by E R Eddison
The Chancellor, dismounting, noted this by-play with ironic unconcern. ‘Fortunately met, my lord Duke,’ he said, as the grooms led away their horses. ‘I was to speak with your grace, by his serene highness’s command, that you sup with him tonight in Sestola: a farewell banquet ere they begin their progress north again to Rialmar. You are for the council, doubtless, this afternoon?’
‘I fear not, my lord.’
‘I’m sorry. We need our ablest wits upon’t, if aught’s to come of this business.’
‘I have opened all my mind to the King, and have his leave to sit out. Truth is, there’s matters on hand must detain me otherwheres today. But as for supper, pray you say, with my duty, I kiss his highness’s hands and joyfully obey his summons.’
‘I shall.’
‘Strange,’ said Fiorinda, ‘I am bidden too.’ She sat down, shedding, as some exquisite lily sheds waft by waft its luxury abroad, a fresh master-work of seducing and sense-ensearching elegancy from every lazy feline grace of her settling herself upon the bench: eye-wages for the Duke.
‘Is that so strange?’ said he, his eyes upon her. ‘I took’t for granted.’
‘What brings your grace hither in this hour of the morning?’
‘Idleness,’ answered he with a shrug of the shoulder. ‘Want of a more reasonable employment. O, and now I remember me, I had these letters for your ladyship, to wish you well of your twentieth birthday.’ With that, turning to the table before the bench where he had sat, he took a parchment: gave it into her hand.
She unrolled it. While she scanned it curiously, a delicate warmth of colour slowly imbued the proud pallor of her cheek. ‘A dear bounty of your grace,’ she said. ‘I am deeply beholden. But indeed I cannot accept of it.’
‘You will not be so uncivil as hand me back my gift.’
‘Nay, indeed and indeed, I’ll not have it. Mind you not the poet?—
Nor he that still his Mistress payes,
For she is thrall’d therefore.’
Beroald continued—
‘Nor he that payes not, for he sayes
Within, shee’s worth no more.’
Barganax reddened to the ears. ‘To the devil with your firked-up rhymes,’ he said. ‘Come, I give it to you freely, out of pure love and friendship. You must take it so.’
She put it into her brother’s hand, who read the docket: ‘Deede of feoffment to behoof of the Ladie Fiorinda by liverie of seisin to holde in fee simple the castell of Velvraz Sebarrm and the maines therof scituate in the Roiall Appannage and Dukedome of Zayana. Why, this is princely bounty indeed.’
‘Well,’ said the lady, drawing down a blossom of the rose to smell to, and watching the Duke from under the drooped coal-black curtain of her eyelashes. ‘Not to displeasure your grace, I’ll take it. Give it me, brother: so. And now,’ (to the Duke) ‘hereby I give it you back, i’ the like truth and kindness, and for token of my devotion to your grace’s person.’
‘No, you anger me,’ he said, snatching the parchment and flinging it, violently crumpled, on the ground. ‘’Tis an unheard-of thing if I may not bestow a present upon a noble lady but ’tis spat back in my face as so much muck or dirt.’
‘Dear my lord, you strain too far: I intended it far otherwise. Be not angry with me, not today of all days. And before breakfast, seems in especially unkind.’
He loured upon her for a moment; then suddenly fell a-laughing.
‘Nor I’ll not be laughed at, neither. Come,’ she said, rising and, in a divine largesse which at once sought pardon and as sweetly dispensed it, putting her arm in his, ‘let’s walk apart awhile while the board’s a-setting.’
When they were private, ‘I think,’ she began to say, looking down to the jewelled fingers of her hand where it rested, a drowsed white lily for its beauty, a sleeping danger for its capacities, upon his sleeve; as hands will oftest betray in their outward some habit or essence of the soul that informs them from within: ‘I think I have a kind of mistrustful jealousy against great and out-sparkling gifts. Not little gifts, of a jewel, a horse, a gown, a book: that’s but innocent gew-gaws, adornments of love. But, as for greater things—’
‘O madonna mia,’ said Barganax, ‘you have the pride of archangel ruined. What care I? For I think if God should offer you fief seignoral of Heaven itself, you’d not stoop to pick it up.’
