Mistress of mistresses (45 page)

'Twenty-five
men?' said Medor. 'Are you out of your princely wits?'

'If
the gear cotton, I need no more men for this dust. If not, more were useless.'

Medor
laughed bitterly. 'Falleth not for me to question your grace's orders. But if
you are thus resolute to cast your life away, let mine be in the cast too; for
indeed I care not for it a pudding-prick if you miscarry.'

'No,
Medor. If I must be had by the back, you shall avenge me. But I know at my
fingers' ends what kind of men are in that city. I do esteem this a sport.' His
eyes met Vandermast's. Surely the eyes of that old man were become as the thin
pure radiance that suffuses the starless heavens eastward before the
sun-spring of a windless dawn. Fiorinda turned. She held her head high, like a
leopardess that scents the wind. 'I have been anvil long enough,' said the
Duke: 'I will now be hammer. Let all be made ready; for I've bethought me, I'll
not stay for to-morrow: I'll ride tonight.

'And
now, give us leave.'

When
they were alone there fell a stillness. At last Barganax spoke: 'So runneth
the hare then. Well? and if it be farewell?' She reached out a jewelled hand:
he took it in his, bowed over it, raised it to his lips, then, as with a sudden
flaming of the blood, began to run with hungry kisses from palm to wrist, from
wrist upwards, pushing back the sleeve till he reached the tender inner bend of
the elbow, then with a stride forward seized her to him. 'No,' she said,
withholding her mouth. 'When you come back.'

'That
may be never.' He mastered her, but her lips were lifeless under his kisses:
all her body stiff and hard and unkind. 'Was there ever such a venomous
tyrant?' he said, letting her go at last. 'All ice. And you have turned me to
ice too.'

'You
are rightly served,' replied she, 'for being a glutton. The fuller fed, the
greedier. This livelong morning: then more this afternoon. Well, marry Myrrh
a, then, or Pantasilea: some obedient commodity to all your bidding. Me you
shall not have o' these terms.' Leaning against the door-jamb, her hand upon
the crystal knob, she watched him from under a drooped curtain of long black
eyelashes while, like summer lightnings, there played about the dear beauties
of hand and neck and cheek, and about the sweep of frills and ruffles and
many-pleated gauzinesses of her skirt, glints of fang or claw. 'Indeed,' she
said, 'I know not why my girdle should still be at your command. Unless if it
be that in you too,' she said, 'for all your idle plaguy ways, there is no sit
still, no rest, nothing predicable. And because of that:' she suddenly paused
upon a miraculous softening of every line and contour; a breath, like the
sudden filling of a sail, lifting the Grecian curve of her breasts; a slowing,
as if it were honey with the bee's sting lost in it, of her voice; a quivering
of eyelids; an exhalation of intoxicating sweets, zephyr-like, like dark roses,
in all the air about her: 'because of that,—I love you.'

Upon
which most heavenly farewell, eluding a kiss or any touch or caress, she was
gone.

Barganax
rode that same night. He sent up word to his mother in Memison castle as he
passed next day that he intended a week's hunting of oryx and bears in the
Huruns. So fast he rode that by Saturday midnight he was come up to Rumala.
Here he rested horses and men till late evening of Sunday, and so at dusk came
down the Curtain. They rode all night, avoiding the highway, and a mile or so
south of Kutarmish, in a beech-wood of the spreading hills, waited for dawn.
Twenty men, by driblets of twos and threes, he sent ahead to be ready outside
the gates. At dawn the gates were opened, and there began to be coming and
going of the day's traffic. The Duke with his five rode up openly; they had
blue osset cloaks and common country bonnets to dissemble their warlike gear
and quality. As they drew near the gates, those twenty joined them. In a moment
they killed the guards and rode briskly into the town to Roder's house. Roder
was upon coming forth with some men, and had but at the very instant swung
himself into the saddle. Few folk were abroad, it being thus early, and the
Duke and his fared swiftlier than the hue and cry at their heels. He took Roder
by the hand: 'How fares it this morning with your excellence?' In his left hand
he held a dagger, well placed, to let Roder's bare skin feel the prick of it
through his doublet, while the Duke might feel through the pommel in his hand the
leaping of Roder's heart. The face of Roder turned dark as blood, then grey
like well-thumbed parchment. His jaw fell, and he sat still as a mouse, with
dull blood-shotten bull's eyes staring at the Duke. About the two of them the
Duke's men, swiftly casting off their cloaks, had made a circle, facing outwards
with drawn swords. People now ran together from the houses, these in the street
screeching out to those within who burst forth in heaps. 'If you love your
heal, be sudden,' said the Duke, 'and proclaim me. Here is your argument: hath
a sharp point and a tart. If 'tis die and go to hell now, be certain you, my
lord, shall in the entrance of this massacre be murdered: 'I'll send you first,
show me the path. If not, sudden, while you may.'

