by E R Eddison
In that instant when the wax was yet soft of the King’s seal sealing that commission for Corsus, one tapped gently at the chamber door. The King bade enter, and there came the captain of his bodyguard and stood before the King, with word that one waited without, praying instant audience, “And showed me for a token, O my Lord the King, a bull’s head with fiery nostrils graven in a black opal in the bezel of a ring, which I knew for the signet of my Lord Corsus that his lordship beareth alway on his left thumb. And ’twas this, O King, that only persuaded me to deliver the message unto your Majesty in this unseasonable hour. Which if it be a fault in me, I do humbly hope your Majesty will pardon.”
“Knowest thou the man?” said the King.
He answered, “I might not know him, dread Lord, for the mask and great hooded cloak he weareth. It is a little man, and speaketh a husky whisper.”
“Admit him,” said King Gorice; and when Sriva was come in, masked and hooded and holding forth the ring, he said, “Thou lookest questionable, albeit this token opened a way for thee. Put off these trappings and let me know thee.”
But she, speaking still in a husky whisper, prayed that they might be private ere she disclosed herself. So the King bade leave them private.
“Dread Lord,” said the soldier, “is it your will that I stand ready without the door?”
“No,” said the King. “Void the ante-chamber, set the guard, and let none disturb me.” And to Sriva he said, “If thine errand prove not more honester than thy looks, this is an ill night’s journey for thee. At the liftink of my finger I am able to metamorphose thee to a mandrake. If indeed thou beest aught else already.”
When they were alone the Lady Sriva doffed her mask and put back her hood, uncovering her head that was crowned with two heavy trammels of her dark brown hair bound up and interwoven above her brow and ears and pinned with silver pins headed with garnets coloured like burning coals. The King beheld her from under the great shadow of his brows, darkly, not by so much as the moving of an eyelid or a lineament of his lean visage betraying aught that passed in his mind at this disclosing.
She trembled and said, “O my Lord the King, I hope you will indulge and pardon in me this trespass. Truly I marvel at mine own boldness how I durst come to you.”
With a gesture of his hand the King bade her be seated in a chair on his right beside the table. “Thou needest not be afraid, madam,” he said. “That I admit thee, let it make thee assured of welcome. Let me know thine errand.”
The fire of her father’s wine shuddered down within her like a low-lit flame in a gust of wind as she sat there alone with King Gorice XII. in the circle of the lamplight. She took a deep breath to still her heart’s fluttering and said, “O King, I was much afeared to come, and it was to ask you a boon: a little thing for you to give, Lord, and yet to me that am the least of your handmaids a great thing to receive. But now I am come indeed, I durst not ask it.”
The glitter of his eyes looking out from their eaves of darkness dismayed her; and little comfort had she of the iron crown at his elbow, bright with gems and fierce with uplifted claws, or of the copper serpents interlaced that made the arms of his chair, or of the bright image of the lamp reflected in the table top where were red streaks like streaks of blood and black streaks like edges of swords streaking the green shining surface of the stone.
Yet she took heart to say, “Were I a great lord had done your majesty service as my father hath, or these others you did honour to-night, O King, it had been otherwise.” He said nothing, and still gathering courage she said, “I too would serve you, O King. And I came to ask you how.”
The King smiled. “I am much beholden to thee, madam. Do as thou hast done, and thou shalt please me well. Feast and be merry, and charge not thine head with these midnight questionings, lest too much carefulness make thee grow lean.”
“Grow I so, O King? You shall judge.” So speaking the Lady Sriva rose up and stood before him in the lamplight. Slowly she opened her arms upwards right and left, putting back her velvet cloak from her shoulders, until the dark cloak hanging in folds from either uplifted hand was like the wings of a bird lifted up for flight. Dazzling fair shone her bare shoulders and bare arms and throat and bosom. One great hyacinth stone, hanging by a gold chain about her neck, rested above the hollow of her breasts. It flashed and slept with her breathing’s alternate fall and swell.
“You did threaten me, Lord, but now,” she said, “to transmew me to a mandrake. Would you might change me to a man.”
