Mistress of mistresses (56 page)

'Prettily
thought on,' said Lessingham. 'Tell me the crow is white.'

The
Vicar, with the table between himself and Lessing-. ham, and eyeing him from
beneath bent forehead, began to move with a sidelong motion leftwards towards
the door. But Lessingham, swift as a leopard, was there before him, hand upon
sword-hilt. His left hand shot home the bolt behind him. 'Had you been drunk so
long you'd a done your estate better service. Plot treason? Is't come to this?
And with this princox, voice like a woman, this filth of filths, this murderer
of—'

'O
leave your cackling,' said the Vicar, hand upon sword-hilt, head down, like a
bull about to charge. 'Thought you, while you played your games at put-pin, I'd
sit idle for ever? I'll tell you, here's been small leisure for kissing and
haking in Owldale this five month past, by the Gods!'

Lessingham's
sword flamed out: the Vicar's too. 'Loo! Loo! tear him! Pyewacket!
Peck-i'-the-crown! tear his lights out!' As the dogs rushed in from the side,
Pyewacket, as moved by a friendship strangely struck in that dungeon under
Laimak, fastened her teeth in the backside of one, so that, missing of his
spring, with a howl of pain he turned to fight her. Another, Lessingham stabbed
dead with a dagger snatched left-handed from his belt; but, since a man's eyes
look but one way, the Vicar, foining at Lessingham's middle, passed under his
guard; but, by good hap, no more than a skin-wound beside the thigh. Amid the
rage of the dogs yet worrying and snarling, and the charging against the door
by soldiers without, whom the Vicar now in a voice of brass shouted for again
and again to come and aid him, Lessingham, free now, albeit hurt, to use his
swordsmanship, in a few passes sent the Vicar's weapon flying.

The
Vicar, crouching like a cat-a-mountain, seemed for the instant as if he would
have leapt onto Lessingham's sword-point. But the hinges began to yield under
that thunder of blows, and, as lord of his mind once more, he reared himself up
and, stone still and with arms folded, faced Lessingham, who, regarding him
again in a high and cool carelessness that was yet alert for all mischiefs, now
sheathed his sword. The door gave and fell. A dozen men armed leapt in with it.
In the sudden hush of that obstreperous noise the Vicar commanded them,
pointing with his finger: 'Arrest me that man.'

For
two breaths they stood doubtful. Then, one by one as their glances met
Lessingham's, so one by one they were gathered by him and held. 'You have won
the wager, cousin,' he said, throwing with a laugh his purse of gold on the
table. 'And truth to tell, I feared you would. Not your own men, at your own
bidding, will so far forget your highness's edict as lay hand upon the King's
Captain-General.'

With
swift comprehension, the Vicar, bursting into a great boisterous laugh, clapped
him on the back, took the purse, tossed it up ringing in the air, caught it,
and thrust it away in his bosom.

When
they were alone again, 'Well, fanged adder?' said Lessingham, speaking low; 'so
you dare try masteries with me? So you set your dogs on me, ha?' Pyewacket,
looking up at him, fawned and wagged her tail; 'set your men on me?'

The
Vicar, sitting at the table sideways, left hand akimbo on his hip, right elbow
crooked far forward on the table top, the hand a rest for his mighty jowl,
looked steadily up at Lessingham. 'You have forgot your part,' he said, and his
voice, low and quiet, came like the dank air from some grave. 'And your hand is
out.'

To
Lessingham, thus looking down into the eyes of his cousin, it was as if their
hard and adamantine lustre and wicked fires should have been but the image upon
a still water, in depths whereof, were no image there to veil them, deadlier
matters should have been beheld. And now, as upon that surface, memories
stirred like a flaw of wintry air, blurring the image: memories of a voice
which, a year ago, borne up loud and hoarse over water, had unsphered a summer
night and withered fair flesh to a mountain-lynx's pelt and sinew and claw.