‘But surely, you and I,’ she said, and the accents of her voice, summer-laden, lazy, languorous, trod measure now with his foot-fall and with hers as they paced in a cool of pomegranate-trees, ‘we surely gave all? Body and inward sprite, yours to me, mine to you, almost a full year ago?’
‘With all my heart (though I doubt ’tis not wholesome meat for you to be told so), I say ay to that.’
‘To speak naked as my nail (and ’tis time, may be, to do it), I dwell in this house, have use of these lands and pleasaunces, joyfully and with a quiet mind; and why, my friend? Because they are yours, and, being yours, mine so far as need. For is not this wide world, and Heaven’s mansions besides (if there be), not yours indeed, nor yet mine, but ours? Is it not graved in this ring you gave me – HMETEPA – Ours? Feminine singular, I that am ours: neuter plural, all else whatsoever, ours. And Velvraz Sebarm, being yours, is therefore the dearer to me, who am yet more entirely yours than it. Am not I yours by blood and breathing, glued infinitely closer than had we two one body, one spirit, to make us undistinctly one? Surely a cribbed lone self-being self were no possession, no wealth, no curious mutual engine of pleasure and of love. ’Twere prison sooner.’
The Duke spoke no word: a silence that seemed to enjoin silence to itself, lest a spell break.
‘But what was given already,’ she said, ‘and given (as it ought to be) with that reckless, unthought, uncalculated freedom as a kiss should be given – to wish now to give that again by bond and sealed instrument, ’tis unbelievable between you and me. As though you should a bethought you: “Someday, by hap she shall be another’s. Or by hap I may find (being myself too in the hot hey-day of my youth, and long wedded to variety) another mistress.” And—’
‘No more of these blasphemies,’ said the Duke, his voice ruled, yet as holding down some wolf within him: ‘lest you be blasted.’
‘Nay, you shall hear it out: “And ’cause I yet love her past remedy,” you might say, “I’ll give her this rich demesne: and more if need be: make my munificencies play the pander, to drug her for me, and so bind her to my bed.” Heaven spare us, will you think to ensure us together by investment?’
‘No more,’ he said, ‘for God sake. ’Tis a filthy imagination, a horrible lie; and in your secret veins you know it. Why will you torture me?’ But, even in the setting of his teeth, he clapped down his right hand upon hers where it lay, the pledge of her all-pervading presence quivering within it, along his sleeve: as not to let it go.
They walked slowly on for a while, without word spoken, unless in the unsounded commerce of minds, that can work through touch of hand on hand. Then Fiorinda said, ‘We must turn back. My respected brother will think strange we should leave him so long with none but the waiting breakfast-covers for company.’
As they turned, their eyes met as in some mutual half-embraced, half-repudiate, pact of restored agreement: as if the minds behind their eyes were ware each of other’s watchfulness and found there matter for hidden laughter. The Duke said, ‘You spoke a while since of a token of your regard for me. I know a readier token, if your ladyship had honestly a mind to prove that.’
‘O, let’s not be chafferers of proofs.’
‘It comes o’er my memory, my coming hither was to ask the honour of your company at supper.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Tonight, madam, I had dearly wished.’
‘See then, how fortune makes good your wish before the asking.We sup together in Sestola.’
‘Not entirely as I would, though.’
‘Your grace is hard to please.’
‘Is there aught new in that? ’T
is another likeness between us.’
The lady’s head bent now in lazy contemplation of her own lilied hand, where it yet lay out, sunning like an adder in warm beams, along his fore-arm. Her eyes veiled themselves. Her lips, seeming to brood upon some unavowed, perhaps unconfirmed, assent, were honeyed gall. Under the coat-hardy, which from hip to throat fitted as glove fits hand, the Grecian splendours of her breasts rose and fell: restful unrestfulness of summer sea, or of two pigeons closed together on a roof. The Duke said: ‘Is it permitted to ask where your ladyship means to lie tonight?’
‘Truly I hope, abed. And your grace, where?’
‘In heaven, I had a longing hope. It rests not with me to decide.’
The fingers of the hand on his arm began to stir: a sylph-like immateriality of touch: almost imperceptible.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘You must not tease me. I am not in the mood to decide.’
He said, softly in her ear, ‘All’s hell that is not heaven, tonight. Would you have me lie in hell?’