She could read nothing in the crag-like darkness of his countenance, the iron lip, the eyes that were like pulsing firelight out of hollow caves.
“I should serve you better so, Lord, than my poor beauty may. Were I a man, I had come to you to-night and said, ‘O King, let us not suffer any longer of that hound Juss. Give me a sword, O King, and I will put down Demonland for you and tread them under feet.’”
She sank softly into her chair again, suffering her velvet cloak to fall over its back. The King ran his finger thoughtfully along the upstanding claws of the crown beside him on the table.
“Is this the boon thou askest me?” he said at length. “An expedition to Demonland?”
She answered it was.
“Must they sail to-night?” said the King, still watching her.
She smiled foolishly.
“Only,” he said, “I would know what gadfly of urgency stung thee on to come so strangely and suddenly and after midnight.”
She paused a minute, then summoning courage: “Lest another should first come to you, O King,” she answered. “Believe me, I know of preparations, and one that shall come to you in the morning praying this thing for another. What intelligence soever some hath, I am sure of that to be true that I have.”
“Another?” said the King.
Sriva answered, “Lord, I’ll say no names. But there be some, O King, be dangerous sweet suppliants, hanging their hopes belike on other strings than we may tune.”
She had bent her head above the polished table, looking curiously down into its depths. Her corsage and gown of scarlet silk brocade were like the chalice of a great flower; her white arms and shoulders like the petals of the flower above it. At length she looked up.
“Thou smilest, my Lady Sriva,” said the King.
“I smiled at mine own thought,” she said. “You’ll laugh to hear it, O my Lord the King, being so different from what we spoke on. But sure, of women’s thoughts is no more surety nor rest than is in a vane that turneth at all winds.”
“Let me hear it,” said the King, bending forward, his lean hairy hand flung idly across the table’s edge.
“Why thus it was, Lord,” said she. “There came me in mind of a sudden that saying of the Lady Prezmyra when first she was wed to Corund and dwelt here in Carcë. She said all the right part of her body was of Witchland but the left Pixy. Whereupon our people that were by rejoiced much that she had given the right part of her body to Witchland. Whereupon she said, but her heart was on the left side.”
“And where wearest thou thine?” asked the King. She durst not look at him, and so saw not the comic light go like summer lightning across his dark countenance as she spoke Prezmyra’s name.
His hand had dropped from the table edge; Sriva felt it touch her knee. She trembled like a full sail that suddenly for an instant the wind leaves. Very still she sat, saying in a low voice, “There’s a word, my Lord the King, if you’d but speak it, should beam a light to show you mine answer.”
But he leaned closer, saying, “Dost think I’ll chaffer with thee? I’ll know the answer first i’ the dark.”
“Lord,” she whispered, “I would not have come to you in this deep and dead time of the night but that I knew you noble and the great King, and no amorous surfeiter that should deal false with me.”
Her body breathed spices: soft warm scents to make the senses reel: perfume of malabathrum bruised in wine, essences of sulphur-coloured lilies planted in Aphrodite’s
garden. The King drew her to him. She cast her arms about his neck, saying close to his ear, “Lord, I may not sleep till you tell me they must sail, and Corsus must be their captain.”
The King held her gathered up like a child in his embrace. He kissed her on the mouth, a long deep kiss. Then he sprang to his feet, set her down like a doll before him upon the table by the lamp, and so sat back in his own chair again and sat regarding her with a strange and disturbing smile.
On a sudden his brow darkened, and thrusting his face towards hers, his thick black square-cut beard jutting beneath the curl of his shaven upper lip, “Girl,” he said, “who sent thee o’ this errand?”
He rolled his eye upon her with such a gorgon look that her blood ran back with a great leap towards her heart, and she answered, scarce to be heard, “Truly, O King, my father sent me.”
“Was he drunk when he sent thee?” asked the King.
“Truly, Lord, I think he was,” said she.