The
Vicar seemed to wait. There seemed a contentment in his waiting, as of one that
had weighed all and all determined. But to questioning eyes his countenance
showed no answer. As well might a man, looking from the fields across to
Laimak, have hoped to divine, only with such looking, the prison-houses that
lay quarried in the rock's bowels: the prisoners, their names, qualities,
aspects, and conditions, who rotted in those prisons: the deaths some died
there.

'By
God, then, I will teach you,' Lessingham said. 'By God, I will tread you under
feet. Come, you shall be my secretary. Write,' he said, thrusting from
Gabriel's table the means before him, and taking out, to read from it, the
damning document: ' 'tis well enough worded, do it out fair. "Unto the
most high king"—foh! the words foul my mouth. On then: your own invention:
out with it: all the sweet persuasive points, the special trust and affiance he
hath in you, as fitted by nature for rapes and treasons and all villany: let
not the filth be in doubt, you are his good jade, hate us all, too, 'cause of
your quondamship: let him but trap you in gold,
quid pro quo,
vicariate and so forth, as here set down, and
you'll have us all murdered with bodkins pat o' the eve of his coming south
hither: and now, time that for Mornagay, night o' the first new moon in August.
Write,' he said, and it was as if the rehearsing only of the thing had blown
his cooling rage to great flames again within him. 'We shall be ready. O this
is double treason! lure him like a polecat to the gin.'

The
Vicar in all this moved not at all. Only across his eyes, adder-like, resting
on Lessingham, it was as if a film had been drawn, veiling the unfoldings of
his thought; and along the lips of him something, the scales whereof glinted
colours of mockery, gaiety, and disdain, seemed to draw its subtle length. At
last, taking up the pen, he with awkward slow unclerkly fingers began to write
under Lessingham's eye. When it was done he pushed it towards Lessingham, who
took and read it 'Is it fit?'

Lessingham
read. 'It will serve.'

'Reach
me the wax,' said the Vicar. 'A candle: so.' He
Sealed
it.
'What safe hand now have you to bear it? There's heading business in this
were't wrongly handled. Where's Gabriel?'

'Give
it to me,' Lessingham said. 'I'll be bearer of both.' The Vicar gave it in
silence. In silence their eyes engaged. Then first this paper, then that (which
Gabriel had disgorged), Lessingham held in the candleflame: scornfully beheld
them catch fire, curl up, flare, burn down, fall in black ashes. 'Ah, cousin,
am I yet to teach you,' he said, 'that I do that I will do, not upon condition
of this and that, as use your bungerly foul plots, but in my own way, and with
clean hands?'

He
turned and went. The Vicar, watching his passage to the door, the sweep of his
cloak, the carriage of his
head,
the swing of his gait to the clanking of golden spurs, narrowed his lids to a
gaze serpently shrewd. So, left alone, in a sullen grandeur of storm-tormented
sea-cliff against which every great wave that rides crashes and falls broken,
he sat, and waited.

In
the same hour came Gabriel Flores. The Vicar sat yet in his chamber. Gabriel
came tiptoe to the table. 'Highness, spake my Lord Lessingham aught to you of
the letter I bare? Upon my soul, I would a died sooner—'; here, upon his knees
he blubbered out the story.

'Well,'
said the Vicar when it was done: 'give you your due, you did all you might.
This but shows I'd better a holden to my resolve, spite of all, to put nought
in writing.'

There's
this,' Gabriel said: 'not a soul hath knowledge of the thing except you and me
and his lordship. Not Amaury, I know: they spake not together but in my presence,
I swear to you, and then one rode north, t'other south to you. Hath your
highness the paper?'

‘I
have both had it and burnt it.'

'Good
so far,' said Gabriel; then paused. His furtive gaze came again under his
master's eye. 'Lord, I pray you, 'tis but my love and service speaketh: be not
angry. But must your highness not fear lest he will not thus leave you, nor
your part in this, undiscovered?'

The
Vicar looked down upon him. 'The Duke,' he said, *with five thousand men, will
be here afore sunset.' He paused. Gabriel met his eye and trembled. 'And so, my
nobs and cony sweet, infix your mind to virtue and prudence: employment in a
work shall please your disposition, and upon a very small warning. Look you,
the skies do thunder. My cousin Lessingham: let not the Duke nor any of these
come at him, on your life.'

