E. Eddison - Mistress of Mistresses

For the Chancellor, ending now his progress up the hall, was stood with the Lord Jeronimy on the great carpet before the throne. To them, as presenting in their high commission, along with Earl Roder, the King’s very person and authority in Meszria, was accorded these many years the freedom of the carpet; and that was accorded to none other in all the land who was not of the Duke’s own household or of the ducal line of Memison.

‘I am glad to see you here, my lord Admiral,’ said Beroald; ‘and indeed it is a joy I scarcely looked for: thrice in three weeks, and you were not formerly given to great observance of this ceremony.’

The Admiral looked at him with his dog-like eyes, smiled slowly, and said, ‘I am here to keep the peace.’

‘And I on the same errand,’ said Beroald: ‘and to please my lady sister. I would have you look a little more starved, as I myself do study to do. It is nought useful to remind him how we made new wood when the young King pruned away his appanage.’

There’s that needs no reminding on,’ said Jeronimy.

‘Will your lordship walk a little?’ said Beroald, taking him by the arm, and, as they paced slowly to and fro, cheek by cheek for convenience of private conference: ‘I still do hear it opinioned that it was not without some note or touch of malice these things were brought about; and you are named in that particular, to have set the King’s mind against him.’

Jeronimy blew out his cheeks and shook his head. ‘May be I was to blame; but ’twas in the King’s clear interest. I’d do it, were’t to do again tomorrow.’

‘This country party love us the worse for it,’ said Beroald.

‘A good housewife,’ answered Jeronimy, ‘was ever held in bad report with moths and spiders.’

‘We can show our teeth, and use them, if it were come to that,’ said Beroald. ‘But that were questionable policy. Too many scales stand in too uncertain balance. Roder’s long tarrying in Rerek: I like it not, ha?’

‘As if the King should think he needed men there.’

‘You have no fresh despatches?’

‘Not since that I showed you, a-Thursday sennight.’

‘That was not so bad, methought. My lord Admiral, I have a question I would move to you. Are we strong enough, think you, to hold off the Vicar if need were?’

Jeronimy looked straight before him awhile; then, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘with the Duke of our side.’

‘You have taken me?’ said Beroald. ‘Supposition is, things fall out worst imaginable: war with him in Rerek, and the King’s forces overthrown. You are confident then?’

‘With the Duke of our side, and with right of our side, I should hope to do it.’

‘I too,’ said the Chancellor, ‘am of your opinion.’

‘Well, what’s the matter?’ The Lord Jeronimy came to a stop in his slow deliberate pacing. A gentleman of his household waited below the carpet: he seemed short of breath, as one that hath run a course: with a low leg he made obeisance, drawing a packet from his doublet. Jeronimy came to him, took it, and looked carefully at the seal with the gold-mounted perspective-glass that hung by a fine chain about his neck. Men marked how his sallow face turned sallower. ‘Just,’ he said: ‘it hath all the points in it.’ He undid the seal and read the letter, then handed it to Beroald; then, scowling upon the messenger: ‘How hapt, ninny-hammer, that you delivered this no sooner?’

‘Lord,’ answered he, ‘his lordship, all muddied from hard riding, did write it in your own house; and upon his sudden injunction strung with threats and filthy speeches innumerable, I did fly a-horseback and upon admittance at the fortress gate did with such leaps flee up the stairs as I was in point to have been laid hands on for a madman, so had all my charge miscarried.’

‘Away then: to him again and say I had it, and my lord Chancellor too.’ Then, walking apart once more with Beroald: ‘We were best act on this, albeit to see us openly on a sudden go from the chamber may give occasion that the people may buzz and talk of it. Yet these commends do directly say we are in peril here until he speak with us.’

‘Roder,’ said Beroald, ‘is not a man to start at his own shadow. Go we while the way’s yet open.’

Those two lords, presenting to curious eyes a studied show of untroubled and careless ease, were but even come forth to the grand staircase, when the lofty doors clanged to behind them, and in the throne-room trumpets sounded a sennet. And now in great pomp and splendour, an hour and a half past the just time of audience, the Duke opened the presence. There went before him, entering by a door behind the throne, six blacks with silver trumpets, sounding to the sennet as aforesaid, and thirty peacocks, walking two by two with their tails displayed, who, after their progress forth and back before the throne, ranged themselves fifteen on either hand beneath the black onyx pillars, making with their tails a screen of shimmering green and blue and gold. Medor, Egan, and Vandermast, and a dozen other of the Duke’s household, took each his appointed station beside the throne, Medor in his bronze byrny with gorget and shoulder-pieces inlaid with silver and bearing as symbol of his office a long double-handed two-edged sword; and now the trumpets, after a long baying blast that seemed to shake the gossamer tracery of the roof, suddenly fell silent as Barganax appeared.

His kirtle was of corded silk, rose-coloured, slashed with velvet of a darker hue, and gathered about the waist with a belt of sea-horse hide lapped at the edge with thread of gold and bossed with balas rubies and cat’s-eye chrysoberyls; he had thick-woven silken hose of the like rose-colour, and a long cloak of dark grey brocaded silk lined with cloth of silver; the collar of the cloak was of black cormorants’ feathers cunningly sewn and fitted to make an even smoothness, cross-striped at every span with lines of rubies and fastened with golden clasps. Yet was all this but shadows in water beside the man himself. For, alike in his lithe tall frame, and in his carriage noble and debonair and of a cat-like elegance, this Duke was beautiful to look upon beyond the example of men; his skin marvellous fair and smooth, his hair the colour of burnished copper, short and curly, his nose clean cut and straight, his brow wide, his eyebrows sleek and thick and with a scarcely to be seen upward slant, that cast a quality of somewhat pensive and of somewhat faun-like across his face; his shaven chin delicate but strong, his mouth a little large, firm-lipped under daintily upcurled mustachios, sensitive, apt for sudden modulations of mood and passion; his eyes brown, contemplative, and with profound obscurities of pulsing fire. And as, with that easy simplicity of magnificence which seemed in him nature bred clean beyond the range of art, he took his seat upon the dream-stone, it was as if the richness of his jewelled apparel, the shadowing of those wings, and all the sumptuous splendours of that hall were to him but as the flower on the blackthorn or the rainbow across a mountain peak: graces wedded to a substance worthy their own unsubstantial loveliness.

Now when the ceremonial business of presentations, petitions, sealings of placets and decrees was concluded, the Duke spake to them of his council that stood beside him: ‘Is’t not some wonder there should be no legate nor envoy here to represent the Vicar?’

‘May be,’ answered Medor, ‘that he liked not your grace’s sending away of Gabriel Flores a month ago.’

Barganax lifted an eyebrow: ‘’Twas pure charity, and indeed a compliment, to let him know I thought his honour too basely travestied by such a villain. Nor was it fit I should accept as envoy but his master of the horse, one that is besides but a patent hired intelligencer, and scarcely a gentleman by birth.’