The Zimiamvia Trilogy

by E R Eddison

  The melody of the pavane, which had returned, upon its last variation, to walk in a glitter of all stars and in a hum of bees and in wafts of honey-sweet fragrance sent out by flowering lime-trees, paused now and, upon two soft pizzicato throbs, entered the doors of silence. Lessingham, making his obeisance to the Queen, handed her towards her chair. On the way to it he, looking down at her as they talked, noted her glance range over the assembled company: noted the dimple hover like a hummingbird near her mouth’s corner. ‘Cousin,’ she said, holding out her free hand to Zenianthe as they met: ‘praise my invention. It has succeeded past belief: our enemy fled to mew, and durst no more appear. What reward, Captain-General, will you ask for your share in’t? For truly, till tonight, ne’er was there prince in Rialmar so yoked as I.’

  ‘Some heights there are,’ replied Lessingham, ‘that a man may but descend from. If I may yet be honoured, I’ll choose the next lower height, and ask this: that your serenity will graciously be my advocate with my Lady Zenianthe for the honour of a dance.’

  ‘Well, cousin?’ said the Queen; ‘shall I?’

  ‘’Tis a request,’ answered she, ‘which I think your highness may pleasantly accept. And for this next dance following.’

  Lessingham carried himself, through the remaining pleasures of that evening, with open face, and as a man that gives him wholly to the immediate matter: his discourse full of lively and bright sparkles and, when need was, serious opinion. So that neither to the Queen nor to Zenianthe, nor to any that was there, was aught seen in it but of example and use: so masterfully he rode that hippogriff steed within him, and upon so delicate a curb.

  Night wore, and the high festival drew to a close. And now, for an ending of ceremonies, the ladies of presence and they of her council stood below stairs in waiting, while she went up in state, alone save for her train-bearers, between the sea-horses. Lessingham, watching, bethought him that not far otherwise might the foam-born Goddess Herself ascend azured spaces of Her eternal sea, between sunset and the moon’s rising. And then he bethought him as if all time’s treasure-house should have been distilled, from eternity to eternity, into one frail pearl, and in that superlative should pass, under his eyes, beneath cliffs of night.

  XIV

  DORIAN MODE: FULL CLOSE

  LESSINGHAM’S ‘I WILL HAVE BUT UPON NO CONDITIONS.’

  QUEEN Antiope, upon that good-night, went up to her rest. But Lessingham, being come at length to his bedchamber, came and went betwixt window and bed and candle and hearth in an inward strife, as if right hand should grapple against left hand to peril of tearing in pieces the body that owns them.

  ‘I will have nothing upon conditions,’ he said at length, aloud. He stood now, looking in the glass until, with that staring, the reflection dimmed, and only his eyes, sharpened to steel with a veiling and confounding of all else, stood forth against him. ‘Conditions!’ he said; and, turning about, drew from the breast of his doublet a little withered leaf; the same which Anthea, for better convenience, had given him in Laimak. Upon this he looked for a while, musing; then opened the door: went out. The corridors were as ante-chambers of sleep and oblivion: night-watchmen stood to a drowsed salute upon his passage, down the stairs, through empty halls, to the outer doors. At that leaf’s touch doors opened. He came so to the privy garden. On noiseless hinges, under that leaf of virtue, the gate swung wide. And he began to say in himself, walking now in the night-light under stars, and with slower tread, and with an equanimity now of breath and heart-beat whereon his riding thoughts seemed to mount into the starred sublimities of the unceilinged night: ‘Nothing upon conditions. Condition of wedlock, kingdom, and be answerable: no. Betrayal so of his commission: no, by my soul! Throwing over of freedom: lean on this, ’stead of ride him as I have ridden aforetime: ha! No. Or, glutton-like: smircher of—’ He checked; overtaken, as a man smitten on the nape of the neck with a stick, with a blindness of thought and sense. Then he quickened his pace for a dozen steps, then swung round and, rigid as a statue, stood facing Aphrodite’s statue there: of Aphrodite, white between stars and paler stars reflected in the water, and water-lilies that floated asleep about Her feet. And he thought with himself, as thought stood up again: ‘You are other. Even He that made You—’ the night-wind moved for a moment in that sleeping garden, and in a moment was fallen again to sleep: ‘Your power forced Him, making of You, make the one thing desirable.’

  A breath from the lilies fainted from under Lessingham’s nostrils. His mind stopped and stood still. So a man cloudbound upon the backbone of some high mountain stands clean lost, for the opening and shutting again of a window in the mists that has revealed, far below, a glimpse not of familiar country but of strange and unremembered: and yet embraced, upon some unseized persuasive contrariety of argument addressed to blind certitudes secure and asleep within him, for a country familiar and his own. And now, with a like alien outwardness that the inward touch denied, words which, for all their curiosity of outmoded idiom, he seemed to know for his own words drifted across his thought:

  And we, madonna, are we not exiles still?

