by E R Eddison
‘You have a fair prospect southward, lord brother-in-law,’ said the Princess, shading her eyes with her hand to look across the Lows to where, between forty and fifty miles away and a little east of south, the Ruyar Pass cuts the mountain spine at the meeting of the Huron range with the peaks of Outer Meszria, carrying the great road over into Meszria itself. ‘Where your fancy dallies, they tell me.’
‘My wife’s home. Should not that be commendation enough?’
The Lady Deïaneira smiled. She was tall: exquisite, whether in movement or at rest, as some fine-limbed shy creature of the woods: high-cheekboned, smooth-skinned and dark, and with eyes dark and lustrous that seemed as by native bent to return always, save when he was watching them, to her lord.
‘And yet,’ said Marescia, ‘you had these tidings from the north, too, two days sooner than I could bring them.’
‘I have lived in this world, dear Princess,’ said Emmius lightly, ‘near five times seven years, and I have learnt the need to have eyes and ears to serve me. Give me, prithee, what you saw with your own eyes. One pinch of fact outweigheth a bushel of hearsay.’
‘Ay, tell it as you told it to me,’ said Supervius.
Marescia said, ‘’Twas heard with mine ears first: a cry out of the King’s bedchamber, made the gold cups ring on the shelf above my bed and the geese scream in the yard under my window.’
‘And that was, when?’ said Emmius.
‘About first light.’
‘Ay, and the day?’
‘Fifth morning after my lord here was ridden south. Then a noise of doors flinging open, and the Queen’s voice, dreadfully, ‘Marescia, Marescia.’ So, on with my nightgown and scarce get the door open but her highness’s self meets me there into my arms, trembling like a frightened horse: in her hair: nought but her sage-green velvet nightgown upon her: moaneth out over and over, the King’s name: bringeth me thither: he on the bed, dead as doornail, boiled up huge as a neat, blue and grey and liver-colour, his eyes sticking out like a crab’s, and his hair and his beard and his nails all bursten off him.’
Deïaneira’s lips pressed together till they whitened, but no sound escaped them.
The Lord Emmius had all this while of Marescia’s speaking studied her face, with that gaze of his which commonly seemed, to those on whom it rested, strangely undisturbing; so free of concernment it seemed, effortless and intermittent as a star’s among changing clouds, but yet as steadfast too, deep-searching, not to be eluded, and so, when they considered again of it, strangely disturbing, as able to touch and finger their privatest inward thought. He looked away now, past her, to that sun-veiled skyline in the south. ‘Tell me, sister-in-law, if you can: slept she by him that night?’
‘Never. Not these two years.’
‘But would your ladyship a known?’
‘If so they did, ’twas a thing without precedent since many months at least.’
‘Truth is, we know not. Who was in the chamber when you came in, besides the Queen?’
‘Not a soul. O, a woman or two o’ the bedchamber I think. Then more. And then Aktor.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Yonder princox.’
‘I remember: I caught not the name as you said it. What made he there? Was he sent for?’
The Princess changed glances with Supervius. ‘I cannot tell,’ she answered. ‘Was in a pretty taking: weeping and lamenting: My dearest friend, my King (and so forth); author of all my good: murdered and dead.’
‘In those words? Murdered: said he so?’
‘A dozen times.’
‘Well?’
‘But at first sight of the handiwork, shouts out in a kind of fury or terror to the Queen: God grant you ha’nt touched him, madam? Go not you near, nor any person else, till leeches examine it. Here’s the vile murderer’s doing I sent last night to sup in Hell: woe that I should a squeezed the sting out of him but not afore he’d sown the poison.’
‘What meant that gibberish?’
‘Telleth us how, afore supper, he’d caught this rascally instrument of the king of Akkama (had been in Rialmar, it seems, under pretext of service in the buttery or the black guard, quite unsuspected, and for weeks biding his happy chance): Aktor caught him skulking in the private room the King and he were wonted to play chess in—’
‘Slip we not there into hearsay?’
‘’Twas out of Aktor’s mouth, in my hearing. Tells us (still in tears) how a had wrung a true tale out of this devil’s-bawd—’
Here Emmius looked round at her: a comical glint in his eye. ‘Is this still the Prince’s words? Or is’t Princess’s gloss?’
