Mistress of mistresses (24 page)

When
the Earl's outriders came round the south-east neb of the wood and saw these
dispositions, they sent word back to let him know that Lessingham stood there
in the ings of Lorkan, and in what posture, offering battle.. Upon which the
Earl straightway called a halt, arrayed his host as he had determined with
himself before, and advanced in order of battle. He had with him the whole army
that was that morning gathered in the Sali-mat, save only five hundred sailors
from the fleet who abode still in the pass there with the High Admiral, to hold
it if need were and to await the Chancellor. His main strength, of two thousand
heavy-armed spearmen of Fingiswold and a thousand of Jeronimy's sailors, so far
outwent in his judgement Lessingham's foot, as well in weapons and goodness as
in numbers, that he made little account of the odds against him in respect of
horse. With that mind, he arrayed them in deep ranks, and commanded
Peropeutes, who with Hortensius and Belinus captained the foot, to throw their
whole weight, upon blowing of the horn for battle, against Lessingham's centre,
and break it. He himself with his three hundred picked horsemen of the Wold
fared against Amaury beside the river. Egan and the Meszrian horse, but new
come in that morning, went upon the left.

Earl
Roder without parley let blow up the war-blast, and the banners were borne
forth, and with a great and horrid shout his main battle set on at a lumbering
run. Lessingham bade his folk hold their ground till it was come to
handystrokes and then to hold firm on the wings at all costs. When they were
come within cast, each side let at the other with twirl-spears. Upon the next
instant Peropeutes and the pick of the royal guard, bearing great oblong
shields and armed alternately with long thrusting-spears and two-handed swords,
crashed like a battering-ram against Lessingham's centre. In the roar of that
onset and the clatter of steel and grinding of edge upon edge, the levies of
Rerek, under the weight of deep columns so thrown upon them, shook and bent.
Many were hurt and many slain of either side in that first clash of the battle;
for fair in the centre had Lessingham set with each raw young man an old
fighter of the Vicar's, and these, with their short two-edged swords good for
thrusting and hewing alike, and their smaller shields light but tough, made
play where Roder's spearmen might scarce find weapon-room in the close mellay.
With main ponderous weight of numbers thrusting in serried ranks from behind,
the battle front bent northwards, until Lessingham's half-moon was clean reversed:
horns reaching forward on either side, belly buckled inward. And little by
little into that deepening pocket Roder's battering-ram, with ever narrowing
front, crowded and battered its way.

Lessingham
had under his hand a hundred picked riders and a hundred of his veteran foot,
men trained to go into battle with the horsemen, holding to the stirrup when
they charge. With these he hung about the backward-buckling centre as a gannet
follows a shoal of mackerel. His lips were set: his eyes dancing fires. By
runners and riders, where he might not see for himself, he knew minute by
minute how things fared: of the Meszrian horse now broken and put to flight
beside the wood: of Amaury heavily engaged with Roder on the left. For the main
action, his tried troops, two hundred and fifty on either part, were now, with
the passage between them of that battering-ram, posted where he would have
them: upon the enemy's flanks. Even as the gannet, half closing her wings,
drops like a white broad-barbed arrow to the sea, cleaving the waters with a
blow that flings up spray with a swish as of a spouting whale, so, suddenly,
seizing the moment, Lessingham struck. Himself, with his two hundred, rushing
forth now from between the ranks of the unbroken but battered and far-driven
centre, turned back the advance of Roder's main front as with a blast of
murdering wild-fire. In that same nick of time, the Vicar's veterans closed
upon Roder's flanks like the claws of a crab. They took his right flank at open
shields, so that great was the man-fall, and men cast down in heaps: some
smothered under their fellows' carcases, some cut to death with their own
weapons or their fellows' or ever their foes might come at them. The horse upon
Les-singham's right, leaving the pursuit when they heard his horn blow up the
battle-call, took a sweep south and about and fell upon the foot from flank and
rear. Amaury in a last charge flung the half of Roder's famous horsemen into
the river and utterly overthrew them.

