The Zimiamvia Trilogy

by E R Eddison

  ‘As, by law, come it must,’ said Count Olpman: ‘to the son born in wedlock and undubitate heir.’

  ‘An untried boy,’ said Stathmar.

  ‘Proud, insolent, jealous of all true merit,’ said Gilmanes.

  ‘God abolish his name under heaven,’ said Clavius.

  Arquez ground his teeth.

  ‘Such inconveniences,’ said the Vicar, ‘are lightly by wise policy to be turned to advantage. But mischief is in his tutors. Be sure of this, my lords: come that day, you shall see a triumvirate of court sycophants, under colour of young Styllis, take power i’ the Three Kingdoms: Roder, ’cause the boy clings yet to him as to’s wet-nurse; the fat Admiral, ’cause of legitimacy and what has been must be; and Beroald, ’cause in the sheep’s-heads o’ the other two is not brains sufficient betwixt the pair of ’em to keep ’em from disaster not a sennight’s space, nor resolution enough to hold to any course resolved on, but still must run to him.’

  ‘And besides all this,’ Stathmar said, ‘your excellency has to reckon with Zayana.’

  ‘Aye, I was coming to that.’

  ‘O, I redoubt not him,’ said Olpman. ‘So he have his pretty pussy to huggle withal, it forceth not. A do-little, a—’

  ‘There your judgement, my Lord Olpman, so needle-eyed as I have known it, turns blind as a beetle,’ said the Vicar. ‘Five years now he hath shown himself, in conduct of his dukedom, high-thoughted like to’s father. Because in his underage and jollity he will eat and drink and have dalliance with women, be not you so bedoted as think that the sum. Bastard blood is very bold and hurtful: the more so, come of the loins of King Mezentius. And we manage not this young Duke, he may yet prove a main part of our undoing. Styllis, Barganax, and yonder three unite and joined against us, our matter were like to go evil. But feed we but their factions and hold ’em apart (as, with him, we may use the offences Styllis hath unbrotherly committed and shall likely yet commit against him) – why, with such a policy, I dare pawn down my life, Rerek shall still find her a cloak for every rain.’

  There fell a silence. Under the Vicar’s careless-seeming yet most discomfortably mind-searching glance, men’s eyes shifted, as though each looked for other first to unrip the seals and show what underlay these unresty hints and half-spoken loose suggestions. ‘Let me put in your minds, if you forget,’ said the Vicar, ‘that you, not I, first sought such a conference as this is, when each severally in writing you put yourselves to my protection. And, that you may see how merely for the common weal I take hand in the thing, I’ll tell you: if there be any man living you think likelier than me to help you in such perilous circumstances as but now we spoke on – show him to me. I’ll give place to him, swear him fealty and upholding.’

  Every man of them sat mute as a fish.

  ‘You, Prince Gilmanes: will you undertake, say?’

  Amid angry murmurs, Gilmanes made haste to disclaim so ungrateful an eminence.

  ‘Shall’s let this stand adjourned, then? How if we send to Ercles in Eldir, bid him our following?’

  ‘God strike him dead first!’

  ‘The old keen tiger that in a wait hath lain for us so long?’

  Clavius began to hum a ditty sung by Gilmanes’s faction in the street of Veiring:

  The elder from Eldir

  God sent him here selder!

  When he might have hearing again, Gilmanes said, ‘Shall Rerek speak with one man’s voice, with whose if not with the Parry’s?’

  Gabriel Flores, eyed and footed like a weasel, went betwixt bench and wall filling first for his great master then for the rest. All drank deep. Then the Vicar spoke. ‘If I have given you,’ he said, ‘any sour words tonight, be satisfied ’twas but in consideration of the secret knowledge I had of my own will, and being resolved to make some difference between tried just and false friends ere I would strip off all farthingales to the bare nature of these high purposes. Let’s confess it was never merry world in Rerek since Fingiswold came up. Which thing, though it be coloured per jus regale, yet it is tyranny. Which tyranny – considering the straiter amity between me and you concluded, and considering your several private promises in writing (which, as I shall satisfy you, import an army of well five thousand men, veterans all, to be had abroad in a readiness at any time now upon ten days’ notice given, resting upon Kutarmish) – why, ’twere abomination irremissible and everlasting scorn upon us if we overtopple it not.’ He paused. All they as they listened seemed but more and more to fan their feathers in his lime. ‘That is to say,’ he added, ‘occasion arising.’

