"Well, I have told your lordship at large of my talkings with Duke Styllis in April in Rialmar. It somewhat did stomach the boy to be left behind there, and this cauldron a-bubbling in the south."
"It hath long been apparent," said the Chancellor, "those two agree best when farthest apart. Howsoever, no Dukes today. Lord Barganax hath leave of absence from the King."
"I'm glad to hear it."
"My lady Duchess," said Beroald lightly, "arrived today, in Zayana."
"So. Then the King lies there tonight?"
"Like enough."
"And cut short so our potting after supper, ha?" said the Earl, and ground his teeth. "Women. And what comes of women. Were 't not for that, our cares were the lighter."
"Mala necessaria."
"O, if you speak law-terms, I'm a stone."
"I but meant, my lord, where were you and I without women had bred us?"
Upon noise of a footstep, Roder looked behind him "Here's the great lord Admiral."
They turned to greet him, walking towards them the length of the gallery with head bent as deep in thought. "God give you good den," he said as they met, his eyes, candid as the day's, searching first the Chancellor's then the Earl's. "We are to reach tonight at last, it is to be hoped, the solutions of a ticklish and tangled business. Have your lordships thought of any new mean to the unravelling of it?"
"So we be at one as for the end," replied Beroafd, "it should be no unexampled difficulty to find out the means. Has your lordship held more talk with the King's highness in these matters?"
"None since I saw you both last night. I have been afloat all day 'pon business of the fleet. All's ship-shapen now, what-e'er be required of us in that regard. And you, Earl?"
"My folk are so well readied," answered he, "we are like to fall apart in rottenness, like over-ripe cheese, if we be not swiftly given the occasion to prove our worth upon't."
"You will open the matter before the King, I take it, my lord Admiral," said the Chancellor, "on our behalf? His serene highness will take it kindliest from your mouth. Besides, among us three, you are primus inter pares. And I hope you will stand resolute for action. *Tis most needful this nettle be rooted up or it prove too late."
"Yes, yes," said Jeronimy, fingering his beard. " Tis a business worth all our wits. We must not be fools, neither, to forget it toucheth the King's set policy of a lifetime's standing. Peradventure, as for this one time, he is wrong: if so be, then is it our mere duty to say so to his face. But before now, and in as weighty matters, when wise men deemed him mistook he hath turned the cat m the pan and, by the event, showed 'em fools for their pains. Well, we must ferret out the true way. And by King in council is the good stablished method so to do."
The Earl's neck, as he listened, was swelled up red as a turkey cock's and his face, where frizz of black beard and hair disguised it not, of the like rebellious hue. The proud weather-bitten lineaments of the Lord Beroald's face wore a yet colder unpenetrable calm than before. Their eyes met. In that instant, as the Admiral ceased speaking, the door was thrown open upon his right, and the Queen, all but as red as Roder but with countenance uncipherable as the Chancellor's, came forth from the council-chamber.
Even now, when for her the winds of old age had set in, with no deadly force as yet, but enough to make her take in sail and tack against wind and tide, which-with slow gathering of power drive back tall ship and feeble coracle without distinction to that hateful and treeless shore whence, against that tide and that wind, none did ever again put back to sea: even in that Novemberish raw weather of her years, some strength of lost youth, some glory, unlosable, uncrushable, indestructible, lived on. Almost might a man have believed, beholding her stand thus in the dazzle, from the open doorway behind her, of warm afternoon sun, that in these few weeks, after twenty-five years of exile, she had renewed h
er very body with great draughts of the fecund and lovely magic of the Meszrian highlands, over which she had so long ago, by exercise and right of her own most masculine will, made herself Queen. Here she stood: the argument of her father's dreams and policies made flesh in the daughter of his desires; and the same badge of cold unagainsayable relentlessness, more unadulterate and more openly self-proclaimed than on Emmius Parry's underlip, sat at this moment upon hers.
She looked upon the Earl's face, whose smoulder of thwarted anger mirrored, weakly may be, some locked-up passion within herself: upon the Chancellor's, that carried in its stoniness at this moment deep-seated likenesses to her own: last, upon the high Admiral's, which gave back (of any quality of hers) no reflection at all. They did obeisance to her; Roder, with a low leg, kissing her hand. "The King is ready," she said to them, as if speaking not to lords but to cur-dogs. "You may go in."
