Mistress of Mistresses

‘Proceed, as touching Meszria,’ said the Duke. ‘’Tis thus far i’ the bounds of reasonable surmise; though I might a looked to see my royal sister entrusted to my care sooner than to so questionable a tutor. True it is, I ne’er set eyes upon her, but I am far nearer by blood and (or I should hate myself else) far more to trust to.’

‘Ere I proceed,’ said Roder, ‘I would inform your grace of this; hard for me to say, but I pray bear with me. The King on’s death-bed did directly say to me that though he was at odds with the Vicar, he did believe so great an honour as this is should bind him faithfully to the royal interest, but your grace he did misdoubt (as he did openly say, but I did speak against it) of a secret determination to usurp the kingdom, and so feared to entrust the Princess unto you.’

‘Proceed, man,’ said the Duke. Roder proceeded:

‘As touching my sayde kyngdam of Mezria, save and exept the sayde apponage of Zayjana as heerin befoare prouided, I do point my wel beloued faythfull sarvante the Lorde Hy Amerall IERONIMY to rewill all the londe as Regent therof during my sed Systyrs minorite and therafter as Shee shall of Hir roiall wylle and pleasire determine of. And who some ere shall neglect contempne or sette on syde any dysposicion of this My Testment, lat his life haue an erly a suddant and an euill endinge and lat the Angre of the Goddes reste vpon him. Giuen under my roiall seall and under myne hande in my pauylyoun bisyde Hornmeere in Rerec this fourt day of Aprelle in the yeere of my raighne I,

STYLLYS R.’

A silence of little ease fell on their council when Roder ended his reading of that testament. Except old Vandermast’s not an eye was raised: those others shrank, in that silence, from meeting Barganax’s glance: Barganax himself sat staring downward with a cat-like intention on the void table-top before him. When he spoke at last it was in a strained voice, as if he rode wrath on the curb, tight held yet ready to overleap at the least slackening of control all bounds, all reason. ‘You will libel me out a copy of that, my lord Chancellor, certified under your hand and under his and his,’ pointing with his eye at Roder and Jeronimy.

Beroald answered and said, ‘I will.’

‘I must have half an hour to consider of this ere we pursue it further,’ said the Duke, still with that frightening tenseness in his voice. ‘Vandermast, fill out Rian wines for these lords and then attend me. And to you, sirs, I will say this: I have warranted you safety and freedom in Acrozayana. But this shall you know, and consider well of it: in case you shall not wait for me in this room until I come back to talk with you, and in case I find you not here all three when I do come again, that shall be in my eyes an act of war, my lord Admiral, and I shall answer it as such.’ With that word, as if the reins he had held at such horrid tension had slipped on a sudden through his fingers, he leapt to his feet, smote with his dagger into the table-top so mighty a downward stabbing blow that the steel stood a hand-breadth deep in the wood and snapped off short, hurled the broken weapon in the fireplace, and in that gusty extremity of fury flung open the door, swapped it to behind him, and was gone. Doctor Vandermast, who alone of that company maintained a demeanour of detachment and imperturbability, silently set wine before them according to his master’s bidding and silently departed.

‘Sure, the Duke’s much incensed,’ said Jeronimy, wiping the sweat from his brow with a silken handkercher and blowing out with his mouth.

‘It was, in my conceit, a prime error in judgement,’ said Beroald, ‘not to have given him the regency. Unless I do grossly mistake him, he was ready to let go the rest had he had but that. You must pardon me, my lord Admiral; the time calls for bare truth, not glosing compliment.’

‘I would in pure joy give it him today,’ said the Admiral, wiping his brow anew.

Roder drank a great draught of wine, then turned square upon them as if upon revelation suddenly to announce an important truth. ‘Why, this is very much to the purpose, my lords. Give it him: ’tis a bargain, and he is ours.’

‘You do forget your gravity,’ said the Chancellor. ‘Lieth it in us to alter and set aside the King’s will?’