The
sun was a flattened ball of crimson fire touching the sea between the
Quesmodian isles, when the High Admiral walked up from his tent with the Lord
Beroald to a place of prospect whence they might overlook far and wide the vale
of the Zenner, misty in the warm and sleepy sunset light. 'Well, I have told
you, I think, every tittle,' he said. 'And now it is the eighth hour past noon.
And no news these three hours.'

'And
then to say he had come up with
him
in the ings of Lorkan?'

Jeronimy
nodded his head. 'Should a been more news ere now.'

The
Chancellor with a swift glance sideways, not to be seen, noted the Admiral's
face clouded with anxious thought. ‘I would not think so,' he said lightly.

'A
cat not to be caught without mittens,' said Jeronimy. He stood for a minute
scanning the countryside below, then, as they turned again to their walking,
'When should your main body be here?' he said.

'To-morrow
night,' answered Beroald.

'And
Zapheles?'

Beroald's
lip curled. ‘I will adventure upon no guesses as to that.'

'To-morrow
night,' said Jeronimy. 'And that's but lean relief, when 'tis being played out
now, and for want of your army, three days dallied behind the day—nay, I blame
it not on you, my lord: 1 know what ado you had. Nor I blame it not on myself.'
He met the Chancellor's cold eye, squared his shoulders and laughed. "Your
lordship must forgive me. Pah! 'tis barely sunset, and are the scritch-owls
abroad already? But these land-fights, 'tis pure truth, have ever seemed a
thing 'gainst nature to me, in a manner.'

A
studied imperturbability informed the Chancellor's lean countenance as, erect
and soldier-like, he surveyed the landscape with folded arms. 'The odds of
strength, my lord Admiral,' he said coldly, 'can alone resolve you of all
doubts. And Roder is no untried boy, to walk into nets or aim ere he can
strike. Come, let's go to supper.'

The
Concordat of Ilkis

AMAURY
BEFORE THE DUKE    OUR LADY OF CYPRUS     
FIORINDA   IN   A   JEWELLED  
SHADE
 
PHILOMMEIDES APHRODITE
 
HER HIGH PIERIAN FLOWER
 
THE DUKE PERCEIVES.

Duke Barganax
,
the second night after that battle, sat in an upper chamber above the
guard-room in Rumala. Bolt upright he sat, in a great stone chair, back to the
wall, greaved and helmed, and in his long-sleeved byrny, every link of which
was damascened with silver and gold. Black plumes of the bird of paradise
shadowed his helm with their shifting iridescence of green and steel-blue
fires. His hands hung relaxed over the arms of the chair. Torn and crumpled
papers lay at his feet. A lamp on the table at his left elbow lighted the room
but dimly. His face was in shadow, turned from the lamp towards the deep-set
open window and its darkness astir with starlight. He did not move at the
clatter of Medor's mailed footsteps on the stair nor at his coming in. For a
full minute Medor stood before him silent, as if afeared. , 'Is he gone?'

Medor
answered, 'I cannot move him. He is most stubborn set to speak with your
grace’

Barganax
neither spoke nor stirred.

'He
will say nought to me,' said Medor: 'nought to any save to your grace alone.'

‘Is
he weary of his life?'

‘I
did instruct him at large. Yet nought will do but he shall have speech with you
face to face. I have done my best.'

After
a pause the Duke said, 'Admit him.'

Thereupon
was guarded into the chamber, betwixt two of the Duke's red-bearded
shaven-headed men-at-arms, Amaury. He was dirted to the knee from hard riding
through the marshlands. They had made him leave his weapons. 'Was this well
done, Amaury,' said the Duke, *to come and make me your gazing-stock, and the
glory of Zayana laid in the suds?'

