Mistress of mistresses (28 page)

Lessingham
looked and rode on. 'I would have you learn a new tune, dear Amaury,' he said;
'not melancholy yourself to melancholy's self and die of your apprehensions.'

So
came they at length to the castle of the Parrys and rode north-about to the
gatehouse and up by the deep hewn passage way to the main gateway, high upon
the northern verge, and there was the Vicar and his men to welcome Lessingham.
The Vicar was in his brown velvet kirtle, with a belt about his middle of old
silver. About his shoulders was his great robe or mantle of state, of red
tartarine, and upon his brow a coronal of gold. With so much unexampled show
of' honourable respect he received Lessingham, as offer to hold the bridle
while he dismounted; then took his arms about him and kissed him. Then he made
him go up with him to his private chamber in the tower above Hagsby's Entry.
'Nay,' he said, when they were private there, ‘I would hear no word from
Gabriel. I would have it from your lips, cousin. And first, is it well?'

'
'Tis not altogether bad,' answered Lessingham, pouring out some wine. * 'Tis
victory?'

*My
coming home should warrant you that. Did you ever know me put up my sword with
the work half done?'

'You
did promise me Outer Meszria in the hollow of my hand: that in a month. 'Tis
bare three weeks since then. I'm not Grizell Greedigut to ask aught past
reason, but somewhat I hope you have brought me.'

'Outer
Meszria? Did I promise so little?' said Lessingham. 'If that should content
you, cousin, you shall be more than content with this when you shall have understood
it and considered of it;' and with that he pulled forth from his bosom a
parchment and writing sealed with seals.

‘I
can read,' said the Vicar, 'though none of the best,
yet meanly,' reaching out his hand for
it.                     

'First
I'll rehearse it to you at large,' said Lessingham.

'Nay,'
said the Vicar, and took it: 'if any words seem dark, you shall make it more
open, cousin. I like 'em best naked: you shall put the frills and furbelows on
it anon.' He read it, sitting back easily in his great chair. His face as he
read was open as a book, with the light full on it from the high window beside
them, and Lessingham watched it, sipping his wine. There was not, as he read,
so much as a passing shadow ruffled the noble serenity of the Vicar's brow or
stirred the repose of those lineaments about the eyes and nose and jowl that
could, upon an ill wind's blowing, wake to so much bestial ferocity. Nor was
there any new note in his voice when, having read and read it again, at last he
spoke. 'These articles express a concordat made 'twixt me of the one part,
acting within my sovereignty vicarial and as Lord Protector for the Queen, and
of t'other part Duke Barganax and ('pon their by instrument accepting of it)
those other scum of the world, Jeronimy, I mean, Roder, and Beroald?'

'And
in case any one of them shall not within fifteen days accept it,' said
Lessingham, 'then falleth it to the ground, and our hands free of either part.
That's why I hold the army still on the Zenner. But they'll accept, ne'er fear
it.'

'And
'tis execute in duplicate, cousin, by you in virtue of your full powers on my
behalf? And Zayana hath my seal, as I have his?'

'Yes,'
said Lessingham.

The
Vicar let fall the parchment and clapped his hands. Six men-at-arms upon the
instant leaped out upon Lessingham from behind and ere he could raise finger
clamped chains upon him that shackled him, wrist and elbow, knee and foot.
Lessingham saw that Gabriel Flores was come in with them and was beside his
master. The Vicar started from his chair like a ravening tiger. He smote
Lessingham across the face with the parchment. The countenance of Lessingham
was for a moment transported with terrible anger: he neither spoke nor moved,
but he became white as death. The Vicar, mastering, himself, sat down again.
Under the clutch of his hands the arms of his chair shook and trembled. He
glared with his eyes upon Lessingham who, of his right colour again, had now in
his grey eyes the steadiness of levelled steel.

The
Vicar opened his mouth and said, and his words came thick and stumbling as a
man's that is drunk with wine: 'Overmuch have I trusted you. Yet this showed
little wit, to come tell me to my face of this betrayal, that stinks more ugly
in the sight of God than do all the carrion of this world. But you shall see I
have a short way with such checking buzzards. A guard upon him! In an hour's
time, cut his neck. Chop his carcase for the dogs, but spike up the head upon
the main gate. I'll look on it before supper.'