‘Ay, indeed,’ said Roder: ‘I had forgot.’

‘’Tis not to be thought on,’ said the Admiral. ‘But, that provided, it is the more instant we waste not our powers in a manner with private bickerings. I am strangely puzzled. I think we be all of an accord, though, in this: that the main purport of the matter and our only thought is to uphold the young Queen as we are bound to do, and serve her wholly and throughly?’

‘We be weaponless here,’ said Beroald, ‘else would I kiss my sword to that. Take up the regency, my lord Admiral, and I at least will sustain and comfort you in this ’gainst all continent impediments and unto death itself.’

‘Thanks, noble Beroald,’ said the Admiral, taking his hand and Earl Roder’s, who on the motion sware him the like upholding. ‘And now, ’tis to make firm accord with the Duke if we may, and then keep open eyes on Rerek. But there there’s difficult going and need, in a manner, to go frost-nailed, since we were much to blame went we in aught against the King’s testament, and by that testament the Vicar must have the Queen in ward and be Regent for her in Rerek.’

‘Suffer me,’ said the Chancellor, reaching out his hand for the document, ‘to peruse it again. Ha! Come hither,’ he said: ‘note a strange accident. It saith “shall in her name rule the realm as Regent” (this of the Vicar), and then concerning you, my lord Admiral, “to rule all the land” (that is, of Meszria) “as Regent thereof.” It might be nicely argued that, he being in terms named Regent of all the realm and you but of Meszria only, effect is you shall be subject unto him as Regent of all the realm.’

‘’Twas never so intended,’ said Roder.

‘Nay,’ said the Chancellor; ‘but ’twill be argued by the letter, not upon supposition of intention. How came it, Roder, that you had the original?’

‘The Vicar hath it too,’ said he: ‘’Twas execute in duplicate. O there’s no doubt on’t, my lords, the Vicar meaneth not sit content in Rerek. ’Twas most observable with what a cloak of seeming loyalty he wrapped himself withal soon as the King ’gan sicken, and with what eagerness he did haste to wipe out of men’s sight and memories all evidences of strife betwixt them. As witness, a thing I knew by secret and most trusty intelligence: ’twas come so nigh a breach betwixt ’em, that he had privily posted his cousin german, the great Lord Lessingham, with near a thousand horse at Mornagay of Rerek to hold the ways northward ’gainst the King should they come to open differences; but straight upon the King’s sickening (for well he knew the hellish virtue of the drug that would obey no antidote) a sent his Gabriel Flores, a close instrument of his, galloping a whole night and day, to call off Lessingham and fetch him home again. And put it about forthright (with circumstances to be witness in’t) that ’twas Barganax in a jealous vengeful cruelty did procure ’s young brother’s taking off.’

‘And will you say,’ asked Jeronimy, ‘that Barganax did not indeed procure it?’

‘I rest but on hearsay and what my own judgement tells me,’ answered he. ‘I am persuaded the Vicar did it. And hath the mind too to use the sister as a stalk to catch birds with, and that’s the whole kingdom for’s own usurping and enjoyment.’

‘You mind what we spoke on but now i’ the throne-room?’ said Jeronimy to the Chancellor. ‘With right of our side, and with the Duke of our side?’

Beroald nodded a grave assent, saying, ‘We need both.’

The Lord Jeronimy fingered his thin beard a moment in silence: ‘And yet,’ he said, with a twitch of his mouth, ‘I would not trust him out of all-ho! His thoughts do soar too high, in a manner, for sober deed to follow. I would trust him discreetly.’

The door opened, and those lords stood up in a formal deference. It was easy to read in Jeronimy’s most tell-tale eyes how all his prudent and scrupulous withholdings discandied quite, only to look on Barganax that now entered to them with so lovely a taking grace as, after the foul storm he had gone out with, seemed a new man, a new day. ‘My lord Admiral,’ he said, standing in the door: ‘I have now thought on’t. I will stand in alliance with you to uphold the King’s testament unto last fulfilment. Let your scriveners draw it in form, my lord Chancellor: we’ll set our hands to it. And if you will dine with me tomorrow, ’tis a pleasure I shall set store by. I’d say tonight, but – tonight I am bespoke already.’