‘Cry you mercy, ’twas my tongue slipt,’ said she. ‘Tells us the fellow confessed a was sent a purpose to murder the King’s highness (and Aktor too if that might be compassed): says this threw him into so fierce a sweat of anger he killed the man out of hand and, not to mar our evening, huggled the dead carcase into a big box or coffer was there i’ the room, to wait till morning. There was an act me thinks smelleth something oddly in this Aktor.’
‘What next?’
‘Next, Aktor (thinking, belike, enough made of weeping and blubbering) takes charge. Calleth for leeches: shows us the dead vermin stiff and be-bloodied in the box and with Aktor’s own dagger sticking in his ribs: (a pretty property for such an interlude, that, me thought).’
‘Well?’
‘Well, those learned men sat in inquest ’pon what was left: ’pon the dead poison-monger, ’pon the King’s highness, and ’pon the chessmen. (’Twas pity Aktor thought not sooner the night before, of those chessmen.)’
‘That the King and he wont to play with? Had they played with ’em that night?’
‘Yes. Nay, I know not for sure. We left them to it, being bedtime.’
‘And what found the leeches, then?’
‘Upshot was, some nasty pothecary stuff in the King’s finger and thumb: had run all over his body: same stuff on one or two chessmen, but the most of ’em pure and harmless: some more of it on the man’s knife: conclusion, knife was to do the business had the chess failed.’
She ceased speaking; and Lord Emmius Parry, a cloud on his brow, looked at her in silence for almost a minute. She, with cool smile and hot chestnut eyes, met his gaze steadily as if minded to out-stare him. But as well should a printed page hope to out-stare the reader, as out-stare that eye that looked forth, cold, meditative, ambiguous, and undisturbed, from the iron yet subtle face of the Parry, and rested without distinction of kind, alike upon the landscape, or upon the stone coping of the wall, or (as for this, to her, uneasy minute) upon the challenging eye of this woman, young, fierce-blooded, masterful, who, come to a halt close under him where he halted, set the air about him afire with the agitation of all senses mixed and stirred up in the goblet of her bodily nearness and her domineering will, bent to some end as yet unrevealed. Even just as a reader, having read, looks up from his book to ruminate the matter he has read there, Lord Emmius turned now from her and, standing a little apart by the battlements, in the same remote meditation remained awhile, looking south. The Princess, left so, albeit scarcely victorious, in possession of the field, said apart to her lord, the hot blood suffusing all her fair face and brow even to the roots of the shining yellow hair that was drawn with a smaragdine fillet sleekly up from it and from behind her ears, ‘Was it fitly spoken, think you?’
‘Beyond admiration well,’ he answered, taking his arm about her.
‘No case argued, as yet.’
‘No, no. It needs not.’
‘He is a man I’d rather have before me than against me: your brother,’ she said, and let her voluptuous weight settle closelier in the assurance of Supervius’s strong encircling arm, while still she watched the Lord Emmius. Deïaneira, with a look in her sweet secret Meszrian eyes more deeplier composed, more akin to his, watched him too. A man worth their eyes he seemed, standing there: towering above them in bodily height, save Supervius, and above him for settled majesty o
f bearing: loose-limbed and of so much reposement of easy power, his left hand, a true Parry hand, beyond the ordinary in breadth and strength and with broad spatula-shaped fingers, yet long-fingered as a woman’s, resting on the stone battlement, his right crooked in his jewelled belt. His bonnet of black velvet sat tilted across his brow: there was a set lift and downward trend of his eyebrows, betokening thought, and a breadth and heaviness in the upper lids. His nose, great, high-bridged and (like the fox’s) scenting to all airts, wore a pride and a keenness of discrimination on every fine-carved surface of it: so too the lean flats of his cheek-bones and the sternness and strength of his mouth, partly veiled by a melancholy downward sweep of dark mustachios. His beard, sedulously brushed and tended, thinned to a certain sparseness of growth betwixt the mouth’s corners and the chin, undiscovering so a taint of heaviness and hard implacability in his under lip.
He turned to face them now, his back against the battlement and the light behind him. ‘But why, dear sister-in-law, will you think Prince Aktor the author of that deed?’
‘I never said I thought so,’ replied she.
‘No. But it peeped from behind most every word you said.’
‘Well, truly, I think it not unlikely.’
‘Why disbelieve his story?’ said Emmius. ‘Doth anyone else? What avail to him, thus to bite the hand that fed him?’
