Avram Davidson - The Phoenix and the Mirror

“Lymerer, did you yestere’en make your ringwalks?”

“Yes, mesire.”

“Did you find slot, trace, voyes, pies, or foil?”

“Found slot and trace, mesire.”

“Fresh slot, good track, heels and cleeves and toes, clear of mark?”

“Yes, mesire.”

“You made scan-talon and you hold him to be warrantable? — a hart of right age, and no hind, buck, or brocket?”

“Yes, mesire…”

Next the Count called the chief parker, and questioned him if he had checked and observed abatures where the stag had lain and pressed down the herbage, thus showing where it harbored and what size it was. The parker, answering in the casual and confident manner of an experienced and trusted servant, declared that he had. He had made blemishes to mark the spot, and blazoned the trees where the beast had frayed its horns. He had put the nets and blinks all in place to keep the stag from scaping the course when in full flight, and had seen to it, too, that sewels and sewings and other scarecerfs were hanged up to keep the stag from running down the hidey-lanes. And all the trystes and stablestands had been set up and yeomen of office stationed in them to blench the game if it turned.

Count Phoebus turned and addressed the lymers once more. “Have you found fewmets?” The stag’s clean stools were presented on leaves before him and he examined them, his face relaxing into a smile. “It promises a large and healthy stag, wouldn’t you say, lymerer?” (“I would, I would, mesire.”) “Then sound the stroke and divide the relays.”

The treble notes of the stroke sounded and quavered, the company began to mount, and the hounds were divided into the three relays — vauntchaseurs, middlers, and perfecters. And, to the sound of the horns, the company began to move unto the hunt.

Clad as were his mounted companions of the day in a loose green robe and a cap tied under the chin lest swift riding dislodge it, Vergil laid aside for the moment his curiosity concerning the Viceroy’s words, and sank gladly into the rich and ceremonial activity. For the quest as such he had no particular taste or relish, but it was something new and therefore something to be considered with interest. And, most of all, the labor and concern of it made his incessant sense of loss and woe almost forgotten.

“Lymerers,” Count Phoebus called from his cream-colored horse, “lay the dogs on the fue!”

“Ho may, ho may, hole, hole, hole!” cried lymerers and berners and fewterers. The dogs spread out, lymehounds and brachets straining and sniffing, alaunts peering — suddenly the hounds opened and cried challenge, belling and pulling. The chacechiens cheered.

A huntsman came running up, cried, “Trace and slot!” and threw himself down on the ground and measured. Then jumped up with a look of chagrin, holding up two fingers. A groan, and shouts of “Rascal!” and “Folly!” — a hart below the age of warrant — and the company moved on. Almost at once, however, the eyes of the alaunts caught what the noses of the hounds had missed, again the huntsman flung himself down to measure the newfound tracks… and this time scrambled to his feet, beaming, holding up four fingers.

“Four! Four! A warrant of four!”

The slot was four fingers breadth in width, one more than the three needed. “Unharbor and imprime!” cried the Captain of the Chase. The dogs pressed forward on the trail, the footmen and horsemen followed — there was a shout, a crash, and “the great, grass-fed stag,” his head crowned with wide-spread antlers, rose and reared from his harboring and bounded forward and away.

“There he goes! There he goes! Ecco, ecco!”

Two notes were sounded on the horn for the unharboring, three (by Doge, Count, and Sergeant, in turn) as the first relay of hounds was uncoupled, and four — by the Sergeant alone — as the hunt burst into full motion. First the stag, flying effortlessly with his head well up, down the velvet corridors of trees and turf, behind and well behind him the first relay of hounds, the brachets and alaunts; then the horsemen, Count Phoebus’ long golden hair whipped by the wind, Doge Tauro crouched upon his black stallion with his knees and elbows out, the Lady Cornelia as secure upon her side-saddle as if it were a seat in her garden (and as grave, as lovely, as indifferent); then lymerers, berners, hounds held, all others.

“Cerf! See cerf!”

“See staggart! See stag! See cerf!”

It had been observed that the stag was not sole, but was accompanied by two younger harts — staggarts or brockets. “Rascal, folly, and herd!” was the cry, and, “Emprime the esquires” — the lesser, attendant deer — ”Make the rascals void!” The esquires were separated and sent away, the great stag singled. The fewterers cried, “Hark back, hark back, so how, so how!” and the chacechiens cracked their supple charcions and began to whip at the few young hounds who had parted to follow the folly; either this or the sounding for this purpose of the trururu, trururu, truru-truru of the recheat upon the horn drew them back in line.

“Forward, sirs, forward!”

“Avaunt, avaunt!”

“Here how, friends, here how-suavely, my friends, suave, suave!”

“Ecco, ecco, ec-co-o-o!”

And again the trururu, trururu, truru-truru of the recheat, the belling of hounds, the thudding of hooves, wordless cries, the wind…

Yet, still, the great red-brown stag ran with his crown of horns up and back, ran so well and so well ahead that he had time for a moment to pause and turn and look, standing at gaze. Then suddenly he bounded off again and was lost to sight as he harbored again in the covert.

And the horn blew the questioning notes of the seeke.

Seeing the pavilion at the stable-stand off to the left, Vergil left the quest and rode cross-park to the place — the stabling station, as it was called — which twice required keepers to undo nets and move blinks to let him pass. Sooner or later the stag must go by the “station”; the course was so arranged. The hounds of the vaunt-relay waited there, and crossbowmen ready to be called if needed at the morte. Outside the sun was high by now, and hot; within the pavilion all was cool and dim and green herbs of fragrant scent were strewn upon the floor and the walls were green with fresh-cut boughs; there was fruit and cooling drinks and couches with silken cushions.

And there was Queen Cornelia and the Viceroy, too.

“Sensibly done, Lord Magus,” said he, breaking off some secret-seeming, sibilant discourse with the Queen and coming forward to greet him. “For my own part, if I had followed the hounds much longer I believe I would have begun to bay. Enough of that. It amuses the idiot aristocracy and keeps them too busy for intrigue, conspiracy, sedition, treason — in short, art — if one may so term it — substituting for nature and to the benefit of everyone. Except, of course, the stag. His fate, if I may quote that irascible Israelite, Samuelides, ‘is predetermined and exact.’ Let him run wheresoe’er he will, however swift, however slow, he cannot escape.”

Cornelia looked at Vergil, and, for the first time, her look seemed timorous. He spoke first. “It was not necessary,” he said. “Not in any way. I would have helped you anyway. I thought you knew that. I thought that, however small a portion of your heart I had, you would have known that much.”

She shook her head swiftly, swiftly. And in a voice so low he barely heard, she said, “My heart belongs to someone whom I dare not see… As to the rest of it, I didn’t know. I didn’t understand, no, not at all. I’m sorry. But I can’t undo it, things have to take their course now.”