The Zimiamvia Trilogy

by E R Eddison

  ‘It is a colour should most excellent well become you.’

  ‘Better than this black, you think?’ And that little thing, in a pretty irony not for his sharing, twinkled its eye (comparing, perhaps, two dresses of that fire-colour, so much alike: one, near of her own age, there beside Lessingham: the other here, in Memison, older by twenty years: dresses wherein She walked as it were asleep, humble, innocent, forgetful of Her Olympian home).

  ‘Black?’ said he, laughing. ‘You are dreaming! You are in yellow and cloth of gold tonight.’

  ‘O most just and discerning eye! How all-knowing an estate is matrimony!’ And this time, the upward curl of the corner of her lip was as a twisting of tiny scaly limbs (as the thing said perhaps, in her secret ear, that a deadly sorrow it was if such a dull owl must much longer go uncuckolded).

  But presently when, with those lips which hold the world’s desire, She began to speak again, it was Her own poetess’s words, and in the sweet Aeolian tongue: the ageless, fadeless, lilied numbers rising again in their undead youth: not as sound, not as movement or succession: rather as some subtlety of the air, some silvered showering of darkness: that shudder of the sense which, like meteors, runs near to heaven:

  Like is he, I think, to a God immortal,

  That man, whosoever he be, that near you

  Sits and thus to you and to your sweet talking

  Privately listens,

  And lilt of your dear laughter: a thing to send the

  Heart within my bosom a-leap; for barely

  So can I this brief little while behold you,

  —Speech quite forsakes me.

  Ah, my tongue is broken: a sudden subtle

  Fire beneath my skin in an instant courses;

  Eyesight none remains to mine eyes: mine ears roar,

  Drown’d under thunder.

  And the sweat breaks forth, and a trembling seizes

  All my body: paler than grass in summer

  I: in all else, scarce to be told, I think, from

  One that lay lifeless.

  Yet, to dare all—’

  All the leaves in that Memison garden trembled. Lessingham, too, trembled, leaning towards his dear. And Mary, lost and trembling, felt her inmost being dissolve and fail within her, under his eyes and under those self-seeing immortal eyes of Hers that, for the instant, borrowed his.

  Midnight sounded, grave, deep-tongued, from Anmering church tower. Mary, on Lessingham’s arm, stood quite still, here at the far seaward end of the garden terrace, listening: listening now to Lessingham’s whispered ‘Time to go.’

  ‘Don’t go. Not yet,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t mean to: not without you.’

  ‘O don’t let’s – all over again. I’ve told you, and told you: I can’t.’

  ‘You said you would.’

  ‘I know, but I oughtn’t to have said it. I can’t. I can’t.’

  ‘You can. I’ll look after “can”, my darling: that’s my job.’

  Mary shook her head. They turned and began to walk, very slowly.

  ‘You know my trouble,’ said Lessingham, after a silence. ‘I can’t do without you. Can’t live, without you. You know that.’

  She shook her head again, saying, almost inaudibly, ‘No. I don’t.’

  ‘I don’t mean shoot myself, or any tom-foolery like that. Simply, shan’t live: my dead body walking about, if I haven’t you.’

  Her face remained unreadable.

  ‘The devilish thing about you,’ he said, ‘is that, before, I used to think of all sorts of things I might do, and do damned well. I knew it. But since you – all that’s changed. There isn’t a hard thing in the world I could not do, standing on my head, with you caring about it; but without you, not a thing of them worth the doing. You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘How could you understand? But will you believe it?’

  She said, like the sound of a moth’s fluttered wing, ‘Yes.’

  ‘O my beloved,’ he caught the hand on his arm and kissed it: a cold little hand for a June night. ‘Then come. Everything ready: change of shoes if it’s wet crossing the paddock: a new fur coat (we can give it away tomorrow if you don’t like it)—’

  Mary stopped: took away her arm: stood looking down, face averted, her breath coming and going, her hands tight shut. ‘How dare you do these things?’ she said, in a kind of whisper. ‘How dare you tell me about them? Why did you come? Why? I told you not to. How dare you?’