Gabriel
was shivering and twitching in all his body, like a little terrier dog at the
edge of a duckpond. The Vicar looked around at him, then back at Lessingham who
was stood up now, taller by a head than the soldiers that held him shackled.
Even upon that brink of fate and death he stood with so good a grace and
presence as if a soul of iron informed him; looking upon the Vicar as from
above, and in his grey eyes, keen and speckled, something very like a smile, as
if he knew something that was not true. *Well,' said the Vicar, 'have you
nothing to say?'

'Nothing
but this,' answered he: 'that you were wont to act upon no great resolution
without you first had slept upon it. It seems the Gods have infatuated your
high subtle wisdom, if now you will do a wrong irrevocable both to yourself and
me, and not e'en sleep upon it. Your matter hath not turned out so ill
aforetime, following of my counsels.'

The
Vicar glowered motionless as a bull in granite; his eyes were fixed no longer
on Lessingham's eyes, but below them, on his mouth or beard. The guard,
obedient to a covert sign from Gabriel, made a motion to take Lessingham away.
The Vicar turned suddenly and Gabriel's elbow shrank in his brazen grip.
'Stay,' he said. 'I'll not let truth go by, albeit she were pointed out to me
by
a
dissembling
tyke. To-morrow's as good as to-day. And
to make sure, unto you, Gabriel, I commit him in
charge; doubt not but that I shall call to you for a strict account of your dealing
with him. For his life and safe keeping your life shall answer. Here are the
keys,' and he threw them on the table.

Gabriel
took them with a beaten scowling look.

xii

Noble
Kinsfnen in Laimak

THE
VICAR'S DREAM
 
ARGUMENT OF MIDNIGHT
 
ADAMANT GRINDS ADAMANT
 
THE RIDER IN SADDLE AGAIN
 
'POLICY AND HER TRUE ASPECT'
 
NUPTIAL FLIGHT OF THE PEREGRINES
 
LESSINGHAM CAPTAIN-GENERAL
 
CONCEITS OF
A
LORD PROTECTOR
 
REVELRY; AND
A
MEETING AT DAWN
 
NORTH.

The
Lord
Horius Parry awoke between midnight and cock-crow, being troubled and vexed
with a certain un-pleasing dream. And this was the beginning of his dream: that
Gabriel sat at his knee reading in a book of the
Iliad
wherein
was told the fate of the lady Simë that she was (and here Gabriel, not knowing
the meaning of the Greek word, asked him the meaning.) And though upon waking
he knew not the word, and knew besides that in the
Iliad
is
no such tale and no such lady, it seemed to him in his dream that the word
meant 'gutted like a dog.' Thereupon in his dream the Vicar was remembered of
that old tale of Swanhild, Gudrun's daughter, wed in the old time to King
Jormunrek, and by him, upon lying slanders of Bikki, adjudged to die and be
trod with horses in the gate; but, for the loveliness of her eyes that looked
upon them, the horses would not tread upon her, but still swerved and reared
and spared her, until Bikki let do
a
sack about her head, hiding her eyes, and
she was trodden so and so slain. And
now was the dream troubled and made unclear, as a breeze ruffles water and does
away the reflected shapes and colours; and when it cleared, there was a wide
plain lay amid mountains, all in a summer's evening and pleasant sunshine air,
and in the midst upon a little rise of ground a table, and before the table
three thrones. And the Vicar thought he saw himself sitting upon the left-hand
throne, and he thought he knew in his dream that he was a king; and the plain
was filled with people assembled as for some occasion, and they waited there in
silence in their multitude, innumerable as the sands of the sea. And the Vicar
looked upon himself, upon the king, and saw that he was both in feature and in
apparel like to the Assyrian kings in the great stone likenesses carved of them
of old, and his beard long and tightly frizzed and curled, and his belted robe
incrusted with every kind of precious stone, so that it glittered green and
purple and with sparkles of fiery red; and he was cruel and fell to look upon,
and with white glinting teeth. And behold there walked a woman before the
thrones, fair as the moon, clothed in a like glittering garment as the king's;
and he knew in his dream that this was that lady Sime, and when he beheld her
steadfastly he saw (yet without mazement, as in dreams the singularest and
superlative wonder, impossibilities and fictions beyond laughter, will seem but
trivial and ordinary) that she was Lessingham. It seemed to him that this she
Lessingham did obeisance to the king, and took her seat on the right-hand
throne; and immediately upon the third throne he beheld the queen that sat
there betwixt them, as it had been a queen of hell. She was attired in a like
garment of precious stones; her hair was the colour of wet mud, her eyes like
two hard pebbles, set near together, her nose straight and narrow, her lips
thin and pale, her face a lean sneak-bill chitty-face; she had a waiting, triumphing
look upon her face; and he loathed her. And now went men before the thrones,
bearing on a great stand or easel a picture framed, and showed it to that
bright lady; and it seemed to the Vicar that she gave a terrible cry and
covered her eyes; and the men turned the picture that all might see, and he
could not discern the picture to understand it; but only the writing upon it,
in great letters: UT COMPRESSA PEREAT. And he thought the whole multitude in
their thousands took up those words and howled them aloud with a howling like
the howling of wolves. And he shouted and leapt awake, sitting up in the dark
in his great canopied bed in Laimak, all shaking and sweating.