  When first we met

  Some shadowy door swung wide,

  Some faint voice cried,

  —Not heeded then

  For clack of drawing-room chit-chat, fiddles, glittering lights,

  Waltzes, dim stairs, scents, smiles of other women – yet,

  ’Twas so: that night of nights,

  Behind the hill

  Some light that does not set

  Had stirr’d, bringing again

  New earth, new morning-tide.

  As a man awakening would turn back into his dream, yet with that very striving awakes; or as eyes search for a star, picked up out but now, but vanished again in the suffusing of the sky with light of approaching day; so Lessingham seized at, yet in the twinkling lost, the occasion of those lines, the thin seeming memory blown with them as if from some former forgotten life. Out of which passivity of dream, waiting on flight where no air is to bear up wings; waiting on some face but there is no seeing where all is darkness; some voice or hand-touch where all is deaf and bodiless; out of this his senses began to look abroad again only when he was come back at last now to his own chamber, and stood, where an hour ago he had stood, looking into his own eyes. And now, as the lineaments of earth are bodied to a gradual clearness under the grey of dawn, he began to see again his own face, as mountain should so at dawn look across to mountain through heights of air.

  ‘I will have—’ he said and was silent. ‘But upon no bargains,’ he said. ‘Conditions is blasphemy.’

  Shred by shred he tore up now his leaf of sferra cavallo, sprinkling it shred by shred upon the whitening embers in the fireplace; and so, with a half mocking half regretful look, stood watching till the last shred shrivelled, and burnt up, and disappeared.

  XV

  RIALMAR VINDEMIATRIX

  CURBING OF THE HIPPOGRIFF • A QUEEN FANCY-FREE • RIDE IN THE FOREST: SUDDEN LIGHT • VANDERMAST’S WAYSIDE GARDEN • THE HOUSE OF PEACE • NAIAD AND DRYAD AND OREAD • ‘SPARKLING-THRONÉD HEAVENLY APHRODITE’ • SPRING-SCENTS OF AMBREMERINE • WHIRLPOOL AND A NEW STILLNESS • ‘… WITH AN IMMORTAL GODDESS: NOT CLEARLY KNOWING’ • SWIFT-FLYING DOVES TO DRAW YOU’ • MEDITATION AMONG NYMPHS BY FIRELIGHT • THE ROSE AND THE ADAMANT • SUMMER NIGHT: ANTIOPE • AUTUMN DUSK: THE STORING AND THE BROODING.

  QUEEN Antiope proclaimed for Michaelmas day a day’s delight and pleasure, to ride a-hawking. That was a brisk sweet autumn morning. Lessingham, booted and ready at his window, sniffed the air. Amaury came in: bade him good morrow. ‘Well,’ said Lessingham to that reproving eye: ‘what now?’ Amaury took a looking-glass from the wall and held it for him.

  ‘Is there a smudge on my nose? Is my beard awry?’ He leaned to survey himself with a mock solicitudeness.

  Amaury set down the glass. ‘O think not I care a flea, though old Bodenay and a dozen more of ’em shall be killed right out, with your denying t
hem all respite and very sleep. But, for your own self—’

  ‘Will you count how many shirts I have sweat at tennis this week?’

  Tennis! Six weeks now, and the last three I think you’re stark mad,’ said Amaury. ‘A half-year’s business thrust into twenty days: the whole engine and governance of the Queen’s strength in the north here picked in pieces and put together good and new: a great new body of intelligencers thrown abroad for a watch on Akkama, till now so ill neglected: the town in act to be stocked ’gainst a twelve months’ siege if need were: works set in hand to make sure all defences: all things viewed, all put upon examination: the Constable and half the officers here cashiered: three or four heads ta’en off: every man else, by your own sole doing, manned and tamed to your fist—’

  ‘Well,’ said Lessingham, ‘we should think the soul was never put into the body to stand still.’ He took his hat. ‘He that could dine with the smoke of roast meat, Amaury, should he not soon be rich? When I’ve set all in order: a week or two now: then off with my commission, throw it by and we’ll begone overseas.’

  Amaury followed him through the door.

