E. Eddison - Mistress of Mistresses

‘Sure, the Duke’s much incensed,’ said Jeronimy, wiping the sweat from his brow with a silken handkercher and blowing out with his mouth.

‘It was, in my conceit, a prime error in judgement,’ said Beroald, ‘not to have given him the regency. Unless I do grossly mistake him, he was ready to let go the rest had he had but that. You must pardon me, my lord Admiral; the time calls for bare truth, not glosing compliment.’

‘I would in pure joy give it him today,’ said the Admiral, wiping his brow anew.

Roder drank a great draught of wine, then turned square upon them as if upon revelation suddenly to announce an important truth. ‘Why, this is very much to the purpose, my lords. Give it him: ’tis a bargain, and he is ours.’

‘You do forget your gravity,’ said the Chancellor. ‘Lieth it in us to alter and set aside the King’s will?’

‘Ay, indeed,’ said Roder: ‘I had forgot.’

‘’Tis not to be thought on,’ said the Admiral. ‘But, that provided, it is the more instant we waste not our powers in a manner with private bickerings. I am strangely puzzled. I think we be all of an accord, though, in this: that the main purport of the matter and our only thought is to uphold the young Queen as we are bound to do, and serve her wholly and throughly?’

‘We be weaponless here,’ said Beroald, ‘else would I kiss my sword to that. Take up the regency, my lord Admiral, and I at least will sustain and comfort you in this ’gainst all continent impediments and unto death itself.’

‘Thanks, noble Beroald,’ said the Admiral, taking his hand and Earl Roder’s, who on the motion sware him the like upholding. ‘And now, ’tis to make firm accord with the Duke if we may, and then keep open eyes on Rerek. But there there’s difficult going and need, in a manner, to go frost-nailed, since we were much to blame went we in aught against the King’s testament, and by that testament the Vicar must have the Queen in ward and be Regent for her in Rerek.’

‘Suffer me,’ said the Chancellor, reaching out his hand for the document, ‘to peruse it again. Ha! Come hither,’ he said: ‘note a strange accident. It saith “shall in her name rule the realm as Regent” (this of the Vicar), and then concerning you, my lord Admiral, “to rule all the land” (that is, of Meszria) “as Regent thereof.” It might be nicely argued that, he being in terms named Regent of all the realm and you but of Meszria only, effect is you shall be subject unto him as Regent of all the realm.’

‘’Twas never so intended,’ said Roder.

‘Nay,’ said the Chancellor; ‘but ’twill be argued by the letter, not upon supposition of intention. How came it, Roder, that you had the original?’

‘The Vicar hath it too,’ said he: ‘’Twas execute in duplicate. O there’s no doubt on’t, my lords, the Vicar meaneth not sit content in Rerek. ’Twas most observable with what a cloak of seeming loyalty he wrapped himself withal soon as the King ’gan sicken, and with what eagerness he did haste to wipe out of men’s sight and memories all evidences of strife betwixt them. As witness, a thing I knew by secret and most trusty intelligence: ’twas come so nigh a breach betwixt ’em, that he had privily posted his cousin german, the great Lord Lessingham, with near a thousand horse at Mornagay of Rerek to hold the ways northward ’gainst the King should they come to open differences; but straight upon the King’s sickening (for well he knew the hellish virtue of the drug that would obey no antidote) a sent his Gabriel Flores, a close instrument of his, galloping a whole night and day, to call off Lessingham and fetch him home again. And put it about forthright (with circumstances to be witness in’t) that ’twas Barganax in a jealous vengeful cruelty did procure ’s young brother’s taking off.’

‘And will you say,’ asked Jeronimy, ‘that Barganax did not indeed procure it?’

‘I rest but on hearsay and what my own judgement tells me,’ answered he. ‘I am persuaded the Vicar did it. And hath the mind too to use the sister as a stalk to catch birds with, and that’s the whole kingdom for’s own usurping and enjoyment.’

‘You mind what we spoke on but now i’ the throne-room?’ said Jeronimy to the Chancellor. ‘With right of our side, and with the Duke of our side?’

Beroald nodded a grave assent, saying, ‘We need both.’

The Lord Jeronimy fingered his thin beard a moment in silence: ‘And yet,’ he said, with a twitch of his mouth, ‘I would not trust him out of all-ho! His thoughts do soar too high, in a manner, for sober deed to follow. I would trust him discreetly.’

The door opened, and those lords stood up in a formal deference. It was easy to read in Jeronimy’s most tell-tale eyes how all his prudent and scrupulous withholdings discandied quite, only to look on Barganax that now entered to them with so lovely a taking grace as, after the foul storm he had gone out with, seemed a new man, a new day. ‘My lord Admiral,’ he said, standing in the door: ‘I have now thought on’t. I will stand in alliance with you to uphold the King’s testament unto last fulfilment. Let your scriveners draw it in form, my lord Chancellor: we’ll set our hands to it. And if you will dine with me tomorrow, ’tis a pleasure I shall set store by. I’d say tonight, but – tonight I am bespoke already.’

LIGHT ON A DARK LADY

THE beginnings of new light, fanned with little winds that had slept all night long on the gentle spring-time sea, entered through the wide-open windows of the Duke’s private lodging in Acrozayana and so by open doors into the outer chamber and so, passing out by western windows, were lost upon distances of the hueless lake below. Upon their passage, ambrosial Night, who had first trailed her mantle of dusk and enchantery over the white damask and the wine-cups rough with jewels, and over the oysters and crayfish in hippocras, jellied ortolans, peaches, queen-apples, and strange passion-fruits filled with seeds afloat in a thin delicious juice, and had later watched, under the silver lamps, such preenings and soarings of the bird delight as even holy Night can find no name to name them, now furled plume by plume her downy wings, ready to repair for yet another diurnal span to her chambers of the west. And now morning stood awake in those rooms; loosing hand from departing Night’s, even as Fiorinda, rising in a like silence, loosed her hand from her sleeping lover’s late fallen asleep a little before the dawn.

Motionless at the great crystal mirror, her hands gathering behind her head the night-black heavy and scented softnesses of her unbound hair, she surveyed for a while her own naked loveliness: marvels of white, proud, Greek, modelled to the faintest half-retracted touch, pure as snows that dream out the noonday on the untrod empyreal snow-dome of Koshtra Belorn; and, as in the sweet native habit of such hair, thrones whence darkness shines down darkness to the failing of vision. Compounded and made up of two things she seemed: day and sable night; only in her eyes shone that coolness of aquamarine, and as tempestuous dawns wear their rose-flowers, so she.

After a time, with a sudden melting movement, unseizable as a hummingbird’s flight in its shimmer of moods and motives, voluptuous languor, half-surprised acceptance, self-surrender, disdain, she pronounced her name Fiorinda , delicately, as if caressing with tongue and lips the name’s very beauty as she framed the syllables. She spoke it strangely, as if that name, and the looking-glass image itself, were not her own but somewhat other: somewhat of her making, it might be, as a painter should paint a picture of his heart’s desire; yet not her, or at least not her complete. And, so speaking, she laughed, very light and low, all unlike to that mocking laugh that so pricked Barganax’s sense, as if (by his saying yesterday) she would laugh all honesty out of fashion. For there was now in this laugh of hers a note of quality alien to all human kind, so honeysweet it was, fancy-free, yet laughter-loving of itself: so might a sudden rift in the veil between time and eternity let through a momentary light sound of the honey-sweet imperishable laughter. On the instant, it was gone. But the memory of it remained like the ringed ripple on water where a bird has dived.