“That cup that he was drunken withal,” said King Gonce, “let him prize and cherish it all his life natural. For if in his sober senses he should make no more estimation of me than think to bribe my favours with a bona roba; by my soul, in his evil health he had sought to do it, for it should cost him nothing but his life.”
Sriva began to weep, saying, “O King, your gentle pardon.”
But the King paced the room like a prowling lion. “Did he fear I should supply Corund in his place?” said he. “This was a cock-sure way to make me do it, if indeed his practice had might to move me at all. Let him learn to come to me with his own mouth if he hope to get good of me. Other else, out of Carcë let him go and avoid my sight, that all the great masters of Hell may conduct him thither.”
The King paused at length beside Sriva, that was perched still upon the table, showing a kind of sweetness in tears, sobbing very pitifully, her face hidden in her two hands. So for a time he beheld her, then lifted her down, and while he sat in his great chair, holding her on his knee with one hand, with the other drew hers gently from before her face. “Come,” he said, “I blame it not on thee. Give over all thy weeping. Reach me that writing from the table.”
She turned in his arms and stretched a hand out for the parchment.
“Thou knowest my signet?” said the King.
She nodded, ay.
“Read,” said he, letting her go. She stood by the lamp, and read.
The King was behind her. He took her beneath the arms, bending to speak hot-breathed in her ear. “Thou seest, I had already chose my general. Therefore I let thee know it, because I mean not to let thee go till morning; and I would not have thee think thy loveliness, howe’er it please me, moveth such deepcommanding spells as to sway my policy.”
She lay back against his breast, limp and strengthless, while he kissed her neck and eyes and throat; then her lips met his in a long voluptuous kiss. Surely the King’s hands upon her were like live coals.
Bethinking her of Corinius, fuming at an open door and an empty chamber, the Lady Sriva was yet content.
CHAPTER XVII
THE KING FLIES HIS HAGGARD
How the Lady Prezmyra came to the King on an errand of state, and how she prospered therein: wherein is also seen why the King would send the Duke Corsus into Demonland; and how on the fifteenth day of July these Lords, Corsus, Laxus, Gro, and Gallandus, sailed with a fleet from Tenemos.
On the morn came the Lady Prezmyra to pray audience of the King, and being admitted to his private chamber stood before him in great beauty and splendour, saying, “Lord, I came to thank you as occasion served not for me fitly so to do last night i’ the banquet hall. Sure, ’tis no easy task, since when I thank you as I would, I must seem too unmindful of Corund’s deserving who hath won this kingdom: but if I speak too large of that, I shall seem to minish your bounty, O King. And ingratitude is a vice abhorred.”
“Madam,” said the King, “thou needest not to thank me. And to mine ears great deeds have their own trumpets.”
So now she told him of her letters received from Corund out of Impland. “It is well seen, Lord,” said she, “how in these days you do beat down all peoples under you, and do set up new tributary kings to add to your great praise in Carcë. O King, how long must this ill weed of Demonland offend us, going still untrodden under feet?”
The King answered her not a word. Only his lip showed a gleam of teeth, as of a tiger’s troubled at his meal.
But Prezmyra said with great hardiness, “Lord, be not angry with me. Methinks it is the part of a faithful servant honoured by his master to seek new service. And where lieth likelier service Corund should do you than west over seas, to lead presently an army naval thither and make an end of them, ere their greatness stand up again from the blow wherewith last May you did strike them?”
“Madam,” said the King, “this charge is mine. I’ll tell thee when I need thy counsel, which is not now.” And standing up as if to end the matter, he said, “I do intend some sport to-day. They tell me thou hast a falcon gentle towereth so well she passeth the best Corinius hath. ’Tis clear calm weather. Wilt thou take her out to-day and show us the mounty at a heron?”
She answered, “Joyfully, O King. Yet I beseech you add this favour to all your former goodness, to hear me yet one word. Something persuades me you have already determined of this enterprise, and by your putting of me off I do fear your majesty meaneth not Corund shall undertake it but some other.”