King Mezentius sat to receive them in a large chamber fairly hung with arras, the light streaming in through open western windows behind him. At this other side of the table the lords commissioners, at a sign from his hand, took their seats facing him: Jeronimy in the midst, Beroald on his right, Roder on his left. They laid out their papers. No person else was present. The table was empty before the King, neither pen, ink nor paper. "I have commanded this council at your request," he said. "Speak without fear, all your mind. Gloze nothing: hold nothing back. The business, I understand, is of Rerek."
The Admiral cleared his throat. "My Lord the King, it needs not to say that there worketh in us but one thought and purpose, and that is to behave ourselves, waking and sleeping, as constant loyal faithful servants unto your serenity's person and, under your ordination and pleasure expressed and laid upon us, to perform (within the measure of our capacities) all that should enure to the safety of this Triple Kingdom and of the common weal thereof."
"True, it needs not to say," said the King. "I know it. Proceed you therefore, my good lord Admiral, to the matter. What of Rerek?"
The Admiral paused, as a swimmer might pause upon a high bank before the plunge. His fingers toyed with the jewel of the kingly order of the hippogriff that hung by a crimson ribbon about his neck. "For me, Lord," he said at last, "it is by so much the harder to urge, in a manner, this matter upon your serene highness's gracious attention (even although I hold it most crying needful), by how much it hath been my happiness to have served you and followed your fortunes since your earliest years: seen your unexampled uprising by wisdom and by might and main to this triple throne you have for yourself erected, as history remembereth not the like, so as it is become a common saying upon men's lips in these latter years, Pax Mezentiana. And it hath befallen me, through accident of birth and upbringing, to have longer enjoyed the high honour of your inward counsels than any here of mine equals now extant, albeit they be, I am very certain (save in this prime advantage of intimate acquaintance with your settled policy and the roots thereof) more abler men than I. Therefore I speak with due reservation" - here the Chancellor shifted slightly in his chair, and Roder, as if to shade the glare of the sun, leaned over his papers, his hand across his eyes - "I speak, in a manner, with reservation, and most of all in this business that concerneth - "
The King smiled. "Come, noble Jeronimy: we are friends. I am not to eat you. You mean the Vicar is my not distant kinsman, and that I have, with eyes open and for reasons not perhaps beyond the guessing of those inmost in my counsels, ridden him on what you begin to think too rashly light a rein. That's common ground. You came not here to tell me (nor to learn of me) that. What of it, then?"
"I thank your highness. Weli, to cut short the argument, my lord Chancellor hath here informations and reports, from divers independent intelligencers, throughly tried and not to be doubted, that (despite your plain warning to him to disband his army) he yet draweth strength to it about Laimak. Please your serenity peruse the evidences." He turned to the Chancellor, who, rising, spread on the table befoe the King a sheaf of writings.
But the King put them aside. "I know it. If they reported otherwise, it were an untruth. What then? You would put me in mind we may have to enforce our command?"
"By showing the whip: that at least, and at all events."
The King glanced his eye over the papers, then, pushing them slowly and thoughtfully across the table to Beroald, shook his head. "He will never attack me. These preparations are not against me."
"Saving your serenity's presence," said Roder: "against whom, then?"
"Against the future. Which, being unknown, he prudently hath fear of. He can look round and conclude he hath many and powerful enemies."
"Truly, my Lord the King," said Beroald, "I would not, for my part, gainsay him as for that. Some would say your serene highness alone standeth 'twixt him and the uniting of 'em to rid the world of him. Indeed there be some malignant grumblers - " He paused. "Is it your pleasure I speak plain, Lord?"
"More than that: I command you."
"With deep respect, then. There be some who murmur that your highness do play with fire may blaze out i' the end to burn their houses: think you ought to protect them, 'stead of suffer this man to grow big, run loose, and in his own time devour us all. They forget not the hellish cruelties used by him upon both small and great, and innocent persons amongst 'em ('tis not denied), upon pretext of putting down the rebellion in the Marches five years ago."