For
a minute he sat so, listening to the darkness, which was as if some vast body
had been flung into the pool of night and made waves upon it that were his own
blood-beats. Then with an obscene and blasphemous oath he felt for tinder,
struck a light, and lighted the candles on the table by his bed in the silver
candlesticks that stood there, and his sword beside them, and a goblet, and
wine in a great-bellied bottle of green glass with a stopper of gold. As the
new-kindled candleflames shrank dim kuthe moment before the melting of the
tallow, questionable shadows crouched in the recesses of the walls and vaulted
ceiling. A puff of wind stirred the curtain by the window. Then the candles
burned up. Pyewacket, waked by his shout, was come from the foot of the bed and
laid her chin on his thigh, looking up at him with great speaking eyes in the
bright beams of the candles. The Vicar poured out wine, a brimming goblet, and
guzzled it down at one gulp. Then he stood up and abode for a while staring at
the candleflames and as if listening. At length he clad himself in breeches and
gown, buckled on his sword, took and lighted a lantern, and unbolted the door.
Gabriel was in his place without, asleep on his bed made up upon the floor
across the threshold. The Vicar woke him with his foot and bade him give him
the keys. He gave them in silence and would have come with him, but the Vicar
with a kind of snarl bade him remain. Gabriel, considering this, and his
disordered looks, and the sword at his thigh, watched him go with his bitch at
his heel, through the ante-room and through the further door, that led to his
private chamber, and when he was gone sat down on his pallet bed again, licking
his lips.

The
Vicar went down by a privy passage of his own to the prison where Lessingham
was mewed up; went in by means of his private key, and locked the door behind
him. He held up the lantern. Lessingham lay in the far corner, with his ankles
shackled to a ball of lead great as a man's two fists. His left arm was free,
but the other wrist locked in a manacle with a long chain from that to his
foot. His cloak of costly silken stuff was rolled for a pillow for his cheek.
The Vicar came nearer. With his dream still upon him, he stood looking upon
Lessingham and listening, as upon some horrid sudden doubt, for the sound of
his breathing. In a deep stillness he lay there on the cobblestones, and with
so much lithe strength and splendour of limb and chest and shoulder that the
mould and dank of that place and the sweating walls, with trickles of wet that
glistered in the lantern-light, seemed to take on an infection from his
presence and put on a kind of beauty. Yet so still and without sound as he
slept, had he been dead he could scarce have lain more still. Pyewacket gave a
low growl. The Vicar caught her by the collar and flashed the lantern near
Lessingham's face. Upon that, he sat up wide awake, and with great coolness
looked upon the Vicar.