Mistress of mistresses (54 page)

'But
look upon him,' said Zapheles in the Chancellor's ear. 'What charter of peace
can you contrive, my lord, but this great devil will break it?'

Beroald
shrugged his shoulders.

'Well,
now a hath put his head in the lion's mouth,' said Melates, as Rossilion ended,
'cannot some contrive to set the King in a fume against him? Bite it off, and
all were well.'

"Tis
but yonder Lessingham standeth 'twixt this and that,' said Barrian. 'A thing
past man's understanding.' 'That he so stands? or that his grace should heed
him?' 'Both,' said the Chancellor with a tart smile. Lessingham said in the
Vicar's ear, 'Your highness would

be
well advised, put off your bonnet: he did the like for you, if I am told aright,
in the Salimat last autumn. Besides there is about your bonnet the diadem,
which you must assume again but at his bidding.'

'Let
be. I'm afeared of this sun. Shall not fry my brains, concordat or no
concordat.'

Men
noted that in the very act of homage the Parry wore still his crown vice-royal
with rich stones and orient pearl beset. Some murmured at it: the Duke, whose
eye no littlest thing might ever escape, could not but note it, but yet let it
go unremarked. Upon kissing of hands, the trumpets of either side blew a
fanfare. The Vicar upon that, taking from off his head the coronal, presented
it to the Duke, who straightway raised it on high that all should see, then set
it again upon the head of the Vicar, saying, for all to hear: 'Be witness whom
it may concern, and the blessed Gods Who keep the wide heaven, that, upon
homage thus made to me in my estate as high master of these kingdoms and
agreeably to articles of peace late sealed and made betwixt us, I do hereby assign
unto you, Horius Parry, the strong holds and demesnes of Laimak, Kaima, and
Kessarey, and all the country and principality of old Rerek, but not Megra nor
the lands north of Swaleback, and not Argyanna nor the Ulba March, to hold as
my vicar or vicegerent, answerable to no man save to me, but to me to be
answerable with your head. In witness whereof, receive this coronal and name
of Vicar of Rerek.'

This
done, amid great noise of trumpets and drums and shouting of all the soldiers
and people there assembled, this solemnity had its end. But first the Duke let
proclaim silence, and bade the Lord Beroald say forth on his behalf this, in a
great voice, that all might know: 'Thus saith the most renowned and most mighty
prince and lord, Barganax, great Duke of Zayana, our sovereign master and King:
that it is his pleasure, even as he will change not these mourning colours till
he shall have beat the out-born usurper from the land and with the Gods' help
punished him with death, so will he think it scorn, and not suitable with his
princely dignity, to take yet the King's name, but will first, like as all
other Kings of Fingiswold, be crowned in Rialmar. At his command publish it so
accordingly. God save his serene and most excellent highness, Barganax, Duke
of Zayana, of the three kingdoms our sovereign lord.'

They
rode now in a progress once about the hold with their bodyguards, the Vicar and
Barganax riding in the midst somewhat apart, jointly taking the salute from
those on the walls and those in the field and all the army drawn up beside the
way in double line, so as men should perceive with their eyes this new
condition of peace and friendship, and the conclusion of the war and hate there
had been so long betwixt them.

'This
is a great pride in you, my lord Duke,' the Vicar said, 'not to take the style
of King.'

Barganax
smiled. ‘I had thought it a great modesty.'

'It
was to shame me,' said the Vicar. 'Not clip the wings only of my vicariate, a
thing I honourably endured, but make me do homage but to a ducal cap.'

'
'Las,' said the Duke: 'I fear I was thinking of my own affair, and not at all
of you, my lord.'

'I
was gulled in it,' said the Vicar. There shone in his eyes, the Duke's head
being for the moment turned away to acknowledge acclamations upon his right, a
most cruel, mortal, and inexorable hatred.

'Give
credit, the thing ne'er entered my head,' said the Duke. 'But indeed,' he said,
'now I think on't, I can but praise your courteous carriage and affability; for
indeed, God knoweth well enough without remembrancer, myself did bow as low,
and to a like necessity, not a year since, i' the Salimat.'

'
'Tis of no moment,' said the Vicar. 'Only for this I thought fit to speak on't
to your grace, considering we shall wisely avoid now whatsoever might diminish
my estimation and authority, and so tie me shorter when we should work together
for common ends.'.

The
Duke said, 'I'll not forget it. I have bespoke a banquet about noon, which I
hope your highness and whom you will of your following will honour me to share
with us. After that, hold council of war. Midsummer already, and much to do ere
we may march in full force. And it were folly think to lead a great army over
the Wold once it be turned September.'

The
same night, when save for the sentinels upon the walls and at the gates none
was astir, Barganax and Lessingham went forth alone together to take the air
and so came slowly a mile or more down the causeway from Argyanna southwards,
walking and talking. The leavings of sunset, dusky orange-tawny on the horizon,
crept slowly round towards the north. Bats skimmed overhead.

'A
month to-day, then,' said Lessingham: 'that's the twentieth. In Mornagay.'

Tn
Mornagay,' said the Duke. 'What shall we be? Seven thousand?'

'That's
not to count the princes and the free towns.' 'We shall be too many.'

'A
stroke that shall not miss,' Lessingham said, and they fell silent.

After
half an hour they came to a stand. Barganax picked up a stone and tossed it in
a reed-bed to wake the reed warblers that forthwith began their chattering. He
said, 'What make you of that light, there in the darkest bit among the
moss-hags? A pool? A broken goblet throwing back the sky? A broken sword? A
whole nation of glow-worms gone astray? A chink in the saucepan lid to let us
see 'tis here they brew the marsh-fires?'