  Lessingham watched her. ‘It’s been pretty difficult,’ he said after a while, without moving: ‘waiting: all this patience and obedience.’ For a minute they stood so; then she took his arm, and once more they began slowly walking. ‘We should never forgive ourselves,’ he said presently: ‘you and I, to turn back.’

  ‘Don’t ask me this, my friend. For I mustn’t.’

  ‘You’re mine,’ he said, his lips touching her hair above the ear: then very softly, ‘you must.’

  ‘Yes: I am yours. But I mustn’t.’

  ‘You must. Why not?’

  ‘I’m someone else’s too,’ she said, looking towards the house and its dark upper windows.

  They walked on. The silence became frightening: the stiffening of Lessingham’s arm under her hand: and now, when she looked up, his face, staring down at his own feet as they moved step by step.

  ‘Be kind?’

  ‘You’re not being very kind to me,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure I’ve not been a fool: not been too patient and obedient:’ Mary made a little sound of incredulous dissent: ‘not sure,’ he said, ‘that I’m not too late.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t let’s be absurd.’

  ‘You mean, when I said “somebody else’s”—’

  The whole night seemed to turn suddenly sultry and sullen and unfriendly.

  ‘Can’t you give me too,’ Mary said, ‘a little credit, for being patient? Being obedient?’

  ‘Obedient! A dangerous virtue.’

  Again she stopped, and they stood off from one another.

  ‘Don’t let us play hide-and-seek. I’m frightened when you think I would— You thought—?’ Lessingham gave no sign.

  ‘O, good heavens!’ She held out both hands to him, laughing as if he and she should enjoy a private joke together. ‘Shall I tell you then? I refused – why, nearly two hours ago I should think. But why should you need telling?’ she said.

  He took the hands in his: lifted them up and up, to bring her nearer: a tremulous and starry propinquity, in which spirit to spirit drew so close that the bodied senses of sight, touch, smell, seemed (as dragon-flies newly uncased from their prisons of the pupa) to hang faint and lost in the mid condition between two modes of being. Only that little thing, to all modes acclimatized and self-conditioned, and now very impertinently awake and active, regarded him from near her lip’s corners. Answering which, something laughed in Lessingham’s eyes. ‘So that’s what made him look like— By heavens, I’d like to—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Break the fellow’s neck,’ he said tartly, ‘for daring— But it shows: there’s pressure. And you’re alone.’

  ‘If people should say: if he should think: O of course, that girl: we didn’t hit it off, and now, you see, on the rebound—’

  ‘Tsh! They say, Quhat say they? They haif said. Let thame say.’ But the moon, shining down in her classic serenity on Mary’s white evening dress and on those upper windows of Anmering Blunds, seemed to discover in these thumping words a sudden and most disconcerting insufficiency: at least as applied to Mary, and by him.

  He let go her hands and stood, not irresolute but as if withdrawn for the moment into some inside privateness of deliberation: a silence that began to gather danger, as if one should listen for the muffled sound of bulls horning and wrestling behind closed doors. Then Mary watched the unconscious pose of him settle to lines such as, bound to an earthly permanency of bronze or marble, are sometimes seen in a masterwork of Donatello. He look
ed up. ‘May I pick one?’ They were standing near the stone pillar of a pergola grown over with Gloire de Dijon roses. Mary nodded, yes. ‘May I give it to you?’ She took it, very gentle and quiet. ‘Let’s walk along a little,’ he said. ‘Let me think.

  ‘Well,’ he said, at last: ‘what’s to be done?’

  There was no answer, unless in the presence of her hand on his arm.

  ‘Will you marry me?’

  ‘I’ve promised to.’

  ‘How can you? What if they won’t let you?’

  ‘Give me two months: perhaps three.’

  ‘O these months. What then?’

  ‘I’ll have got things right by then. And if not—’

  ‘If not?’

  ‘If not – well: I’ve promised.’

  ‘You promised to come away with me tonight,’ he said.

  He was suddenly kneeled down, his arms about her knees, his cheek pressed against her side. Presently he felt how her hand, very gently, began to stroke, the wrong way, the short cropped hair at the back of his neck: heard her voice, very gentle and trembling: ‘Dear. We mustn’t go tonight. I didn’t realize: it’s too big, this of ours: it is All. How can we say, “Let the rest go: take this”? The rest? it’s part of this. That would mean spoil this for its own sake. It would be hateful. We can’t do that. Shouldn’t deserve each other if we could.’ It was as if those moon-trod spaces of lawn and cricket field were tuned to a music bearing as under-song some life to which this is but exordial. He heard her say, ‘Nothing can take it from us: not if we died, I think.’

