Mistress of mistresses (33 page)

'Came
as fast as his horse could carry him,' said Orynxis. 'Kasmon's ride they call
it now: home through the outer Corridor, and near broke his neck i' the end.
You two were best hold together, lest this fellow trounce you again. Nay, but
sadly, know you aught else of him, Alquemen? The Parry is a hard man, I've
heard tell.'

Alquemen
answered, 'They are two notable knaves together: both of a hair, and both
cousin germans to the Devil.'

The
Queen sat now in her ivory chair: Zenianthe to right of her, and upon her left,
standing, Bodenay. Raviamne, Paphirrhoe, and Anamnestra, ladies of honour, with
half a dozen more, court-men and lords of Fingiswold, made a half circle behind
her. Derxis and his troop of gentry stood a little apart upon her right. The
Queen, looking round, noted how he, with an uncivil insolence, stood now with
his back towards her. As moved by some sudden toy taking her in the head, she
whispered Zenianthe to sit in the siege royal while she herself, spite of all
protests of the old Lord Bodenay and other grave persons about her, took place
among her girls behind it.

Lessingham,
ushered in by the north-western gate, walked between the sunflowers and the
sun, that even at cloudless mid-day made but a temperate heat in that mountain
country of the north. He was bare-headed, in his mail-coat of black iron and
gold, black silk hosen and black leather riding-boots, dusty from the journey.
So came he towards them, with clanking silver spurs. And as he came, he
gathered with the sweep of his eyes, resting with no inconvenient intensity
upon this person or that, all the posture of their company: the staid elders
that curiously regarded him; Derxis and his, haughty and uneasy like cattle
when the dog comes towards them; Zenianthe in the chair and her companions, who
lent to that stone-walled garden a delicacy, as of tender feet trampling the
fine soft bloom of grass.

Now
were greetings given and taken. Lessingham said, 'You must pardon me, noble
ladies and you my lords of Fingiswold, to a come without all ceremony and even
in my riding-clothes. But the message was, the Queen was here, and did desire
me come instantly to present my service.'

'Well,
sir,' said Zenianthe, 'and will you not present it? This is the siege royal.'

Lessingham
bowed. 'You become it most excellent well, madam.'

'That
is strangely spoken,' said she. 'Or did you look then to find some rustic girl,
should know not how to draw the skirt about her ankles?'

Antiope,
with a hand on Raviamne's arm, watched him very demurely.

'Your
ladyship shall not find me so flat nor so stupid,' answered he. 'No, but I can
tell 'twixt the dusky lily and the white. I am not colour-blind.'

Zenianthe
laughed. 'You have seen my picture? May be the paint had faded.'

The
eye-tricks and signs they bandied amongst them did not escape Lessingham. 'No,
madam,' he answered, 'I have not seen her highness's picture. But I have
heard.'

'Was
"dusky lily" to say, uncomely?'

'Had
your ladyship hearkened more carefully, you would have noted I stressed the
"lily".'

Antiope
spoke: 'It is a wonder you will not know the Queen, sir, when you see her.'

He
looked at them in turn: Antiope, Paphirrhoe, Zenianthe, Anamnestra, Raviamne,
Antiope again. 'Ah,' he said, 'not till she tell me I may. That were too unmannerly,
find her out sooner than she meant.'

They
fell a-laughing, and Zenianthe, catching Antiope's eye, stood up. 'The fox was
near driven, your highness, when he took this muse,' she said.

'A
most good and courtly answer, sir,' said the Queen. 'And cometh from the south:
none here could have turned it so. And you'll not be angry with us for this
game of play?'

'Serenissime
princess and my sovereign lady,' said Lessingham, 'humbled on my knee I kiss
your grace's hand.'

King
Derxis, being turned about now, looked upon these actions. With an insolent
stare he went over Lessingham from brow to boots and so back and so down to
boots again. And now he came to them. 'Pray you present to me this gentleman,
madam. I were loth to lose aught of his discourse, so pleasant as it seemeth.'

'Sir,'
said the Queen, 'this is my cousin Lord Lessingham, he that must be my captain
of war against my enemies. Your highness knows him by repute?'