IV ZIMIAMVIAN DAWN

LIGHT ON A DARK LADY

THE beginnings of new light, fanned with little winds that had slept all night long on the gentle spring-time sea, entered through the wide-open windows of the Duke’s private lodging in Acrozayana and so by open doors into the outer chamber and so, passing out by western windows, were lost upon distances of the hueless lake below. Upon their passage, ambrosial Night, who had first trailed her mantle of dusk and enchantery over the white damask and the wine-cups rough with jewels, and over the oysters and crayfish in hippocras, jellied ortolans, peaches, queen-apples, and strange passion-fruits filled with seeds afloat in a thin delicious juice, and had later watched, under the silver lamps, such preenings and soarings of the bird delight as even holy Night can find no name to name them, now furled plume by plume her downy wings, ready to repair for yet another diurnal span to her chambers of the west. And now morning stood awake in those rooms; loosing hand from departing Night’s, even as Fiorinda, rising in a like silence, loosed her hand from her sleeping lover’s late fallen asleep a little before the dawn.

Motionless at the great crystal mirror, her hands gathering behind her head the night-black heavy and scented softnesses of her unbound hair, she surveyed for a while her own naked loveliness: marvels of white, proud, Greek, modelled to the faintest half-retracted touch, pure as snows that dream out the noonday on the untrod empyreal snow-dome of Koshtra Belorn; and, as in the sweet native habit of such hair, thrones whence darkness shines down darkness to the failing of vision. Compounded and made up of two things she seemed: day and sable night; only in her eyes shone that coolness of aquamarine, and as tempestuous dawns wear their rose-flowers, so she.

After a time, with a sudden melting movement, unseizable as a hummingbird’s flight in its shimmer of moods and motives, voluptuous languor, half-surprised acceptance, self-surrender, disdain, she pronounced her name Fiorinda, delicately, as if caressing with tongue and lips the name’s very beauty as she framed the syllables. She spoke it strangely, as if that name, and the looking-glass image itself, were not her own but somewhat other: somewhat of her making, it might be, as a painter should paint a picture of his heart’s desire; yet not her, or at least not her complete. And, so speaking, she laughed, very light and low, all unlike to that mocking laugh that so pricked Barganax’s sense, as if (by his saying yesterday) she would laugh all honesty out of fashion. For there was now in this laugh of hers a note of quality alien to all human kind, so honeysweet it was, fancy-free, yet laughter-loving of itself: so might a sudden rift in the veil between time and eternity let through a momentary light sound of the honey-sweet imperishable laughter. On the instant, it was gone. But the memory of it remained like the ringed ripple on water where a bird has dived.

The sun rose, and shot its first beam against that lady’s brow, as she turned towards the morning. And now befell a great wonder. Even as she, standing so in the first beams of day, began to put up her hair and pin it with pins of chrysolite, she seemed on the sudden grown taller by a head, to out-top the tallest of men in stature; and whereas, since there is no increase beyond perfection, the beauty of her body might not increase, yet was the substance of it as if transmuted in a moment to pure light, of a like brightness and essence with the heavenly fires of sunrise. No man could in that time have named the colour of Her eyes or of Her hair: the shifting of the dark and light was become as a blinding glory too awful for mortal eye to look upon, too swift for the mind of man to seize or read. For upon Her cheek in that hour was the beauty that belongs to fair-crowned Aphrodite; and that beauty, thus made manifest in its fulness, no eye can bear or see, not even a God’s, unless it be possible for the great Father of All Who sitteth in secret, that He might behold it and know it.