'My
lord Duke,' said Amaury, ‘I see no such thing. If your grace will in your old
used nobility meet my master, he doth most eagerly desire to treat with you,
and upon such terms as shall be of more honour and advantage to you than those
which he beforetime did offer, before war was betwixt you.'

'Do
you see that goblet?' said the Duke then. 'Were you to set in it an invenomed
toad and mash him to a jelly, then pour wine on't and drink it off, that were a
thing likelier for your safety than come hither to insult over me with his
words of peace.'

Amaury
flushed like a girl under his fair skin. He said, 'If there is blame, blame me.
Of myself, not sent, came I hither into your power; for I knew his strange and
needless resolve to come himself to-morrow on the like errand, but I smelt
danger in that. Therefore I came first, without leave asked, to be his taster;
as great men will have the dish tasted first by another, if there be poison in
it'

'Then
shall he thank me,' said the Duke, 'for chastising of his disobedient dog. And
yet,' he said, 'you might a known there was little danger. You might a known I
should have the wit to let you go: as men use with rat-traps: there is a way in
with a snap-door, but another way out: let 'em go at will, in and out, for a
few nights till they have lost all fear on't; then, one night, shut the way
out, catch 'em all in a bunch. Dear Gods, could I have but that Roder and that
Beroald amongst 'em: mince them all!'

'But
I am not a rat,' said Amaury. 'I can judge; and if I judge so, warn him.'

The
Duke's face was dark as blood. 'Take him out,' he -said. 'Tie him hand and foot
and throw him down the cliff. This may somewhat ease my rage.'

The
guardsmen laid each a hand upon Amaury's shoulders. He turned pale. He said,
'If I come not back, there is this good in it, that 'twill yet give him pause.
And his life is better to me than mine.'

'Make
haste, as I bade you,' said the Duke, starting suddenly up, deadly white,
terrible, like a wounded lion. 'If more come, I'll use the like liberty on
them. It shall appear whether I be well tamed with the infortunity of this
battle. Trokers and dastards: let them know me, too late.' He strode with great
clanking strides to the window and stood there, stiff, his back to the room,
his arms tight folded before his face and pressed against the wall, his temples
pressed against the backs of his clenched fists. Medor, by a look, bade the
guard stand still. Amaury waited.

'Medor,'
said the Duke: he was now at the window, looking out. Medor went to him.

'Keep
the man till morning: out of my sight. I will think more on this.'

Amaury
spoke: 'May I, with your grace's leave, say but a word?'

The
Duke made no answer, looking still out of the window, but his frame stiffened
as he stood.

'If
I be not returned ere morning, there be those will tell my lord whither I am
gone. He will conclude your grace hath made away with me. That ruins all.'

The
Duke swung round. 'Have him away, ere I after-think me.' He plucked out his
dagger.

'He
was resolved to ride up the Curtain alone,' said Amaury loudly as they led him
out: 'alone: in so high a trusting honour hath he held you.'

'Away!'
said Barganax. His left hand shut upon Medor's wrist. The soldiers hurried
Amaury through the door. 'O horrible ruin! was ever prince betrayed as I am? O
Medor I could bathe in blood: butcher their heads off with my own hands: cut
their hearts out, eat 'em raw with garlic; then sink with stink
ad Tartar a Termagorunu

'Nay,
that's foulness,' he said, again striding up and down. 'Damned Beroald: damned
two-faced Zapheles: damned womanish Jeronimy: dregs of the Devil's cup. That's
worst of all: I, that dared imaginarily place myself above the circle of the
moon, to be the wide world's paragon, and only beauty's self to be my
paramour: now baffled to extremest derision, changed to a bloody beast

'Nay,'
he said, 'but I'll prince it out;' and sat again in the stone chair. Medor was
leaned on his elbows at the window surveying the night. 'What dost think on?'
said the Duke.

'On
your star-like nobleness,' answered he.

'What
was that he said?' said the Duke suddenly: 'that Lessingham would trust himself
all alone to treat with me here in Rumala? That was very like a lie.'