  Bright sun shone on Rialmar fair and beautifully as they rode down through the market-place. By the Quiren Way they rode, and so to the old town gate, and so out, and so, winding steeply down the shoulder of that great hill, south-about into the levels of Revarm. Orvald and Tyarchus led, with the guard of honour; then the Queen in her close-bodied green riding-habit trimmed with pearls: Anamnestra, Zenianthe, Paphirrhoë: Amaury: the Lord Bosra, new taken for Constable in Rialmar: accipitraries, seven or eight, with spaniels and red setting-dogs; and, to bring up the rear, with a tartaret haggard hooded on his fist, Lessingham upon Maddalena, deep in counsel with the old knight marshal.

  The morning they spent in the open river-meads, flying at wildfowl. The river, meandering in mighty curves a mile and more this way and that way, ran shallow upon great widths of shingle; ever now and again they forded it with a plashing and a clank of hooves among shifting stones. The dogs must swim oft at these crossings, but nowhere was it deeper than wet the horses’ bellies. Out of the north-east the wind blew sharp from the mountains, making sport difficult. The sun in a blue sky shone on rough blue waves of the river and on pale swifter waves of wind-swept grass. An hour past midday they rode up through lava, picking a way among bosses and ridges of it as among stooks in a cornfield before harvest home, and so by wide sloping stretches of black sand, a country that seemed made of coal-dust, to a grassy saddle between two smooth cratered hills. Here, sheltered from the wind by the breast of the hill above them, they halted to eat a little and take their ease.

  ‘What means your highness to do this afternoon?’ asked Tyarchus. ‘Turn back? Or on over the hause and ride races on the flats there?’

  ‘My Lord Tyarchus,’ said Zenianthe, ‘blindfold we’d know you! Your highness were best let him have his way. His eyas flew ill this morning, so the sport’s suddenly out of fashion.’

  ‘Be kind to him,’ said the Queen. ‘’Twas so God made him.’

  ‘And that’s why there’s nought he hateth worse in the world,’ said the princess, ‘than dance, for instance.’

  ‘Now I think on’t,’ said the Queen: ‘danced not one single measure upon my birthday.’

  ‘Truth is,’ said Tyarchus, ‘I am somewhat nice in matter of whom I shall dance withal.’

  Zenianthe laughed. ‘True. For you came first to me. Showed knowledge, if not judgement.’

  ‘O Zenianthe, and would you not dance with him?’ said the Queen.

  ‘Bade him try Myrilla first. So as, if he trod not upon her dress, as ’pon yours, cousin, a year ago—’

  ‘That’s unfair,’ said Tyarchus. ‘Her highness had forgot and forgiven.’

  Antiope seemed to have settled with this talk to a yet sweeter companionship with the green earth where she sat; and not now in her eyes only, but most subtly in all her frame and pose as she rested there, was a footing it as of little mocking faunish things, round and round, in a gaiety too smooth and too swift for eye to follow. ‘Most unfair,’ she said. ‘To make amends, ought I dance with you myself tonight?’

  ‘Madam, I take that most kindly.’

  ‘But in a dress,’ said she, ‘without a train.’ They laughed. ‘But I was but thinking. No; may be, all for all, better it were you, cousin, danced with him.’

  ‘That,’ said Zenianthe, ‘I take most unkindly.’

  ‘A penance for you,’ replied the Queen, ‘for your unkindness to him.’

  ‘A penance?’ Tyarchus turned to the princess. ‘Shall’s make friends then, as both offended?’

  ‘I know the sure way to content him,’ said Lessingham. ‘Do him that favour as to let him try this new jennet of his ’gainst your grace’s Tessa.’

  ‘And to take down his pride ’pon the same motion,’ said Zenianthe.

  ‘Tessa?’ said Tyarchus; ‘was not she bred in the great horse-lands beyond the Zenner, of that race and stock your highness’s father (upon whom be peace) so cherished and increased there, stablished since generations in that good land, and ’longeth now to Duke Barganax? Well, if I win, shall I have her?’

  ‘No,’ said the Queen, laughing at him across her fingers that played bob together. ‘If you win, you shall have leave not to dance: neither me nor Zenianthe.’

  ‘A pretty forfeit! There you stand both to gain.’

  ‘You too; for do you not hate to dance? What could be fairer?’

  ‘If your grace must be answered – thus then: choice to dance with neither or with both.’

  ‘My Lord Lessingham,’ the Queen said, rising, and all rose with her; ‘have you not your mare of that same breed? And shall she rest attemptless?’

  Lessingham laughed with his eyes. ‘So your serene highness rode not in the race, though mine be seven year old, I doubt not mounted on her to outride any that treads on four pasterns. But let me remember that those who will eat cherries with great princes shall have their eyes dasht out with the stones. We low subjects—’

  ‘No excuses,’ said the Queen. ‘I’ll stake a jewel upon it. Come, cousin,’ to Zenianthe: ‘you and I; Lessingham, Orvald, Amaury, Tyarchus: that’s six, upon well-breathed horses.’