  For a minute none spoke, man watching man. Then Gilmanes, making a cast about the table with his long pale eyes and running his tongue along his thin and bloodless lips, said, ‘I question but one thing, my lords. His highness said “occasion arising”. But is not occasion instant upon us? Seeing the greatness of our adversary and his infinite dominion in Rerek, that already hath gone far to work us all from princes into pages. Thinks, too, that he knoweth, I ween, some hollow hearts in Rerek; and is himself one that keepeth his displeasure in close, then, like God’s severe judgement, dallieth not where to strike he doth purpose.’

  The air in that room seemed suddenly to have grown closer. Again man eyed man. Then, ‘God send him here,’ said Arquez with a thick gluttonish laugh, ‘and give me the unbowelling of him.’

  The Vicar looked at Arquez then sidelong at Gilmanes, through half-closed lids. ‘Argument: ergo, dally not we, but strike first?’

  ‘Ay,’ said Clavius, ‘and strike him into the centre.’

  ‘Who speaks against it?’ said the Vicar. ‘In so extreme jeopardous a work as you now propound to me, needs must each stand by all or else all go down in solido.’

  ‘Better that,’ said Gilmanes, ‘than be still kept under like beasts and slaves.’

  ‘Who speaks against it?’

  But in a confusion of high and clamorous words they cried out saying, ‘Strike, for Parry and Rerek!’ ‘Death to Mezentius!’ ‘Throw the crooked tyrant to the Devil!’ ‘Chop him into steaks!’

  ‘You, Stathmar?’ said the Vicar, seeing him sit silent amid this rant.

  ‘’Tis but that I will not,’ answered he, ‘be one of those who rashly before a great man enter into talk unrequired. To my thinking, it is better the sword be sheathed than unsheathed. Howsomever—’

  The Vicar stroked his beard thrice. Huge as a lion he seemed, high seated in that great chair; and red as a fox; and untrusty to handle as a quick eel by the tail; and a king in potentia, wanting but the regal crown and sceptre; and wicked out and out. In the nick of time, ere he should speak again, the door flew open in Gabriel’s face, and before them in his majesty stood the King.

  All leapt to their feet, and, save the Vicar’s and Gilmanes’s, every man’s hand to his sword-hilt. It was as if the instant moment itself leapt and hung tip-toed on an instability of movelessness, while men’s minds, violently unseated, waited on direction. Only the Lord Horius Parry, as in lightning-swift apprehension of the posture of affairs, and of the choices, deeply ravelled of good and bad, of known and unknown, not to be eluded nor long put off, fateful of life and death, which it imported, seemed to face it with a mind intact and unremoved. Like the snapping of a string wound to extreme tension, Gabriel heard the silence break with the King’s ‘Good evening, cousin’: heard in the deep cadence of the King’s voice, careless and secure, an almost imperceptible over-tone of irony that thrilled less upon the ear than upon the marrow that runs within the neck-bones: saw the Vicar’s obeisance: saw, for one breath, their mingling of eyes together, his and the King’s, as if each would craftily undergrope the other’s policies.

  All saluted the King now, with an unhearty greeting but yet with due humble show of allegiance, drinking to him peace, health, joy, and victory upon his enemies. The Vicar made place for him at the table’s head, seating himself at the King’s right, betwixt the King and Count Olpman. ‘Bare a fortnight since I tasted your noble entertainment, cousi
n, in Laimak,’ said the King, raising to his lips the goblet from which the Vicar had but just drunk his health, and pledging them all in turn. ‘And now, benighted in these woods, what luckier find than this hospitable room? or what luckier choice of loving friends and subjects to be met withal?’ His eye seemed merry, as of a man set among them of his household, nothing earthly mistrusting.

  ‘’Lack,’ said the Vicar, ‘this should seem to your serene highness a strange dog-hole, I’d a thought. And, truth to say, we be assembled here ’pon a strange business.’

  Wise men started, and light men laughed in themselves, at these words. But the King said, unconcerned, ‘I had supposed yours was, as ours, a hunting party.’

  ‘It might be named so. Your serenity has had good sport, I hope?’

  ‘Tracked the big bear to his hole,’ replied the King: ‘but as yet not killed.’