Gabriel
bared his teeth like a stoat. 'What means shall I use?'

'All
means, so nor you nor I be not seen in it. Give me notice in some secret sort
when you have prepared the thing.'

Gabriel
gave a little laugh. There was a fell and ugly look on the face of him.

'How
now?' said the Vicar, 'are you afeared?' 'Of your highness somewhat. Not of
aught else.' 'The deed is meritorious.'

'Ay.
I trow it should not much go to my heart so that another did it. But would your
highness would give a name to the deed. I durst not go by guess.'

'Will
you play bodger with me, you scurvy scrub? Is not your life mine? Standeth
there aught but my might and my name 'twixt you and a hundred men that have no
dearer wish than your heart were leaping in their hand? Will you traffic with
me, filth?'

'Your
highness knoweth my inward mind,' replied he. 'I would but be sure you know
your own: will not repent and tear me in pieces, who did you this service, when
'tis done.'

'Go,
I'll tell you,' said the Vicar. 'There is i' the camp here, and walked from
this chamber not ten minutes since, one that hath to-day with so many and vile
injuries abused me and borne me such derision as, not were he set upon the
inflexible purpose to destroy himself might he a done more. I will use him no
longer. Choose your instrument: let him think this is done i' the Duke's
service; that there have been promises he caused to be performed in these late
peace-makings to the feeblishment of the duchy; that the Duke will reward it if
the person be made away.'

Gabriel
looked at him: ran his tongue along his lips. 'I have a lad for the work,
manful of mind,- but as wise as a woodcock. How likes your highness this
pleasantness, to do it in sight of the Duke before they may come to speech
together? and I being by, soon as the stroke is struck, will, in a seeming
indignation to revenge it, stab the striker, and so, sith dead men tell no
tales—?'

'Enough.
Away and to it. And the Devil and the whirlwind be your helpers.'

Gabriel
went. The Vicar, sitting awhile in his melancholy with the westering sun
beginning now through the window to shine into his eyes, yielded his hand to
Pyewacket's nuzzling cold nose and restfully with his fingers searched her jowl
and behind her ear. 'Ay, my brach,' he said in himself: Til not blame you to a ta'en
his part, all and it had been easier otherways. Dead men, quotha?' he said in
himself after a minute, and the wings of his nostrils hardened suddenly. 'May
be, poor pug, you counselled me more wholesomely than you bargained for.'

The
day was near spent when the Duke with the forward of his army began their
winding ascent by the Killary road towards Mornagay. The Vicar, with Lessingham
and
a
dozen other of his gentlemen about him, came a little
upon the road to bring him in with honour. Before the hostelry where they
lodged, a score of trumpeters took their stand, and bagpipers wearing the
Parry's livery of russet and purple, and drummers, and fifty spearmen to be
a
guard
of honour, and bearers of the banners of Fingiswold and Rerek: all in a golden
magnificence of the declining sun, and in a windless summer stillness. The
Vicar was in his robes of state, and bare-headed, save for his circlet of gold:
Lessingham, upon his right, went armed to the throat, but without his helm.
Gabriel Flores, like a shadow, kept step with his lord, a little behind, and
betwixt the two of them.

'You
look merry, cousin,' said the Vicar as they walked.

'Not
merry,' Lessingham answered: 'contented.'

'With
that you have? or with that you look to?'

'Contented,'
answered Lessingham, 'that all sorteth now to wished effect: power where, were
it mine to give, I would give it; and our sword, not now to be escaped neither
eluded, lifted up against our enemy.' Upon that word, there seemed a triumph to
clothe him, such as stars wear riding between clouds in a gale at sea, when all
perils of night and shipwreck are become but a carpet unrolled for those
flaming feet to walk on. His eye, as from that pinnacled certitude, met .the
Vicar's, that till now had avoided the encounter.