'In
my conscience, not I,' said Derxis. 'Yet, being your cousin, madam, should
recommend a^very cuckoo: by how much more a person of so much fame and nobility
as my Lord—I've forgot your name, sir?'

'It
is not yet so renowned,' said Lessingham, 'as that ignorance need disgrace your
highness.'

They
turned to walk now, looking on the garden and the flowers that were there.
Derxis held close at the Queen's elbow, and spoke to her in undertones. Lessingham
by and by fell behind, and walked now with the knight marshal and the old Countess
of Tasmar and four or five others, talking of his journey north from Rerek and
of matters indifferent. And first they looked askance and coldly, and cold was
their talk; and then that coldness began to melt to him as morning frosts in
autumn to the mounting sun, that makes warm the air, and the clouds disperse
and mists are drunk up and the rime on a myriad twigs and grass-blades runs
together to jewels. With so expert a touch he handled them, as one that
himself at ease breathes ease into all the air about him.

And
yet carried he little ease within him. To have fed in his thought these three
months so many lusts and longings: to have come up to this much thought-on
city of Rialmar, thus strangely held out that night to his desire: to have
approved it but so, a plain walled hold, cold among northern mountains under
ordinary daylight, and the dwellers in it, even to the Queen's self and her
maidens, but ordinary: these things were an outshedding in his mind of wormwood
and darkness. In the Queen indeed, he saw a girl gay and high-hearted, and one
in whom, as they talked together, he thought he touched a mind his own rode in
step with, laughing at things his laughed at, leaping where his leapt. But in
this was neither recompense nor echo of that which with so much wonder had
been permitted to stand for a little moment and with so much aching loss had
been taken and gone, upon that midnight under the winged glory in Barganax's
jewelled mansion of delights. Moreover, until now he had remembered and might
feed on the memory of that moment; but now, from his first looking on very
Rialmar, the memory was become as the thin lost perfume dreamed in a dream,
that a man knows would restore him all, might he but breathe it again, but
natural present walls him from it, as day is a wall to shut out the star-shine.

The
Queen now, walking with Derxis, stopped at a bed of the yellow mountain-lily
with spotted flower. 'Poor little lilies,' said she. ‘I cannot please them.'

Derxis
shrugged and, catching the sound of Lessingham's voice, would have walked on.
But the Queen waited, so that, if with no good will, he must needs retrace his
step.

'My
Lord Lessingham,' said she: 'are you a gardener? What is it hurts my lilies?'

Lessingham
viewed them. His eyes and ears were opened to the estate of more than lilies in
that garden. 'Not the aspect,' answered he. 'Your grace hath given them sun for
their faces, and these little mezereon bushes to shade their feet, and
sheltered them from the winds.'

Derxis
said apart to Alquemen, in such a whisper as all might hear, 'Hast not wit to
keep the fellow away, but must be thrust still into my company? Go draw him
apart.'

'But
how of the soil?' said Lessingham. 'They have very particular likes. Mould of
old oak-leaves, and—'

'A
word with you,' said Alquemen, close to his ear.

Lessingham's
eyes crossed with the Queen's. 'Or if your grace should be troubled with
land-mice, little rude beasts that gnaw your lilies underground? I know a way
with such.'

His
back was turned upon Alquemen, and he gave no sign that he had heard him or was
ware of his presence.

Derxis,
looking at Lessingham's riding-boots, said to the Queen, 'Belike I understand
not the right ceremony of your grace's court. It is custom, is't, to come into
the presence in disarray?'

Again
her eyes crossed with Lessingham's: a look sudden and gone like a kingfisher's
flight between gliding water and overshadowing trees. He turned to Derxis with
a grave courtesy. 'My lord the king of Akkama, I am
a
soldier. And it is custom, with a soldier, to obey
his sovereign's command.'

The
Queen had moved onwards a step or two. 'A soldier?' said Derxis. 'Go, and 'tis
said women will love
a
soldier better than all other men?'

Lessingham
lifted an eyebrow. 'I know not that. But this have I known,' said he, as if
talking to the flowers: 'in many countries of the world I have known ladies
plagued with uncivil persons have found a soldier excellent good as
doorkeeper.'