  The Vicar met his eye without quinching. ‘As for our hunting,’ he said, ‘your serene highness will laugh at us. You have heard, may be, stories of this same farmstead: that there was of old a man dwelt alone in this place, a bonder, rich in goods and in cattle, alone save for’s thralls. And these thralls, uncontented, it seems, with his hard and evil usage of ’em, one night, ’pon agreement had together, took and murdered him.’ Glancing round the table while he talked, he saw them sit like dumb beasts, as if afeared to meet some eye upon them were they to look up, his or another’s. Only the King, idly fingering his wine-goblet, gave him look for look: idly, as one who rolls on his tongue the wine of some secret jest, the delightfuller to him because hid from all men else. The Vicar proceeded: ‘Since when, to this day, none durst live in the place for dread of the dead sprite which, as is said, rideth the roof a-nights, breaketh the necks of man and beast, and so forth. And is neglected so, some three generations and all fallen to ruin. Now the Prince here and my Lord Olpman, they laid me a wager, a thousand ducats, that these tales were sooth and that something bad resorteth indeed to the house; but I tell ’em is but old wives’ foolishness and fiddle-faddle. Which to determine, we mean to sit out the night here, drinking and discoursing, with these four lords besides to witness whether aught beyond ordinary shall befall us.’

  The King smiled. ‘I’d a sworn there were things in this house worth the finding out. Coming but now, supposing it empty, and finding, ’pon opening of the door, this jolly company within, put me in mind of the old tale of the shepherdman’s coming by night beside Holyfell in Iceland. He saw that the fell was opened on the north side, and in the fell he saw mighty fires and heard huge clamour there and the clank of drinking-horns; and he heard that there was welcomed Thorstein Codbiter and his crew. He and his crew. You remember?’

  ‘That had, that same night, as was known later, been drowned in the fishing?’

  ‘Yes: dead men,’ said the King: ‘feasting that night in Holyfell. There’s the difference: that here, at present, are all yet alive.’

  Furtively, as though some strange unwonted horror began to invade them, men’s eyes sought the Vicar’s. Gabriel Flores, watching there apart, bethought him how most things have two handles. How if one of these comates of mischief had blabbed out all to the King beforehand? How if his master, sitting so thoughtful, had the like inkling? Gabriel waited for his eye. But the Vicar, smiling to himself, played softly with the great seal-ring on his left thumb and gave eye to no man. ‘Your highness sees some danger, then?’

  ‘A certain danger,’ replied the King lightly, yet not a man there sat at ease under the look he now swept round the table, ‘in meddling with such business as brought you here tonight.’

  The Vicar still smiling, nodded his head: still intent upon his ring. Men watched him as if they knew, how smooth soever his looks were, there was a devil in his bosom.

  ‘In some serene highness’ school well brought up,’ said Gilmanes, after a pause, and his teeth flashed, ‘we are inured to dangers.’

  ‘And yet,’ said the King, ‘there is measure in all things. Courage of the wise: courage of the fool.’

  ‘The second we know,’ said the Vicar. ‘What is the first?’

  ‘Is it not a native part of wisdom? A wise King, for instance, that will trust his person unguarded amongst his loyal loving subjects.’

  Men began to shift in their seats a little, as unballassed ships are rocked and tossed. Clavius, being high with wine, shouted out, ‘Yes: and a hundred swords ready behind the door to secure him.’

  ‘That,’ replied the King, ‘were an unwise mistrust of them that were loyal. And yet for a jest: instance the extreme of improbability: say you were of that rank sort, here met to devise my ruin. Then I, having some wisdom, and knowing as a King should know, might come indeed, as I am come, but with a force of men without prepared to seize upon you; ’stead of (as ’tis) secure in my friends, and not so much as a man-at-arms to guard me.’

  Olpman whispered privately to the Vicar, ‘This be set forth to blear our eyes. He hath men at call. Our only safety, strike and strike suddenly.’

  ‘Quiet, fool, and wait my word,’ said the Vicar. He paused a moment, smiling, playing with his ring: then made sign to Gabriel to fill round the wine again. A look of intelligence passed between him and Gabriel, slight and fleeting as, at slack-water, is the beginning of the turning, this way and no longer that, of the great tide unresistable of the sea. Gabriel, when he had filled round, went out by the door. The Vicar found means to say to Olpman under cover of the general talk, ‘I had prepared this beforehand. We will a little play for time. When you shall hear me say to Gabriel, “Why not the wine of Armash?” that is a sign to him to admit those that shall dispatch the King’s business for him right suddenly. Pass round the word. This too: that no man, on his life, stir afore my bidding.’