  ‘We shall die someday. What then?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mary said. ‘Perhaps this is only the shadow of it.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. This is all.’ His clasp tightened: his eyes now, not his cheek, buried themselves against her side.

  Suddenly Mary, so standing, very still, began to say rather breathlessly, rather brokenly: ‘You could, you could make me go tonight. But you won’t. It would spoil everything. It would hurt me. I’d always thought you were too fond of me to do that: thought you would never want to hurt me: you, of all people.’ Through the hammerings of his own veins he felt the trembling of her and the failing, like the yielded body of a bird in his encircling arms: felt the touch of her hand again, on his neck: heard her voice, nearer, lower: “But I’m not going to turn back. I don’t doubt you, my friend. Here I am. Your very own Mary.’ The summer night seemed, upon that silence, to be suddenly frozen. ‘All of me. Do what you like with me.’

  But Lessingham, in this new worst wrestling behind those doors, held fast: remained as if himself, too, were frozen: then did but this: still on his knees, catch her two hands and kiss them: kiss the Gloire de Dijon, still held in one of them: then, rising to his feet, take her in his arms. ‘Good night, my dear, my love, my beautiful. Too good and perfect for me, but my own. You make me ashamed. Kiss me goodnight: I’m going.’

  And, for last goodnight, Mary, mistress of the situation, touching with the tip of her nose the most sensitive part of his ear, whispered in it: ‘Didn’t I say: An omen, if you were wise? Michaelmas – Vintage.’

  VII

  SEVEN AGAINST THE KING

  KING Mezentius and my lord Chancellor Beroald, having refreshed them with a few hours’ sleep at Rumala, rode down from the Curtain into Rubalnardale: taking thus the easternmost, the directest, and the roughest-wayed and so most unfrequented pass over the mountains out of South Meszria northwards to the marches of the Zenner. They rode armed at all points, but cloaked and hooded. They were alone, even as alone they had set forth the evening before from Memison. A little beside Ilkis they began to bear away more northerly, leaving the beaten way and giving a wide berth to Kutarmish town; meaning to strike the river ten miles or more upstream and come over it by an unfrequented ford, and thence up by forest ways to the neighbourhood of Gilgash and the place intended. The sun had topped the far snow ridges of the range of Ramosh Arkab, and flooded all the vale of the Zenner with its fresh and unclouded glory of summer morning. They came on without haste now, and with time in hand.

  ‘Beroald,’ said the King, reining in his horse at the top of a slope where the moorish champaign began to fall away northwards before them in fold upon fold of heather and silver birch down to the green flats, purpled with distance, of water-meadow and woodland and winding river, ‘I have changed my mind concerning this undertaking.’

  The Chancellor, with his most saturnine smile, said, ‘I am glad to hear it.’

  ‘Glad? Why you know not yet what it is.’ The King threw back the hood of his cloak: put off his helm: suffered for a minute the wild delicate morning breeze to play about his forehead and ruffle the ambrosial curls above his brow. Clear and smooth his brow was as the polished ivory; but the rest of his countenance, down to the beginning of the great black beard and mustachios, was weather-bitten and passion-worn with the tracings of iron resolution and of a highness of heart beyond the nature of man, and of humour and a most eagly suddenness of thought and act. And now, as he laughed, it was as if the infection of some unsmotherable superfluity within that King, ever rash, ever headlong, like lightning, or like the rut and furious rage of love, fed the cold light’s flame in the watching eyes of the Chancellor that watched him. ‘For the life of me,’ he said, ‘I cannot bring myself to permit even you, Beroald, now that I come to the pinch, to have share with me in the grand main act.’

  The Chancellor shook his head. ‘I have long given over seeking to compass your serene highness or learn your drifts. You will go alone, then?’

  ‘Alone.’

  Beroald was silent.

  ‘Come,’ said the King, putting on his helm and drawing the hood over it once more: ‘you are a politician, and yet see not reason in that?’