‘I
think you shall find it but stagnant water if you go to it,' said Lessingham.
'Here, it might be all those things.'

'A
light asleep in the dark,' said the Duke. ‘I should like to paint this night,'
he said, after a little. 'The past: all gone. The thing to come, crouching in
those obscurities of ooze and reed-bed, ready to spring. The thing present: you
and me. And that is strangest of all: unpaintable, too, like as are most things
worth painting.'

Lessingham
was silent.

'Were
you a tenderer of your own safety, you'd now leave me,' said the Duke.
'Espousing my cause thus wholly, and enforcing this last settlement of peace
upo'n him, you now go naked to his claws. No argument remains of self-interest,
as before most strongly served, why he should not destroy you.'

'I
have now a kind of freedom,' said Lessingham. 'I'll not give up you; nor I'll
not give up him.'

'Pity
that savage mare of yours, who biteth and striketh all men else, will not
content you.'

'Would
she content your grace, and you stood where I stand?'

They
began to walk slowly, in their companionship of silence, back again towards
Argyanna that stood squat, square, and black, against the sky to the north.
They were half-way home when the Duke began to say, under his breath, as if the
words had been not words but echoes only, answering the measured tread of his
musing footsteps along the causeway.

Earth
I will have, and the deep sky's ornament:                      

Lordship,
and hardship, and peril by land and sea.—

And
still, about cock-shut time, to pay for my banishment,

 
Safe in the lowe of the firelight I will have
Thee.

Lessingham,
who had listened with breath held back lest a word should be lost, suddenly, when
the stave was ended, checked in his stride. They halted and faced one another
in the stillness. 'Who are you?' Lessingham said at last, staring through the
soft darkness into Barganax's face: so like to his sister's, save for the
varying characters of he and she, that Lessingham's very being was, for that
likeness, confounded within him. Barganax made no answer. The silence was full
of bird-voices afar on marshes that never go quite to sleep: now a redshank's
cry, now some littie plover. Lessingham said, 'Who made that stave?'

'That?
I made it.'

'You?'
In the stillness a curlew whistled far away, awake in the night.

'I
like it,' Barganax said, 'if for its very vanity.'

'Its
vanity!' said Lessingham, and they stood silent.

'Why
did you bid me,' he said then, 'to your love-feast upon Ambremerine? Why that
night did she draw me through doors? What changed then in your throne-room? Why
did she send me to Rialmar? Who is she?' he said, last of all.

Barganax
shook his head. ' 'Las,' he said, 'I can answer none of these riddles.' He met
Lessingham's eyes through the dark. Inch for inch he and Lessingham stood of
a
height. It was as if
he could not easily resolve to let loose that which was upon his tongue. At
last he spoke: 'Lessingham, I can, as I said, answer none of your riddles. But
I will tell you this: upon Michaelmas night, taking my ease in a certain house
of Vandermast's, I looked in
a
mirror and I beheld there not my own face, but
yours.'

Lessingham
neither spoke nor moved.

'Well/
Barganax said. 'What was it? Know you such a house?'

'And
I beheld', said Lessingham, stare for stare, 'your face, not mine. In that
house. Upon Michaelmas night.'

He
swung round: began walking again homeward. Barganax, at his elbow, heard the
gritting of his teeth upon a smothered groan, as a man might grit them with the
turning of the blade in a wound. But in time, as they walked on in that
commerce of mind with mind in which speech were but a troubling of the stream
that else runs crystal clear, Lessingham tasted again, as upon Ambremerine,
the leaning of Barganax's spirit towards that seeming woman of his; and
strangely in the tasting took balm to his own mortal hurt, until his own spirit
within him was borne up on high like a great violent flame of fire, as for the
grand last act indeed.

The
Duke wrote that night, and sent it south by safe
hand betimes the next morning:                  

'Righte
Expectable and Noble Lady, these to kiss your hands and informe you that
matters occurent must hold me in the north now well till autumne. I would be
sured therefore that your Ladyship will keep my private lodging as your own
upon Akrozayana till these inconveniences be over past. I have todaye with the
Parry sealed againe the infringible band of faith, but fear I shall never love
him, nor would you, not for the honesty of his conversation neither nice in
bodie but grossly sett and thick. And kinde will creep where it may not go, hee
is enemy I think to all men save to such as will subject themselves to him. As
for I. I doo think your Ladyship knoweth more than I of his affair, I mean not
my Sisters parte which was with so much wisedome kept close as never a whisper
went on it, I mean things deeper farre than that. My thoughts growe busy that
some way there bee iv of us but some way ij only. O beguiler of guiles, opening
of your garments, sudden flashing of your Beauty, what webs are these. But no
more, it is coriander in swete wine. I shall never have done when I am once in,
and never settle my self for want of lipwork in stead of penwork. O Blacke Lily
one and onemost, disdainer, and hallower, of all things, blinder of sight,
bedde of the dragon and the dove, robe state and crowne imperiall of my desire,
in daylight acte my Cynosura, wanting you here, in my dreames I taste you, and
wanting wordes to endear you, call you but Mine, me, Yours.'

xxi

Enn
Freki Renna

pack'd cards with derxis
 
the thing laid bare to
lessingham 
 
last clash of the
adamants       insultans  
tyrannus  
  
the wolf
runs
 
antiope in mornagay.