Mistress of mistresses (11 page)

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 zigzag
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 northwest 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 eaves-droppers 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
arm-chairs 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.