  While Olpman was cautiously in this sense instructing Arquez, the Vicar said covertly to the King, ‘I entreat your highness, let’s manage your faces so as none shall doubt we speak on aught but trivial matters. And if I speak improbably, yet believe it—’

  ‘No more,’ said the King, with a like secrecy and a like outward carelessness. ‘I’ll tell it you myself. You have stumbled tonight upon a wasps’-nest. But I am come on purpose to take it. All present, you alone excepted, play underboard against my royal estate and person. I have proof: I have letters. Your charge it shall be that not a man of them escape.’

  ‘A squadron of horse, my own, distant from the farm some half mile,’ said the Vicar. ‘And these, I well guess, have twice as many against us. What profit in men-at-arms, though, when the head is off?’

  The King laughed. ‘I am glad you are not a fool, cousin.’

  The Vicar, playing as before with the great ring on his thumb, said, ‘Go, I think there’s not one here, I alone excepted, believes your serene highness is in truth come alone here and unattended.’

  ‘But you, cousin, are not a fool,’ said the King.

  ‘I know now. I have put my life in your highness’s hand.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Sitting thus at your right hand. Your hand next my heart. And your dagger, I see, ready to your hand.’

  ‘We are neither of us slow of understanding,’ said the King. ‘And I think either would be sorry to lose the other.’

  They had means to speak some word or two more thus privately. Then came Gabriel Flores in again with a flesh flagon of wine. ‘I shall in a moment,’ said the Vicar, ‘give your serene highness proof of my love and fidelity plain and perfect.’ Gabriel filled first to the King, then to the Vicar, who whispered him some instruction in his ear. ‘And you shall see too I can play at shuttlecock with two hands,’ said the Vicar, under his breath to the King. ‘Which oft cometh well.’

  As Gabriel passed now behind Count Olpman’s chair, his eyes met his master’s, and he paused. Gilmanes, Clavius, and Stathmar were in talk, heads together, at the far end of the table. Olpman, biting his lip, had secretly, under cover of the table-top, bared his sword. The Vicar rapped out suddenly to Gabriel, ‘Why not the wine
of Armash?’ and, the word scarce out of his mouth, hurled his heavy goblet in Gilmanes’s face, throwing at the same time with his other hand his dagger, which pinned Clavius’s right hand (put up to save him) to his cheek. Gabriel, bringing down the wine-flagon with all his might upon the bald pate of Olpman from behind, dashed out his brains. The King was sprung to his feet, sword drawn: the Vicar beside him. Amid this broilery and fury, leaping shadows on wall and ceiling, knives thrown, chairs and benches overset, the King crossed blades with Stathmar: both notable swordsmen. Arquez threw a pie-dish at the King: grazed his cheekbone: then a chair, but it fell short, sweeping (save one) every candle from the table. At fifth or sixth pass now in that uncertain light, Stathmar fell, run through the heart. Arquez, seeing this: seeing Olpman lie sprawled over the board, his head in a pool of blood: seeing Gilmanes stretched senseless, and Clavius wounded and in a mammering whether to fly or fight: threw another chair, that tripped up the Vicar rushing bloodily upon him: then yet another at the King. It missed. Arquez jumped for the window. The King caught the chair in mid-air, hurled it again, took him on the backside, well nigh broke his tail-bone. Down from the window he dropped, and Gabriel, with skilfully aimed kicks and with strampling on his face and belly, soon stopped his noise.

  Clavius, casting himself prostrate now under the King’s feet, cried out that, might but his life be spared, he would declare all: ‘I was neither author nor actor: only persuaded and drawn in by Olpman and Gilmanes and by—’ His speech dried up in his throat as, gazing wildly round, he saw how the Vicar beheld him with a look as fell, as venomous, and as cruel as is in the face of the death-adder.

  ‘Tie them all up,’ said the King: ‘these three that be left alive.’ Gabriel tied them hand and foot with rope from the pack-saddles: set them on a bench against the wall: gathered some candles from the floor to make a better light. Gilmanes and Arquez were by now come to themselves again. Little content they seemed with their lot; seeing moreover how the King drew a sheaf of papers from his bosom. But never a word they uttered.