Marescia laughed. ‘Best avail of all, seeing a loveth the Queen’s person to distraction. And she him.’
Emmius paused: raised an eyebrow. ‘Be not discontent with me,’ he said, ‘if I question your ladyship somewhat sharply. The matter is of highest moment. Mean you that he acquainted himself over familiarly and unhonestly with the King’s wife?’
‘At a word, I do.’
‘And that he and she had nothing more in their vows than his serene highness’s ruin?’
‘O you miss my sense abominably!’ she said. ‘Kill me dead at your feet if I’d e’er credit Stateira with any such wicked purpose. Him, yes.’
‘Then why not her?’
‘’Cause I have known her since children, like a book. ’Cause it lies not in her good nature.’
‘I praise your trusting affection,’ said Emmius with a crooked smile. ‘But remember, good qualities are easier spoilt than bad ones.’
They began to walk again, in silence till they were come more than full circle round the battlements of the great keep: Emmius with long deliberate stride, hands clasped behind him, eyes moody and lightless under half-lowered moody lids: Supervius (as if policy, counselling attend and wait, strove within him against a wolfish impatience that ill can stomach delays) opening once and again his mouth to speak, and as swiftly shutting it after a sidelong glance at his brother: the Lady Deïaneira walking as some mislaid remnant of a perfumed summer night might miraculously walk here in the face of day, between this rockish imperturbability upon her one side and that hunger for action upon the other: the Lady Marescia tasting and managing, with her bare hand linked in his, Supervius’s chafing, the while she studied, all uncertainly as she must and with jealous despiteful eye, weather-signs in Emmius.
When he spoke, it was to shift no clouds. ‘It is all misty stories and conjecture,’ he said to Supervius. ‘The one clear act was when she (as you told me at first) made to steal away the boy. But (no blame to her) that miscarried.’
Supervius said, ‘Question is, what to do? And that suddenly. Whether Aktor’s hand was in it or not, I account him neither fool nor weakling. He is like to seize kingdom now if we give him time to settle in his seat.’
Marescia covertly gripped his hand: whispered, ‘Enough said. Better it come out of his mouth than ours: will love his own brat better than a stepchild.’
‘One thing I see,’ said Emmius: ‘what’s best not to do.’ His eye, cold and direct, moved from his brother to his brother’s wife, and so back again. ‘Some would counsel you levy an army and ride north now, with me to back you: proclaim yourself Lord Protector i’ the young King’s interest: or, proclaim your father-in-law, if he would undertake it. If the Queen send Aktor packing, we join force with her. If, econverse, she join with Aktor, you might look to all Fingiswold to rise and throw them out. In either event, you could hope to attain an estate and power such as you had scarce otherwise dreamed to climb up unto. For all that,’ he said, and Marescia’s face fell, ‘I hold it were a great unwisdom in us to touch the matter.’
Supervius reddened to the ears. ‘Go,’ he said, ‘you might a listened to reason first, I’d think, ere condemn so good an enterprise.’
‘Reason? Mine ears are yours, brother.’
‘Why, ’tis a thing at the first face so wholly to be desired, it needs no more commendations than you yourself have e’en just now given it. What’s against it, we are yet to learn.’
‘First of all,’ said Emmius, ‘we know not whether Aktor bore part in this business or not; neither know we the terms he is upon with the Queen.’
Marescia let go a scoffing laugh. ‘As well pretend we know not upon what terms a drunken gallant consorteth with a stewed whore.’
‘Well,’ said he, viewing her with an ironic crinkling of his under eyelids, as if she were lit by a new light. ‘You know your own kinsfolk better than can I, sweet Princess. But, be the case so, it but strengtheneth the possibility her highness may publicly wed with Aktor; and then what surance have you that the King’s subjects will cleave to us and not to them?’
‘Good hope, at least,’ replied she, ‘that the better men will follow us. They will behold the Parry of Laimak, wed with a princess of the blood, upholding the King’s right against his landless outlander hath beguiled a Queen, not of that blood at all, to’s vile purposes; and herself suspect too, though I ne’er heard it voiced till you yourself informed me—’
‘Come,’ said Emmius, ‘you cannot argue it both ways.’
‘We speak of how ’twill appear to others. For myself, I said I’d ne’er credit the Queen with such wickedness.’
‘And as for Aktor’s case by itself, nobody shared your ladyship’s suspicions? Is’t not so?’