'I
am your grace's man,' said the Earl then out of a dry throat, 'whatsoe'er my
mouth have jangled. Aware, fellows,' he shouted, 'and stand a-room: blow oip
your trumpets that every man of good will shall stand 'pon his allegiance to
the lord Duke of Zayana, for whose behalf I have hold this city and do him
right so.'

The
Duke commanded him, 'Proclaim me Vicar of the Queen in Meszria.' They blew up
the trumpets and so proclaimed him.

By
evening was all quiet in the town, and the Duke's power well seated. For they
of his faction, that had fared this while with hidden head while Roder held it
for the Vicar, came forth upon his proclamation and set upon those of the other
party. These turmoils the Duke put down with a heavy hand without fear or
favour, using the soldiers, to the number of four or five hundred, that Roder
held the town with: not of his own private following, but of the royal army
established in the south these many years, from whom the Duke took oath of
allegiance now in the Queen's name, they accepting him sooner than accept the
Vicar, after this autumn's doings, as upholder of the house of Fingiswold. But
the Vicar was proclaimed by trumpet up and down the town as traitor, usurper,
and king-killer, that every loyal subject should refuse and reject him and
receive instead, as Lord Protector and Vicegerent for the Queen, the Duke of
Zayana. And now as the day wore, and men grew bolder, they of the town began to
come with whole cart-loads of complaints and grievances against Roder,
petitioning the Duke to deliver him up, either else punish him himself.
Barganax, finding that Roder could not bungle up but a very poor answer to
these complaints; finding besides, upon seizure of the Earl's papers, plain
proofs of wicked devices devised by him with the Vicar, upon price of
Kutarmish, for invasion of Meszria contrary to the Concordat, and a plot drawn
to murder the Duke; considering too how (and that by proof of documents) they
had hatched up such bloody practices since October even and that meeting in the
Salimat; accordingly next morning let lead out Roder into the markert-place
and there, with these proofs exposed and a man to cry them, take off his head.
By which example of severity, as well as by his yesterday's insulting wild
fierce and unaffrighted quick seizing of the town with so little a band of
high-resolved men, men's minds were wonderfully sobered, to beware how they
should make themselves as of a faction or party against him, or think to play
bobfool with him.

He
sent now, by chosen safe hands of men that rode with him from Zayana, to the
princes in the north, Ercles and Aramond, requiring them of aid and upholding.

Letters
he likewise sent to Jeronimy and Befoald, in measured terms blaming them for
friends unfast, and counselling them now repent and back him, rather than, for
one high act by him upon bitter provocation done, forswear themselves and, to
such scorned purpose, be tools for the Vicar.

And
now was he within a little, while he hoped
to
catch a gudgeon, to have drawn up a pike. For upon
the twentieth of December, being but the second day after that thunder-bounce
in Kutarmish, the Vicar himself chanced to come down thither with two companies
of horse, having there his secret war-chest and much treasure and muniments
both of weapons and horses and other things necessary for his design of Zayana;
and was come well nigh within hail of the town, having, as was oft his manner
because men should not have notice of his coming, fared across country to shun
highways and haunts of men. But here, as the Gods would have it, was word
brought him of rebellion afoot and Kutarmish lost, into which he had else
entered all unknowing: wolf into trap. Nor was there given him bare five
minutes law betwixt safety and undoing, for Barganax, understanding who was
here, galloped out with a hundred horse to fetch him in and chased him twenty
mile to the very gates of Argyanna where, in the nick of time, he went to
earth, with his horses nigh foundered and himself nigh bursten with rage and
furious riding. The next day, not willing, belike,
to
be closed within a fortress whereof, in the
windings of his policy, he had lately appointed governor a creature of
Beroald's, since now and amid these stounds himself and Beroald might begin,
belike, to stand in very doubtful terms, he betook himself north again to
Owldale. It began to be seen how, with this sudden attempt of war, the Duke was
likely to make a shrewd adventure to have taken Outer Meszria from him and the
March besides; for they of the Queen's upholding in the March of Ulba who had
some months since begun to doubt the Vicar as the more dangerous usurper, began
now openly to affect Barganax.