Some seducing and mocking spirit sat up and looked at him from the corners of her mouth. ‘A most furious and unreasonable observation. Nay, I am not in a mood for ayes and noes. I do entreat your favour, ask me no more.’
He stopped, and stood facing her. ‘I think your ladyship is own daughter to the Devil in hell. No help for it, then: I take my leave.’
‘Not in anger, I hope?’ she held out her hand.
‘Anger? Your body and beauty have for so long bewitched me, I am no longer capable even of the satisfaction of being angry with you.’
‘Well, let’s bear out a sober face ’fore the world: before my brother there. Some show of kindness. Pray your grace, kiss my hand, or he’ll wonder at it.’
‘You are unsupportable,’ he said. He raised her hand, hot in his, to his lips: it drew a finger against his palm: then lay still. From her mouth’s corner that thing eyed him, a limb-loosening equivocation of mockery, intoxicating all senses to swimmings of the brain. He kissed the hand again. ‘Unsupportable,’ he said: looked in her eyes, wide open suddenly now, strained to his in an unsmiling stilled intention, eyelids of the morning: beheld, in unceasing birth and rebirth through interkindling and gendering of contrarious perfects, the sea-strange unseizable beauty of her face: the power enchantment and dark extremity of her allurement now plainly spread in the brightness of the sun. He said: ‘O abominable and fatal woman, why must I love you?’
‘Is it, perhaps,’ she replied, and the indolent muted music of her voice, distilling with the sweets of her breath on the air about him, wrought on the raging sense to upsurgings of subterranean fire: ‘Is it, perhaps, because to your grace, unto whom all others your best desires, spaniel-like, do come to heel, this loving of me is the one only thing you are not able to command?’
XXXVII
TESTAMENT OF ENERGEIA
IN Sestola that same day toward evening, the Chancellor and Earl Roder, being come to council a little before the due time, were waiting the King’s pleasure in the great stone gallery that served there as antechamber.
‘Mean you by that, she has been forbid the council?’ said the Earl.
‘That’s too rough a word.’
‘Pray you amend it.’
‘A bird peeped in mine ear that his serene highness graciously excuseth her from attendance today, and at her own asking.’
‘Is that help to us or hindrance?’
The Lord Beroald shrugged his shoulders.
‘You think unlucky?’ said Roder.
‘I think it of small consequence whether her highness be there or no. Yet I would she’d stayed in the north. We’d then a been spending our time in Zayana ’stead of this stony den of Sestola: fitter for a grave than for living men to dwell in.’ He cast a distasteful look up at the high lancet-shaped windows whose embrasures, spacious and wide enough here withinward, narrowed to slits in the outer face of the huge main wall: slits to shoot through at assaulters from without, rather than windows to light the gallery.
‘We grow customed to strange choices this twelve-month past,’ Roder said.
Beroald’s nostrils tightened, with a thinning of lips below close-clipped mustachios.
Roder said, ‘Know you for certain what way she inclineth now, i’ this thing we have in hand?’
‘No. Nor much care. Strange your lordship should ask me this, who are far more in her counsels than ever I have been.’
‘She is too unnatural with me of late,’ said the Earl: ‘too kind. Smiles at me: gives me honeyed words. Makes me afeared may be his serene highness listeneth to her more readily than he will listen to us.’
‘No need to fear that.’
‘No? Well, be that as may, I’m glad she cometh not to this meeting. God shield us from women on our councils of war, I never could argue with a woman. Besides, I mistrust Parry wolvishness. And bitch-wolf was ever more fell than dog-wolf, as the more uncorrigible and unforeseeable in action. Your lordship frowns? Said I not well, then?’
‘Too loud. Walls have ears.’
‘True. But it’s commonly thought those ears are yours, my lord Chancellor.’ The Earl stretched his arms with clenched fists above his head, strained wide the fingers and yawned. ‘My sword is rusting in its scabbard. I hate that. What latest smelling by your blood-hounds?’
Beroald patted a bundle of dispatches under his arm. ‘You shall hear all in good time, my lord.’
‘Nay, I seek no favours. So it be there, well. Let it wait due audit.’ He stole a look at the Chancellor’s face. ‘You and I are still agreed? O’ the main point, I mean?’
‘Surely.’
‘The Admiral is with us, think you?’
‘We have but the one arm,’ answered Beroald: ‘all three of us.’