The rays touched Barganax’s lids. He turned in his sleep: reached out a searching hand and spoke her name in his sleep. She took from the silver-studded stool where it lay her loose gown of diaphanous silken stuff spangled with silver stars and with diamonds and sapphires tiny as grains of sand, and put it about her. The marvel was overpast, as a meteor trails across heaven in the common sight of men and their lowly habitations a light never seen till now in earth or sky, and in a count of ten is gone. On the edge of the great bed upon the fair-worked lace border she sat down, placidly and gracefully as a she-leopard might sit. There was a new look in her eyes now as she watched him asleep: a simple human look, but yet as it were from above, detached and virginal, regarding as if in a tender pitiful wonder these toys of circumstance and greatness and magnificence, and him like a child asleep among them, and her own presence as part of them, sitting there. Suddenly she took his hand that lay there where it had abandoned its dreaming quest, and prisoned it, under both hers, in her bosom. The Duke opened his eyes upon her. He lay very still. Her side-face wore the cool loveliness of a windless lake at sunrise; her gaze was downward, the upper lid level and still, the eye still and wide, yet as if attending to no seen object but to some inside music. His imprisoned hand stirred: he said, under his breath, her name.

Her echo, scarce audible, upon a self-accepting Olympian faint upward nod, came with a kind of hushed assent: Fiorinda. And as still she sat with that downward gaze listening, the thing at the corner of her mouth, very beguiling and faun-like now, turned on its back and looked at him sideways.

V THE VICAR OF REREK

A DOG-WASHING IN LAIMAK • GABRIEL FLORES • AMENITIES BETWIXT COUSINS • THE CURST HORSE FEELS THE BRIDLE • ‘AN HONEST STATESMAN TO A PRINCE.’

THAT same eye of day, which three hours ago had opened upon wonder in Acrozayana, was now climbed so high in the eastern heavens as to top, fifty leagues to the northward, the far-shadowing backbone of the Forn, and shine clear into Owldale where, upon a little steep hill solitary among grazing-lands betwixt mountains eastward and westward, the hold of Laimak lay like a sleeping wolf. So steep was that hill that it rose naked in cliffs three or four hundred feet high on every side, and the blind walls of the fortress, built of huge blocks quarried from the crown of the hill, followed the line of the cliffs’ brow round about. Only to the north an arched gateway broke the walls, opening on a path hewn zig-zag up through the cliffs to give passage for men and horses; but always upon sufferance, since at every step the walls or towers commanded that passage way for shooting and casting down of fire or boiling pitch; and a gatehouse bestrode the passage way at its coming forth into the fields below, with towers and machicolations and a portcullis of iron. Wolf-grey it was all to look upon, as well the cliffs as the walls that frowned above them, being of one substance of stubborn crystalline rock, of the earth’s primordial crust, wolf-grey and of an iron hardness. And this was from antique times the castle of the Parrys, that now for thirty generations had been lords in Rerek.

Upon the champaign north and east under Laimak there lay in tents that army, not yet disbanded, which the Lord Horius Parry had drawn to a head for dealing with the King if need were, and which, that necessity now being past, he in his prudent husbandry thought it not good too hastily to lay aside; meaning it should yet, haply for argument in the southlands, haply otherwise, nicely serve his turn.