"Was not that well done, then," said the King, "to put it down? Was it not his duty? You are not a child, Beroald. You were there. You need not me to tell you this realm stood never in your lifetime in so fearful danger as when (I and the Admiral being held, with the main of my strength, in deadly and doubtful conflict with Akkama in the far north) Valero, following the Devil's enticements and his own wicked will and ambitious desires, raised rebellion most formidable to my great empire and obedience. By what strong hand was it if not by the Parry's alone, that the stirrers-up of those unnatural and treasonable commotions were put to the worst? And this to the evil example of all such as would hereafter attempt the like villany. And victory is not unbloody. Are you so hardy as question my rewarding him therefore?"
"My Lord the King, you do know my whole mind in this matter," replied the Chancellor, "and my love and obedience."
"But you thought I'd ne'er come back from Middle-mead, a year ago?"
"I thought neither your highness nor I should ever come back. Yet must I remember you, it was bitterly against my will you enforced me to stay behind while yourself did enter that cockatrices' den single-handed and alone."
"Yet that worked?"
"It worked. And for this sole reason, because (under favour of heaven) your serene highness was there to handle it. Another than yourself, were he a man of our own day or the greatest you could choose out of times past since history began: it had been the death of him. And that you do know, Lord, in your heart, better than I."
"To speak soberly, that is simple truth, dear Beroald," said the King. "And thinking upon that, you may wisely trust me in this much lesser danger now."
There fell a silence. Jeronimy caught the King's eye. "I would add but this," he said. "There is not a man in the Three Kingdoms would trust him an inch were your highness out of the way."
"However, I am here," answered the King. "You may securely leave him to me."
Again there fell a silence. The Admiral broke it, his eyes in a dog-like fidelity fastening on his great master's and taking assurance, may be, from the half-humorous glints, sun-blink on still water, that came and went across the depths of all-swaying all-tolerant all-sufficient certitude which then looked forth upon him. "God redeem us from omens: but we were great failers of our love and duty to your highness if we sat speechless, for want of courage to come to the kernel of the thing." "Which is?"
"That all men are mortal."
The King laughed: Olympian laughter, that the whole air in that room was made heady and fresh with it. "Why, you talk," he said, "as if there were no provision made. You three here in t
he south: Bodenay and a dozen more, seasoned captains and counsellors, to uphold the young King in Rialmar: Ercles and Aramond in north Rerek: Barganax in Zayana. Shall all these appear i' the testing-time bodgers and bunglers, at odds among themselves? Will you tell me the fleet is helpless? Or the army, Roder?"
"A prentice hand upon the tiller," said the Admiral, "and a storm toward, 'tis a perilous prospect, like to try all our seamanship."
"Let me not leave your minds in doubt," said the King. "When I farewell, it shall not be to commit the Kingdom to a bunch of ninnies and do-littles, but to men. The Duke of Achery, as legitimate heir, must look to it. He will need all his wits, and yours. I have instructed him fully, in every principle and its particular bearings, this summer, ere I came south now."
Jeronimy said, "The Duke of Zayana is also in question."
"He hath his apanage. He hath no thought of claiming more than his own. You may trust him, as were he mine own younger self, to be loyal and true to's young brother (so the boy have the wisdom and common generousness to play his part), and, were Styllis to die, to be as loyal and as true to's young sister, as Queen. Let me remember you, too: his kingdom is over far other things than lands, rivers, lakes, and the bodies of men. In the camp and the council-chamber I have nurtured him up to be expert in all that a prince should be master of; but, in heart, he is poet and painter. What to Emmius Parry was second subject in the symphony, is to Barganax first subject. He is of Meszria, born and bred. If let live, he will let live. But," said King Mezentius, his eyes upon them, "he is my son: therefore not a man to be mocked or teased. If forced to it, a hath that in him will make him able, and he be once set forth upon that path, to overthrow any person whatsoever who should pretend to usurp upon his right, - Well?" he said, watching them sit as men who in imagination see a load presented for them which they begin to think shall prove heavier than their powers may avail to carry. "Tell me not you are not the men I have known you."