  With that, they took saddle again and rode on north, over the hause and so down into woodlands of silver birch with open turfy stretches, and among the grass pallid drifts of the autumn crocus. Where the glade ran wide before them near on a mile without bend, those six took station. After some justling and curvetting, Paphirrhoë with a wave of a white handkercher gave them the start. As they galloped, now in broad sunshine, now through airs dappled with lights and shadows, wet earth-scents flew. Rabbits that washed their faces or nibbled among the grass fled left and right to the shelter of bramble or hazel-coppice or birch-wood. Grey silver in the sun were the trunks and branches, and the twigs red as it had been copper glowing against the blue. At a mile the Queen led, outgalloping Tyarchus for all his spurring. The forest ride swung west now, and after a while south-westwards, into the sun, and began to fall gently away towards a bottom of green grass. Lessingham, for the sun’s glory in his eyes, scarce could see. He leaned forward, whispered Maddalena, touched her neck: in a burst of speed she carried him past Tyarchus. As by conduct of some star he rode now: a timeless chase, wherein he lost at length all wareness save of his own riding that seemed now to outswift the wind; and of Antiope ahead, on her black mare.

  At a three lanes’ end she drew rein. The black mare stood with head down and with heaving and smoking flanks. Lessingham too drew rein. Maddalena herself was breathed and weary: she had carried the heavier load. On either hand were wide billowing tracts of whinbushes in full flower, yellow, of a sharp, stinging scent. On either hand upon the edges, of the wood, silver birches in their livery of autumn swayed in the bright air.

  ‘We have outridden them all,’ Antiope said, a little breathless yet with hard riding, as she turned in the saddle to Lessingham who was hal
ted now within hand-reach. ‘’Las, and I have ridden my hair loose. Will you hold my reins while I see to it?’

  She dropped reins: pulled off her gloves: began gathering with her fingers the coil of hair which, heavy, pythonlike, of the sheen of palest mountain gold, was fallen at her neck. Lessingham made no answer, neither moved. This that he looked on was become suddenly a thing to darken sight and shake the stability of nature. The wind was on that sudden fallen, and no breath stirred. On the stillness came a flutter of wings, of a wood-pigeon flapping down unseen among tree-tops. The Queen looked round into Lessingham’s face. The stillness laid its finger upon her too, even to the holding in of breath. Like a lute-string strained in an air too thin to carry sound, the silence trembled. The Queen parted her lips, but no voice came.

  At a grating of hinges upon the left, Lessingham swung round in his saddle to behold, with eyes startled as out of sleep and dreams, a wicket gate that opened in a low red brick wall smothered all over with dark red climbing roses. A garden close was within that gate, sweet with a hundred smells and colours of flowers, and beyond the garden a low-built old timbered house in measurable good reparations, straw-thatched, and with slender chimneys of brickwork and long low windows. A vine hung the porch with green leaves and pendulous black clusters. The wall on either hand betwixt porch and window, besides all the length betwixt the windows of the ground-floor and of the bedchambers above these, was a ripening-place for apricocks and pears and peaches trained orderly against the wall; and the slant rays of the sun turned the hanging fruits to gold, sending long shadows of them sideways on the wall, deep purple shadows against the warm and ruddy hues of the brickwork. The decline of postmeridian brought coolness to the autumn air. Homing doves rested pink feet on the roof-ridge. A smell of wood-smoke came from the house. And, cap in hand upon the top step of three that led down from that wicket gate, there stood to greet them, as bidding welcome to expected guests, that same logical doctor, last seen by Lessingham in the far southlands of Zayana. Well past all mistaking Lessingham knew him: knew besides the little cat, white as new snow, that rubbed head against the skirt of that old man’s gaberdine and looked ever with blue eyes upon Antiope. The sun’s splendour swung at mid-evening’s height above great oak-woods. These, and a high upland training across the north behind the house, shut out all distances; not a birch was to be seen; no whins flaunted yellow flowers; no galloping hoof drew near. Only Tessa and Maddalena munched the wayside grass: from the roof came the turtle dove’s soft complaint: from the woodside a lowing of cattle sounded, and nearer at hand a babble of running water. Upon the left, to the right of the sun, a holm-oak upreared its statuesque magnificence of bough and foliage, nearly black, but with a stir of radiance upon it like a scattering of star-dust. Doctor Vandermast was saying to Antiope, watching her face the while with most searching gaze, ‘I hope, madam, that in these particularities I have nothing forgot. I hope you shall find all perfect even as your ladyship gave in charge at my depart.’