E. Eddison - The Mezentian Gate

‘Duty?’ said the Princess: ‘to be led blindfold by your husband? Go, they’ll ne’er call me perfect wife a those terms.’

There was a pause. Then Marescia, sitting back again, her voice now at its ordinary strength and pitch: ‘What is this prognosticator by the stars, this soothsayer, your highness keeps i’ the palace?’

‘What do you mean? I keep none such.’

‘O yes: a greybeard signior: long gaberdine, and capped magister artium : some compliment-monger, I would wager. Comes to me as I passed among the throng of guests not half an hour since on my Lord Supervius’s arm, gives me a stare o’ the eye turned all my backside to gooseflesh, and crieth out that I shall bear Supervius a son shall be greater than his father.’

‘Heaven hold fast the omen,’

‘And then to my Lord Emmius, whom I must now call brother-in-law: crieth out and saith that of the seed of Emmius Parry shall come both a queen of earth and a queen of heaven.’

‘And what will he cry out at me, think you?’ said the Queen.

‘Please you enter the hall of the Sea Horses, I can show him to you, and you may examine him.’

‘Dear my Lord,’ said Stateira, as the King and those about him, their business being it seemed concluded, approached her, ‘here’s diversion for you,’ and told him what Marescia had said. The King bluffly humouring it as child’s talk, assented.

‘Yonder standeth the old man: there, that tall, lanky one,’ Marescia said in the Queen’s ear, from behind, as they descended the great staircase into that vast hall and paused upon the last steps between the two sea-horses of dark blue rock-crystal well the height of a man’s shoulder, there to take their stand and survey the company that, upon sounding of trumpets to a sennet to proclaim the King’s presence, abode all motionless now and with all faces turned that way: ‘and the girl with beastly eyes,’ she said, ‘who is, I suppose his granddaughter. Or, may hap, his bona roba, if such a jack pudding have use or custom of such commodities.’

Supervius eyed his princess with the deepening satisfaction of a skilled rider who begins to know the paces of a new high-blooded but untried mare. ‘Speak within door, Marescia,’ said her father. The King sent a little page of his of six year old that was named Jeronimy, to bring the doctor before him.

When that was done, and Vandermast made his obeisance, the King surveyed him a while in silence: then said, ‘Who are you, old sir? Of my folk or an outlander?’

‘I am,’ answered he, ‘your serene highness’s life-long loyal faithful subject: my habitation many journeys from this, south on the Wold: my practice, that of a doctor in philosophy.’

‘And what make you here i’ the court?’

‘To pay my humble duty where most I do owe it, and to behold with mine eyes at last this place and the glory thereof.’

‘And to seek a pension?’

‘No, Lord. Being entered now upon my ninth ten years I do find my lean patrimony sufficient to my livelihood, and in meditation of the metaphysicals food sufficient to sustain my mind. Over and above these things, I have no needs.’

‘A wise man,’ gently said the Queen, ‘by what he saith. For, to speak true, here is freedom indeed.’

‘I ne’er heard philosophy filled a man’s belly,’ said the King, with a piercing look still regarding him. ‘You are bruited to me, you, to have uttered here, this instant afternoon, prognosticks and probabilities (some would call ’em improbabilities, but let that pass) touching certain noble persons, guests at our wedding feast.’

Vandermast said, ‘I did so, my Lord and King, but in answer to interrogatives proposed to me by the persons in question.’

The King raised an eyebrow at Marescia. ‘O yes,’ said she: ‘we did ask him.’

‘I gave but voice to my thoughts that came me in mind,’ said Vandermast. ‘Neither spake I unconsiderately, but such things only as upon examination with mine inward judgement seemed likely and reasonable.’

The King was fallen silent a minute, glaring with his eyes into the eyes, steadfast and tranquil, of that learned doctor beneath their snow-thatched eaves, as though he would plumb some unsoundable darkness that underlay their shining and candid outward. Shifting his gaze at last, ‘You shall not be blamed for that,’ he said: then privately, to Prince Aktor, who was stood close on his right, ‘Here is a man I like: is able to look me in the eye without brave nor slavishness. Kings seldom have to deal but with the one or t’other.’

‘Your serene highness hath never, I think,’ replied Aktor, ‘had to deal with the first.’ He glanced across to Queen Stateira who, upon the King’s left hand, wide-eyed and with lovely lips half parted, was watching Doctor Vandermast with the intent and pleasure and wonder of a child. She caught the glance and looked away.

‘You have answered well,’ said the King to Vandermast. ‘These be days of mirth and rejoicing, and fitting it is folk show themselves open-handed on high holiday, to give somewhat of alms to poor needy persons, most of all when such do utter good words or in what other way soever do seem to merit it. Wear this from me,’ he said, taking a ring from his finger. ‘My grandfather’s it was, King Anthyllus’s upon whom be peace. ’Tis thought there be virtue in the stone, and I would not bestow it save on one in whom I seemed to smell some deserts answerable to its worth. But forget not, the law lieth very deadly against whoso shall make bold to prophesy concerning the King’s person. Aim not therefore at me in your conjectures, old man, bode they good or ill, lest a worse thing overtake you.’

‘My Lord the King,’ said Vandermast, ‘you have commanded, and your command shall with exactness be obeyed. I have told your serenity that few and little are my possessions, and yet that there is nought whereof I do stand in want, nor will I be a taker of rewards. For it is a property universal of rewards that they can corrupt action, propounding to the actor (if the action be bad) a reason beyond the action’s self, without which reason the action must have remained unacted. Because badness of itself is no reason. Contrariwise, be the action good, then the mere fact that it was acted for sake of reward can beget this bad habit in a man: to have respect to cheap, decaying, extern rewards; which enureth in the end so to debauch his inmost understanding that he becometh unable to taste or to desire the true only costly everlasting and ever satisfying reward, which hath its seat in the good action itself. But this,’ he said, drawing onto his finger the King’s ring, ‘cometh not as a reward but as a gift royal, even as great Kings have from the antique times been renowned and honoured as ring-scatterers: a noble example which I find your serene highness do make your own.’

‘Be such as I think you to be,’ said the King, ‘and my friendship followeth the gift.’

The doctor, that audience being done, came and went for a while his leisurely to and fro, within door and without, and always upon the fringes of the company, not as member thereof so much as looker on rather and listener, remarking whatsoever in any person appeared of remarkable: carriages, aspects, moods, manners, silences, little subtleties of eye, nostril, lip. And about and above him, at every succeeding step of his progress through this palace upon the southern horn of Rialmar, the greatness and the ancientness of the place hung heavier. Even as, to a climber, the mere vastness of the mountain becomes, as he goes higher, a presence, unite and palpable, built up of successive vastness of slabbed rock-face, vertiginous ice-cliff, eye-dazzling expanse of snow-field, up-soaring ultimate cornice chiselled by the wind to a sculptured perfection of line, sun-bright and remote against an infinite remoteness of blue heaven above it, so here was all gathered to an immobility of time-worn and storied magnificence: cyclopaean walls and gateways; flights of stairs six riders abreast might ride down on horseback and not touch knees; galleries, alcoves and clerestories cut from the rock; perspectives flattening the eye down distances of corbel and frieze and deep-mullioned windows six times the height of a man; colonnades with doric capitals curiously carved, supporting huge-timbered vaulted roofs; and domed roofs that seemed wide as the arch of day. All of which, apprehended in its wholeness, might cast a wise mind into oblivion not of its own self only and of all mankind but even of the everlasting mountains themselves; in the sudden apprehension that this Rialmar might be the nursery or breeding-place of a majesty and a loneliness older-rooted than theirs.