‘’Tis so, I admit,’ said Marescia and added, under her breath, a buggish word.
‘And the Prince is not ill looked on by the folk? There is, by your own account, sister-in-law, no evidence against him sufficient to hang a cat?’
Marescia said, very angry, ‘O, some can pretend argument as ingenuously as scritch-owls. Thank Gods for a man who will act.’
Whereupon said Supervius, loosing rein on his tongue at last: ‘You are a skilful thrower down of other men’s designs, brother: a fine miner. But you build nothing. This was my very project, that I came hither thinking to have your friendship in. And you, like some pettifogging lawyer, but cavil at it and pick faults. Truly was that said, that Bare is back without brother behind it.’
The Lady Deïaneira’s night-curtained eyes rested on Emmius, a little uneasily. But no lineament of his cold inwardly-weighing countenance betrayed his mind, nor no alteration in the long slow rhythm of his walk. Presently he spoke: comfortable equable tones, without all tang of disputation or of sarcasm: rather as a man that would reason with himself. ‘States come on with slow advice, quick execution. You, brother, nobly and fortunately allied (and not without help from me there) by marriage with this illustrious lady, have your footing now as of right in the council-chambers of Rialmar. It were a rude folly to waste that vantage by menace of civil battle: foolisher still, because we can never be strong enough to win, much less keep, the victory against Fingiswold; and should besides need to purchase passageway for our army through country subject to Eldir, Kaima, and Bagort, and even so I’d never trust ’em not to break faith and upon us from behind. Our true, far, aim is clear: make friends with the lion-cub against the day he be grown a lion: I mean King Mezentius. And that must be through his mother’ (here he looked at Marescia). ‘In the meanwhile, prepare quietly. Strengthen us at all points. Have patience, and see.’
The same day, befo
re supper, the Lady Marescia sat in a window of Emmius’s great library or study, writing a letter. Supervius, from a deep chair, watched her, stroking his flaming beard. Emmius, arms folded, stood in the window, now turning the leaves of his book, now, as in quiet thought, letting his gaze stray to far distances over the Lows and the wide woods of the Scrowmire, lit with the reddening evening-glow out of a cloudless sky. A serving-man lighted candles in branched candlesticks of mountain gold which stood on the writing-table, and so, upon a sign from Emmius, departed, leaving the rest of the room in dusky obscurity. The windows stood open, yet so calm was the evening that not a flame of the candles wavered.
The Princess signed with a flourish, laid down her pen, and sat back. ‘Finished,’ she said, looking first to Emmius then to her husband. ‘Will it serve, think you?’
Over her shoulders, Emmius upon the right, Supervius on the left, they read the letter. It was superscribed To the Queenes most Serene and Excellent Highnes of Fingiswold:
Beloved Soverayne Lady and Queene and verie dere friend and cozen in lawe, my humble dewtie remembred etc. It is to be thocht my departure from yr. highnes Court was something sodene. I am verie certaine I am abused to yr. Highnes eare by fables and foolische lyes alledging my bad meaning toward yr. highness and to the yong King his person. I beseech you believe not the sclaunders of todes, frogges and other venemous Wormes which have but a single purpose to rayse dislyke and discorde betwixte us, but believe rather that my fault was done in no wicked practise but in the horrable great coil and affricht wee then all did stagger in, and with the pure single intente to do Yr. Serene Highnes a service. For my unseemelie presumptuous attempte in that respecte I am trewelie penitent, and sufficientlye punisht I hope with being clapt in goale at commaunde of that lewde fellow Bodenaye, who I am sure dealt not as one of Your aucthorised people in using of mee thus dishonorable but by order of some of yr. secretories withoute your privetie, for which his behaviour hee deserved to have beene putt to death. I saye no more here but that I will learn wisdome of this folly. More att large of this when I shall have the felicitie to look upon yr. face and to kiss yr. hand. My humble suite is that Your Serene Highness, through the olde gracious bountifull affectioun wherewith you and Kinge Mardanus upon whom bee peace did ever honor mee, wilbe plesed to receyve mee againe and gentlie pardon my fault. Unto which ende it willbe verye good if of yr. specyall love and kyndnes you sende me lettres of Safe Conducte, because withoute such I do dread lest this Bodenay whom I know to be a villain or els some other of his kynde may out of lewdnesse and malice to meward finde a waye to do mee the lyke disgrace or a worse.