‘Ay, but ’tis readiness counts. What’s aim, if blow hang i’ the air?’ Then, after a pause: ‘I dearly wish the Duke were expected now.’
Beroald curled his lip. ‘Which Duke?’
‘Not Zayana.’
‘I thought not,’ he said dryly.
‘Well, I have told your lordship at large of my talkings with Duke Styllis in April in Rialmar. It somewhat did stomach the boy to be left behind there, and this cauldron a-bubbling in the south.’
‘It hath long been apparent,’ said the Chancellor, ‘those two agree best when farthest apart. Howsoever, no Dukes today. Lord Barganax hath leave of absence from the King.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
‘My lady Duchess,’ said Beroald lightly, ‘arrived today, in Zayana.’
‘So. Then the King lies there tonight?’
‘Like enough.’
‘And cut short so our potting after supper, ha?’ said the Earl, and ground his teeth. ‘Women. And what comes of women. Were ’t not for that, our cares were the lighter.’
‘Mala necessaria.’
‘O, if you speak law-terms, I’m a stone.’
‘I but meant, my lord, where were you and I without women had bred us?’
Upon noise of a footstep, Roder looked behind him. ‘Here’s the great lord Admiral.’
They turned to greet him, walking towards them the length of the gallery with head bent as deep in thought. ‘God give you good den,’ he said as they met, his eyes, candid as the day’s, searching first the Chancellor’s then the Earl’s. ‘We are to reach tonight at last, it is to be hoped, the solutions of a ticklish and tangled business. Have your lordships thought of any new mean to the unravelling of it?’
‘So we be at one as for the end,’ replied Beroald, ‘it should be no unexampled difficulty to find out the means. Has your lordship held more talk with the King’s highness in these matters?’
‘None since I saw you both last night. I have been afloat all day ’pon business of the fleet. All’s ship-shapen now, what-e’er be required of us in that regard. And you, Earl?’
‘My folk are so well readied,’ answered he, ‘we are like to fall apart in rottenness, like over-ripe cheese, if w
e be not swiftly given the occasion to prove our worth upon’t.’
‘You will open the matter before the King, I take it, my lord Admiral,’ said the Chancellor, ‘on our behalf? His serene highness will take it kindliest from your mouth. Besides, among us three, you are primus inter pares. And I hope you will stand resolute for action. ’Tis most needful this nettle be rooted up or it prove too late.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Jeronimy, fingering his beard. ‘’Tis a business worth all our wits. We must not be fools, neither, to forget it toucheth the King’s set policy of a lifetime’s standing. Peradventure, as for this one time, he is wrong: if so be, then is it our mere duty to say so to his face. But before now, and in as weighty matters, when wise men deemed him mistook he hath turned the cat in the pan and, by the event, showed ’em fools for their pains. Well, we must ferret out the true way. And by King in council is the good stablished method so to do.’
The Earl’s neck, as he listened, was swelled up red as a turkey cock’s and his face, where frizz of black beard and hair disguised it not, of the like rebellious hue. The proud weather-bitten lineaments of the Lord Beroald’s face wore a yet colder unpenetrable calm than before. Their eyes met. In that instant, as the Admiral ceased speaking, the door was thrown open upon his right, and the Queen, all but as red as Roder but with countenance uncipherable as the Chancellor’s, came forth from the council-chamber.
Even now, when for her the winds of old age had set in, with no deadly force as yet, but enough to make her take in sail and tack against wind and tide, which with slow gathering of power drive back tall ship and feeble coracle without distinction to that hateful and treeless shore whence, against that tide and that wind, none did ever again put back to sea: even in that Novemberish raw weather of her years, some strength of lost youth, some glory, unlosable, uncrushable, indestructible, lived on. Almost might a man have believed, beholding her stand thus in the dazzle, from the open doorway behind her, of warm afternoon sun, that in these few weeks, after twenty-five years of exile, she had renewed her very body with great draughts of the fecund and lovely magic of the Meszrian highlands, over which she had so long ago, by exercise and right of her own most masculine will, made herself Queen. Here she stood: the argument of her father’s dreams and policies made flesh in the daughter of his desires; and the same badge of cold ungainsayable relentlessness, more unadulterate and more openly self-proclaimed than on Emmius Parry’s underlip, sat at this moment upon hers.