Dark and immovable as his own dark fortress facing the bright morning, Gorice the King stood and beheld her. Sunshine streaming through the eastern casement lighted red-gold smouldering splendours in the heavy coils of that lady’s hair, and flew back in dazzling showers from the diamonds fastened among those coils. After a space he said, “Suppose I am a gardener. I go not to the butterfly for counsel. Let her be glad that there be rose-trees there and red stonecrops for her delight; which if any be lacking I’ll give her more for the asking, as I’ll give thee more masques and revels and all brave pleasures in Carcë. But war and policy is not for women.”
“You have forgot, O King,” said the Lady Prezmyra, “Corund made me his ambassador.” But seeing a blackness fall upon the King’s countenance she said in haste, “But not in all, O King. I will be open as day to you. The expedition he strongly urged, but not for himself the leading on’t.”
The King looked evilly upon her. “I am glad to hear it,” he said. Then, his brow clearing, “Know thou it for thy good, madam, order is ta’en for this already. Ere winter-nights return again, Demonland shall be my footstool. Therefore write to thy lord I gave him his wish beforehand.”
Prezmyra’s eyes danced triumph. “O the glad day!” she cried. “Mine also, O King?”
“If thine be his,” said the King.
“Ah,” said she, “you know mine outgallops it.”
“Then school thine, madam,” said the King, “to run in harness. Why think’st thou I sent Corund into Impland, but that I knew he had excellent wit and noble courage to govern a great kingdom? Wouldst have me a wilful child snatch Impland from him like a sampler half stitched?”
Then, taking leave of her with more gracious courtesy, “We shall look to see thee then, madam, o’ the third hour before noon,” he said, and smote on a gong, summoning the captain of his guard. “Soldier,” he said, “conduct the Queen of Impland. And bid the Duke Corsus straight attend me.”
The third hour before noon the Lord Gro met with Prezmyra in the gate of the inner court. She had a riding-habit of dark green tiffany and a narrow ruff edged with margery-pearls. She said, “Thou comest with us, my lord? Surely I am beholden to thee. I know thou lovest not the sport, yet to save me from Corinius I must have thee. He plagueth me much this morning with strange courtesies; though why thus on a sudden I cannot tell.”
“In this,” said Lord Gro, “as in greater matters, I am thy servant, O Queen. ’Tis yet time enough, though. This half hour the King will not be ready. I left him closeted with Corsus, that se
tteth presently about his arming against the Demons. Thou hast heard?”
“Am I deaf,” said Prezmyra, “to a bell clangeth through all Carcë?”
“Alas,” said Gro, “that we waked too long last night, and lay too long abed i’ the morning!”
Prezmyra answered, “That did not I. And yet I’m angry with myself now that I did not so.”
“How? Thou sawest the King before the council?”
She bent her head for yes.
“And he nay-said thee?”
“With infinite patience,” said she, “but most irrevocably. My lord must hold by Impland till it be well broke to the saddle. And truly, when I think on’t, there’s reason in that.”
Gro said, “Thou takest it, madam, with that clear brow of nobleness and reason I had looked for in thee.”
She laughed. “I have the main of my desire, if Demonland shall be put down. Natheless, it maketh a great wonder the King picketh for this work so rude a bludgeon when so many goodly blades lie ready to his hand. Behold but his armoury.”
For, standing in the gateway at the head of the steep descent to the river, they beheld where the lords of Witchland were met beyond the bridge-gate to ride forth to the hawking. And Prezmyra said, “Is it not brave, my Lord Gro, to dwell in Carcë? Is it not passing brave to be in Carcë, that lordeth it over all the earth?”
Now came they down and by the bridge to the Way of Kings to meet with them on the open mead on the left bank of Druima. Prezmyra said to Laxus that rode on a black gelding full of silver hairs, “I see thou hast thy goshawks forth to-day, my lord.”
“Ay, madam,” said he. “There is not a stronger hawk than these. Withal they are very fierce and crabbed, and I must keep them private lest they slay all other sort.”
Sriva, that was by, put forth a hand to stroke them. “Truly,” she said, “I love them well, thy goshawks. They be stout and kingly.” And she laughed and said, “Truly to-day I look not lower than on a King.”