Within the hold, thus early, he himself was up and doing, while most men yet slept. Under the mighty archway called Hagsby’s Entry, that led from one of the inner courts beneath two towers into the inmost court of all, which was outer ward of the great square keep, he stood, all in dirt, stripped to the waist, aproned like a smith, with a long wooden vat or tub before him full of steaming soapy water, taking his pleasure with washing of his cursed dogs. Two or three that he had already dealt with rushed hither and thither about the narrow courtyard, yelping and barking and tumbling in a wild gladness of release; the rest skulked in shadowy corners of the archway, as hoping against hope to escape notice, yet daring not to slink away, coming each in turn when his name was called, grovelling and unwilling to his master’s feet. Bushy-tailed prick-eared heavy-chested long-fanged slaver-mouthed beasts were they all, a dozen or more, some red, some black, some grey, some yellow, as big as wolves and most wolfish to look upon. Each as his turn came the Vicar seized by the scruff of the neck and by the loose skin above the haunches and, lifting it as it had been a kitten, set it in the bath. He was a huge, heavy, ugly man, nigh about fifty years of age, not tall as beside tall men, but great-thewed and broad of chest and shoulder, his neck as thick as a common man’s thigh, his skin fair and full of freckons, his hair fiery red, stiff like wires and growing far down on his neck behind; he wore it trimmed short, and it had this quality that it stood upright on his head like a savage dog’s if he was angry. His ears were strangely small and fine shaped, but set low; his jaw great and wide; his mouth wide with pale thin lips; his nose jutting forth with mighty side-pitched nostrils, and high and spreading in the wings; his forehead high-domed, smooth, and broad, and with a kind of noble serenity that sorted oddly with the ruffianly lines of his nose and jaw; his beard and mustachios close-trimmed and bristly; his eyebrows sparse; his eyelids heavy, not deep set. He had delicate lively hazel eyes, like the eyes of an adder. He had none of his servants by him at this dog-washing, save only his secretary, Gabriel Flores, for his mind was sprightly and busy a-mornings, and he would have the convenience to talk, if occasion were, secretly with this man, who were aptly styled (to overpass his swarthy hue, and lack of all nobleness in his softer and more bloated look) for his highness in duodecimo.

‘Come hither, Pyewacket!’ shouted the Vicar, letting go that dog that was then in the bath and turning to peer into the shadows of the gate. ‘Pyewacket! Satan’s lightnings blast the bitch! Woo’t come when th’art called?’ He hurled the heavy scrubbing-brush at a brindled shadowy form that stole away in hoped obscurity: a yelp told him that his aim was true. The great beast, her tail between her legs, trotted away; he shouted to her again; she glanced back, a harried reproachful glance, and trotted faster; the Vicar was upon her with a lion-like agility; he kicked her; she laid back her ears, snarled, and snapped at his leg; he caught her by the neck and beat her with his fist about the ribs and buttocks till she yelped for pain; when he had done she growled and bared her teeth; he beat her once more, harder, then waited to see what she would do. She gave in, and walked, but with no good grace, to the distasteful bath. There, standing shoulder-deep in the steaming suds, grown thin to look on beyond nature, and very pathetical, with the water’s soaking of her hair and making it cling close to the skin, she suffered sulkily the indignities of soap and brush, and the searching erudite fingers that (greatly indeed for her good) sought out and slew the ticks that here and there beset her. All the while her staring eyes were sullen with bottled-up anger, like a bull’s. The Vicar’s eyes had the like look in them.

‘Well,’ said he in a while, ‘is he coming? You did say I would have speech of him, and that instantly?’

‘I did give him your highness’ very words,’ said Gabriel. He paused: then, ‘’Tis a strange folly, this tennis: racket away a hundred crowns afore breakfast, and till that’s done all sober business may go hang.’

‘Did he not answer you?’ asked the Vicar after a minute.

Gabriel smiled a crooked smile. ‘Not to say, answer,’ he said.

‘What said he, then?’ said the Vicar, looking up.

Gabriel said, ‘Faith, ’twas not for your ear intended. I were to blame did I blab to your highness every scurvy word, spoke in unconsiderate haste, that your highness should magnify past all reason.’

