Mistress of mistresses (10 page)

'Proceed,
as touching Meszria,' said the Duke. '

'Tis
thus far i' the bounds of reasonable surmise; though I might a looked to see my
royal sister entrusted to my care sooner than to so questionable a tutor. True
it is, I ne'er set eyes upon her, but
I
am
far nearer by blood and (or
I
should
hate myself else) far more to trust to.

'Ere
I
proceed,' said Roder,
'I
would inform your grace of this; hard for me to
say, but
I
pray bear with me. The King on's
death-bed did directly say to me that though he was at odds with the Vicar, he
did believe so great an honour as this is should bind him faithfully to the
royal interest, but your grace he did misdoubt (as he did openly say, but
I
did speak against it) of a secret determination to
usurp the kingdom, and so feared to entrust the Princess unto you.'

'Proceed,
man,' said the Duke. Roder proceeded:

'As
touching my sayde kyngdam of Mezria, save and exept the sayde apponage of
Zayjana as heerin befoare prouided,
I
do
point my wel beloued faythfull sarvante the Lorde Hy Amerall
Ieronimy
to rewill all the londe as Regent therof during my
sed Systyrs minorite and therafter as Shee shall of Hir roiall wylle and
pleasire determine of. And who some ere shall neglect contempne or sette on
syde any dysposicion of this My Testment, lat his life haue an erly a suddant
and an euill endinge and lat the Angre of the Goddes reste vpon him. Giuen
under my roiall seall and under myne hande in my pauylyoun bisyde Hornmeere in
Rerec this fourt day of Aprelle in the yeere of my raighne I.

Styllys R.'

A
silence of little ease fell on their council when Roder ended his reading of
that testament. Except old Vandermast's not an eye was raised: those others
shrank, in that silence, from meeting Barganax's glance: Barganax himself sat
staring downward with a cat-like intention on the void table-top before him.
When he spoke at last it was in a strained voice, as if he rode wrath on the
curb, tight held yet ready to overleap at the least slackening of control all
bounds, all reason. 'You will libel me out a copy of that, my lord Chancellor,
certified under your hand and under his and his,' pointing with his eye at
Roder and Jeronimy.

Beroald
answered and said, 'I will.'

'I
must have half an hour to consider of this ere we pursue it further,' said the
Duke, still with that frightening tenseness in his voice. 'Vandermast, fill
out Rian wines for these lords and then attend me. And to you, sirs, I will say
this: I have warranted you safety and freedom in Acrozayana. But this shall you
know, and consider well of it: in case you shall not wait for me in this room
until I come back to talk with you, and in case I find you not here all three
when I do come again, that shall be in my eyes an act of war, my lord Admiral,
and I shall answer it as such.' With that word, as if the reins he had held at
such horrid tension had slipped on a sudden through his fingers, he leapt to
his feet, smote with his dagger into the table-top so mighty a downward stabbing
blow that the steel stood a hand-breadth deep in the wood and snapped off
short, hurled the broken weapon in the fireplace, and in that gusty extremity
of fury flung open the door, swapped it to behind him, and was gone. Doctor
Vandermast, who alone of that company maintained a demeanour of detachment and
imperturbability, silently set wine before them according to his master's
bidding and silently departed.

'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 to-day,' 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 to-morrow,
'tis a pleasure I shall set store
by. I'd say to-night, but—to-night I am bespoke already.'
                                                                             
,

IV

Zimiamvian
Dawn

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 humming-bird'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.

The
sun rose, and shot its first beam against that lady's brow, as she turned
towards the morning. And now befell a great wonder. Even as she, standing so in
the first beams of day, began to put up her hair and pin it with pins of
chrysolite, she seemed on the sudden grown taller by a head, to out-top the
tallest of men in stature; and whereas, since there is no increase beyond
perfection, the beauty of her body might not increase, yet was the substance of
it as if transmuted in a moment to pure light, of a like brightness and essence
with the heavenly fires of sunrise. No man could in that time have named the colour
of Her eyes or of Her hair: the shifting of the dark and light was become as a
blinding glory too awful for mortal eye to look upon, too swift for the mind of
man to seize or read. For upon Her cheek in that hour was the beauty that
belongs to fair-crowned Aphrodite; and that beauty, thus made manifest in its
fulness, no eye can bear or see, not even a God's, unless it be possible for
the great Father of All Who sitteth in secret, that He might behold it and know
it.