In
a week came Melates and Barrian through the Ruyar pass with near a thousand
men, to join hand with the

Duke.
Neither from the Admiral nor from the Chancellor had the Duke any reply as yet.
But a little past the turn of the year came tidings that the Chancellor was
moved eastwards in strength and sat down in Argyanna; where, because the place
is both impregnable and overhangs the road that leads north from Meszria, he
like a waiting hawk might cower those partridges of the march-lands and quiet
their flutterings, giving Barganax besides reason of prudence not lightly to
advance far out of his bridgehead beyond Kutarmish. The Duke indeed stood
shortly between this and a new danger, when the regent Jeronimy, marching with
an army through the Meszrian borders from the west along the Zenner, seemed to
offer him battle, or if not, to menace his communications southwards. But it
was as if Jeronimy, with the plain choice at last before him, yea or nay, this
coming day-dawn before Kutarmish, could not find it in his heart to draw sword
against a prince of King Mezentius's blood. He sent in word to the Duke, and
they made peace together.

So,
while the Vicar gathered force in Rerek, and while all Meszria (even such as
Zapheles, who had in a discontent been used to lean towards the Vicar) rallied
to Barganax as to their native lord, only Beroald waited inscrutable in
Argyanna. Most men thought that he saw in this fresh war-rush of the tuke's
the old danger come again that he had feared aforetime. They thought, too, that
this, may be, held his hand: the opinion (that he had from the first inclined
to) that in law the Vicar's claims were hardly to be assailed.

xviii

Rialmar
in Starlight

THE
MANTICHORE GALLERY
 
DESIGN AGAINST AKKAMA
 
STIFF
NEWS FROM REREK
 
THAT 'MORE PRIVATER
COUNCIL-CHAMBER' ANTIOPE: THE GODDESS STIRS
 
TWO WAYS OF LOVE
 
WASTDALE
DISTILLED IN ZIMIAMVIA
 
CHOOSING UNDER
STARS
 
TERROR ANTIQUUS
 
PARTING AT MORNING.

Q
ueen
A
ntiope
decreed
a high banquet in her royal palace of Teremne, upon the night of the equinox,
for the turn of spring. In the Mantichore gallery was the banquet set: in the
ancientest part of that- palace, built when the old kings first raised walls
upon two-horned Rialmar to make it a nursery of their tyranny and a place of
strength: hundreds of years gone, before ever they issued from their watered
valleys betwixt twin desolations of desert southward and eagle-baffling frozen
mountains on the north, or turned eyes towards the southlands of Rerek and
Meszria. Lofty was that gallery, built all of a warm grey stone having a dusky
sheen like marble and beset with black spots or strikes. The long tables and
the chairs besides were of the like stone, with silken cushions, for feasters
to sit and feast. Forty-and-four lamps wrought in silver and copper and
orichalc, and hanging by chains from the vaulted roof, went in two rows endlong
of that great gallery. Beneath, upon the tables, candles of green wax burned in
candlesticks of
gold, a candle
to every feaster. To the careless eye, roof and wall alike seemed plain and
without all ornament; but looked to near, they were seen to be drawn upon with
narrow channelled lines as of burin or chisel. Employing which property of
shining superficies and elusive graven outline, he that in former days made
that gallery had by curious art brought it about so as whosoever should remain
there awhile should, little by little with the altering aspects of those
drawings upon the walls, seem to be ware of shadowy presences of the beast
called
mantichora:
here a leonine paw or leonine shaggy mane, there a
porcupine's quilly rump, a scorpion's tail, a manlike horrible face fanged and
with goggling great eyes: and that is a kind of monstrous beast reputed
anciently found in sandy places and gravelled in the borders of the Wold, next
against the hills hitherward of Akkama.