At that word, came Lessingham hastily towards them out of the low dark passage that sloped upward into the long and narrow yard, at the far, or eastern, end whereof was Hagsby’s Entry where the washing was. And at that word, whether seeing him or no, the Vicar gave his Pyewacket a damnable slap across the nose, grabbed her fore and aft, and flung her out in the way of Lessingham that walked hastily to greet him. She, with the gadflies of pain and outraged dignity behind her and a strange man before, sprang at his throat. Lessingham was in his shirt, tennis-racket in hand; he smote her with the racket, across the fore-leg as she sprang: this stopped her; she gave way, yowling and limping. ‘God’s death!’ said the Vicar, ‘will you kill my brach?’ and threw a long-bladed dagger at him. Lessingham avoided it: but the singing of it was in his ear as it passed. He leapt at the Vicar and grappled him. The Vicar wrestled like a cat-a-mountain, but Lessingham held him. Gabriel, at his master’s skirt, now kept off the dogs, now pleased himself with looking on the fight, ever side-stepping and dodging, like a man caught in a hill-forest in a whirlwind when the tall pines loosened at root reel and lock together and lurch, creaking and tottering, towards the last downward-tearing ruinous crash. The Vicar’s breath began to come and go now in great puffs and hissings like the blowing of a sea-beast. Lessingham rushed him backwards. The edge of the wash-tub caught him behind the knees, and he fell in, body and breeches, with Lessingham a-top of him, and with that violence the tub was overturned.

They loosed hold and stood up now, and in that nick of time came Amaury into the yard. The Vicar barked out a great laugh, and held out his hand to Lessingham, who took it straight. There was in Lessingham’s eye as it rested upon his cousin a singular look, as if he fingered in him a joy too fine for common capacities: such a look as a man might cast, unknowingly and because he could not help it, on his dear mistress. And indeed it was strange to consider how the Vicar, standing thus in nasty clothes, but even risen from a rude tussling-bout and a shameful fall, stood yet as clothed upon with greatness like a mantle, sunning in his majesty like adders in warm beams.

Lessingham said, ‘You did send for me.’

‘Yes,’ answered he: ‘the matter is of weight. Wash and array us, and we’ll talk on’t at breakfast. Gabriel, see to’t.’

‘I’ll meet you straight in my lodging, Amaury,’ said Lessingham.

When they were alone, ‘Cousin,’ said Lessingham, ‘you did throw a knife at me.’

The Vicar was ill at ease under Lessingham’s secure and disturbing smile. ‘Tush,’ he said, ‘’twas but in sport.’

‘You shall find it a dangerous sport,’ said Lessingham. ‘Be advised, cousin. Leave that sport.’

‘You are such a quarrelling, affronting—’ the words ceased in his throat as his eye met Lessingham’s. Like his own great hell-hound bitch awhile ago, he, as for this time, bared fang yet owned his master. And in that owning, as by some hidden law, he seemed to put on again that greatness which but even now, under Lessing-ham’s basilisk look, had seemed to fall off from him.

That was an hour later when those kinsmen brake their fast together on the roof of the great main keep, over the Vicar’s lodging: a place of air and wide prospect; and a place besides of secrecy; for when the door in the north-west turret was shut, by which alone was a way up to the roof and the battlements, there was none save the fowls of the air and the huge stones of the floor and parapet to be eavesdroppers at their conference. Here in the midst of the floor was a narrow table set under the sky, with musk-millions and peaches in silver dishes, and a great haunch of cold venison, and marmalades of quince and crab-apple, and flagons of white and red hippocras, with chased gold goblets; and there were diapered linen napkins and silver-handled knives and silver forks to eat withal; all very noble and sumptuously arrayed. Two heavy armchairs of old black oak were set at the table; the Vicar sat at the northern side, and over against him Lessingham. They were washen now, and in fair and fine clothes. The Vicar had put on now a kirtle of dark brown velvet edged with rich embroidery of thread of gold, but frayed and dirted and rubbed with wearing; it was cut wide and low about the neck, with a flat collar of white pleated lace tied with silken cord. Lessingham was in a buff-coloured kirtle of soft ribbed silk with a narrow ruff and narrow wristbands of point-lace spangled with beads of jet of the bigness of mustard seeds, and tight-fitting black silk breeches and velvet shoes.