  ‘I see unreason in going at all. If I had your authority, I would be so bold to unvicar him, and be done. But that case I argue no longer. Your serenity over-ruled me there.’

  ‘Remember,’ said the King, ‘I go tonight to reclaim an outrageous unstaid hawk. If I go accompanied, he may think he has high cause to fear lest this wild worm of ambition wavering in his head shall be uncased and laid open to the view of the world. That may alarm him to some unadvised violence: fall upon us then and there, and so spill all. For if he do so, then one of two things, and both evil: the worse, me and you to be slain, fighting alone against too much odds; or else (the lesser evil) slay him – as I had resolved not to do, but to reduce him.’

  He paused. The Chancellor but tightened his lips, thinking it folly, no doubt, to spurn against the hard wall. ‘You shall therefore,’ said the King, ‘await me in a place I will show you, under a wood’s side, a little this side of Gilgash. If I be come not again before midnight, then must you doubt not but that the worst is befallen, and so, haste haste post haste, back to Sestola, and do thus and thus,’ (instructing him at large in the whole manage of affairs).

  Mean time, forty miles or more north-away, in the hold of Laimak, that grey eyrie by strength insuperable upon its little hill, which had been to the Parrys since generations both refuge from the storm and seat key and sustainment of that power whereby, through long vicissitudes and whether by open means or dissembled, they swayed the middle kingdom and fattened on the land of Rerek, the Lord Horius Parry, upon this sweet morning of the twenty-fifth of June, stood a minute at his window of his private chamber: gazed south. There was a tranquillity in his gaze: a tranquillity on his unfurrowed brow. Close-sprouting as a pile of velvet, the cropped hair ran up and back over the round head of him to the large bull neck: red hair, stiff like hog’s bristles, growing far down the chine. His beard, clipped short too, came to a blunt point on the chin. His light hazel-hued eyes were small, set near, like a bear’s: the sharpness of their glance as the flashing of diamonds. There was about his nostrils a mobility, an expansion, a bestial eagerness, so that, to look at him, one had sworn he lashed a tail. And yet, over all, that tranquillity, as of a mind at peace with its own self: all the g
reat frame of him reposeful as a falcon hooded, or as quiet waters above some under-suck of the sea. Broad and heavy he was of body, may be nearly fifty years of age, yet knit to that hardness that comes of the soldier’s life and the hunting-field, turning to brawn all over-grossness which might else proceed from overmuch pleasuring of table or bed. He scarce reached the middle stature; and yet, for some native majesty of glance and bearing, seemed a man that could be tall without walking on tip-toe.

  ‘For’s health, a were best be gone,’ he said without looking round. ‘Have you summoned me out that squadron of horse?’

  Gabriel Flores answered him, seated at the broad oak table among papers and ink and seats: ‘Below the main gate, half-hour from now, your highness. As for him, a will hear no reason.’

  ‘Here’s a villain that would face me down. Is he mad?’

  ‘Like enough.’

  ‘Bring him in.’

  ‘If your highness pleased, I could send two lads to souse him in the moat. That might learn him.’

  ‘Bring him in, you sucking-pig.’

  Gabriel went and returned. ‘The Lord Sorms,’ he said loudly, falling behind to let him precede. But the room was empty. Sorms, much too aback, turned in anger upon Gabriel.

  ‘You must have patience, my lord. His highness will certain be here anon.’

  ‘You villain, I am tired out with patience. Where is the money I gave you?’

  ‘Your lordship hath had money’s worth, and three times told, in my wise advice.’

  ‘What? That I must spend yet a week waiting on my right in Laimak? Arquez hath done me wrong. ’Tis now six months since, with leave under seal vicarial and in your hand delivered to me, I have by suit of the King’s peace and in all due forms took course to right me. But in vain. There’s some works strings against me. I am not grounded in lands, and the faculty is very bare. At great charges I came south. I sent three days since to the Vicar for audience, but he would not be spoken with. I spoke with Rossillion: yesterday again with you: one might as well try to collect milk from a he-goat with a sieve. I sent after to the Vicar but he could not attend it for hunting. Or I will have it this morning, or I will hunt with him, by God’s leave.’