With
so little conscience and so leisurable a gravity had he spoken these words, the
king was unready how to take it; and ere he was resolved, Lessingham was some
paces from him walking with the Queen and them of her household. The Princess
Zenianthe alone was left: she had turned aside suddenly, handkercher to mouth,
to contemplate a bunch of water gladiole in the near corner of the pond.
Derxis turned colour, the more at the sight of Zenianthe's shaking shoulders.
With a hasty glance he satisfied himself that, save his own folk's, no eye was
on him. Then with two steps he was at her side, took her about the neck from
behind, bent back her head and kissed her upon the lips, well and strong.
Al-quemen flung up his chin with a great laugh. Lessingham looked round. She,
freeing herself, took Derxis a box on the ear that he heard bells.

The
Queen and her folk waited now by the sunflowers for the king to come up. He
came, twirling his walking-stick idly as he walked, his gentlemen in his wake,
his features well composed. A poisonsome look was in his eyes. 'And now, sir,'
said the Queen, 'is my half-hour ended; and now must I be private in this
garden to confer with my council 'pon matters of state.'

'Madam,'
Derxis said: 'of all cruel ladies are not you the cruellest? Is not sunlight a
darkness, and every minute a year of prison, out of sight of your life-giving
eyes? Well, I am your slave to obey, then; asking but that your sweet lips that
speak the sentence shall give me yet some promise of more private conference;
haply this afternoon?'

‘I
pray you give us leave. And perhaps my huntsmen may find you the means to make
life bearable.'

Zenianthe
said with a levelled malice, 'And you, my Lord Lessingham, care not: we can
offer you some sport here in the garden: a toad-hunt!' Derxis, kissing the
Queen's hand, turned colour again at those words. Laughter sat in the Queen's
eyes, but discretion locked it there.

As
they of the king's company moved off now towards the gate, Lessingham overtook
them, came beside Alquemen, who walked last, and touched him on the arm. 'My
Lord Alquemen: this time, a word with you. Is it as it seemed to me but now,
that you laughed, when a lady was put to an inconvenience?'

'Well,
and if I did?' replied he, swinging round upon his heel and thrusting his face,
with its full popping eyes, into Lessingham's. ' 'Shall need a better than thee
to check me.'

King
Derxis, ware of this jangling, paused in the gate and looked back. At a word
from him, Kasmon, Orynxis, and Esperveris, advanced menacingly towards Lessingham
and stood scowling about him. Lessingham gathered their eyes with his and
folded his arms. 'Let us make no jarring in this presence, my lords,' he said;
and, to Alque-men, 'can you use a sword?'     Amid their great
burst of laughter Alquemen answered, with a bloody look, 'It hath been thought
so.'

'Good,'
said Lessingham. 'This then, and no more: You are a mannerless swine, and shall
account to me for your unmannerly dealing.'

Alquemen
said, 'A word is as good as a blow. I take you very well. My Lord Orynxis will take
order for my part.'

'And
for mine, my lieutenant, Amaury. I'll send him, my lord, to speak with you.'

The
twenty-fourth day after these things just told of,
a
Utile past sunset, the Princess Zenianthe stood at
that same window of the Queen's bedchamber. The room was all astir with lights
and shadows of a log fire that blazed and sputtered on the hearth. To the left
of the fire the deep-bayed window stood wide to the evening, which entered now
with a tang of autumn and a tang of mountains and the sea. The roofs and towers
of Mehisbon were
a
sharp
screen of dark greenish violet against the west, where motes of a rosy radiance
swam and shimmered suffusing the smoky blues and purples, and, for a last
lighting to bed of day, the broad and tapering blade of the zodiacal light
slanted up from the place of settle-gang. The beetle, winding his faint horn to
Zenianthe as he travelled the paths of opening night beside that window, saw
her as some titanic figure darkly fair against a background of fire. The firelight
saw her as its own, spirit of its spirit, dream of its dream, that which itself
would become, might it but be clothed upon with the divinity of flesh: a
presence secure, protective, glad, warm, fancy-free; and so it made sure of
her, touching with trembling sudden fingers now her breathing bosom, now a
ringlet of brown hair that rested curled on her shoulder, now
a
ruby warm against her throat.