Mistress of mistresses (14 page)

'You
are dark to me yet,' said the Chancellor. 'Did your lordship inform the Duke of
this last turn: I mean this offer I told you of?'

'In
a manner, yes,' answered Jeronimy.

'Had
I stood in your shoes, my lord Admiral,' said the Chancellor, 'I should have
given you the opportunity to come with me upon such an errand.'

'You
and
I',
said the Admiral, 'did conclude
upon speedy action. A-riding home I did view the matter from all points, and
did at last conceive in a manner but one safe way betwixt these quicksands.
Brief, I did resign but now into the Duke's hand, as well for present as prospectively,
the office of Regent: bade him take it up and defend it, and we would go
through and second him.'

He
paused. The Chancellor's jaw set, and his lean face turned ashy. He stood up
from his chair, pushed the letter across the table to Jeronimy, and stalked to
the window. The Admiral took out his perspective-glass and read the letter,
blowing softly with his cheeks the while. 'Your lordship hath an art in
drafting of such matters,' he said: * 'tis beyond admiration excellent.' He
looked cautiously up, met the Chancellor's eye, and looked away.

For
a minute the Lord Beroald abode silent. When he mastered himself to speak, the
words came like chips of ice clinking down an ice-slope. 'Lessingham', he said,
'is an able politician. You and me, my lord, he but turneth to his purpose. You
have made a fine hand of it.'

Jeronimy
slowly shook his head. 'I did play for a firm line and no stragglers,' said he.
'We should not have held the Duke with us had we ta'en, in a manner, the course
you formerly thought on: had I complied and ta'en up the regency 'pon
Lessingham's conditions.'

'You
have now by your act', said Beroald, 'disburdened him of all conditions, and
left us open to all injuries. You have, in face of dangerous enemies, set
aside the law, which was our strength and our justification; you have struck
wide division in our counsels, when a single mind was most needful; you have
unleashed the Duke on a course may be shall prove his ruin and ours. Had you
gone cap in hand to my Lord Lessingham and professed yourself ready to do his
bidding so as to make fair success of his mission hither, he could a thought on
no better means to bid you take than these you have taken.'

Jeronimy's
face became drawn and his kindly eyes darkened with anger. He rose from his
chair. 'This talk,' he said, thickly, 'doth more disgrace than it helpeth or
graceth us. Let us say no more but good night, my lord Chancellor. May be
morning shall bring us riper wisdom.'

On
the morrow towards mid-day the Lord Lessingham took horse and rode with Amaury
from his lodgings in the old Leantine palace in the northern quarter down
through the market-place, and so, turning right along Stonegate and
Paddockgate, up into the driving-road that ran by the water-side along the top
of the town wall of old red sandstone for a quarter of a mile or more; thence,
turning inland at the Heugh, through some winding cobbled streets, they came
out into the sunlight of the piazza of the Winds, and, crossing that from north
to south, took the Way of the Seven Hundred Pillars. At a walking-pace they climbed
its wide zig-zags, pleasant with the shade of ancient holm-oaks and the heavy
scent of the mimosa-trees, and came at length a little before noon up to the
main gate of the citadel. A guard of honour, of seven of the Duke's red-bearded
swordsmen, conducted them up the shining stairs that were built of panteron
stone, black green and purple, and so by many courts and colonnades to silver
doors and through them to a narrow and high-roofed corridor which opened at its
far end, with silver doors, upon that garden of everlasting afternoon. Here, in
the low slanting rays under the tufted shade of strawberry-trees, that ancient
man stood to do them welcome, Doctor Vandermast. He said, 'You are late, my
lord.'

Lessingham,
that had not before beheld the wonder of this garden, bit in his admiration and
said, ‘I am, on the contrary, upon the very point of noon. His grace is late,
for his own time appointed.'

'His
grace', answered Vandermast 'is always late. That is to say, he o'errunneth the
just time by an hour or so; and that is not blameworthy in a royal Duke. But
here indeed is a strange impertinent jest of your lordship's, to come hither
some four or five hours behind your set time, and look to find him waiting upon
your pleasure.'

Amaury
said, 'Will you make game with my lord, sir? Be more civil; for in truth you
are but an old fantastical scholar, with a beard like a crow with two or three
dirty straws in her mouth, going to build her nest'

'Hold
your tongue, Amaury,' said Lessingham. 'Scandal not the reverend signior.
Doctor, I heard tell ere now of this garden, that 'tis one of the wonders of
the world, and that you did make it. And now I see it indeed, I am
astonished.'

'It
is a natural garden, my lord,' answered that old man. 'This is very sky, and very
sun, very clouds and lake, and you and I here in our bodies. You may touch,
smell, walk and discourse, inhale the airs. It is natural present.'

'Come,'
said Lessingham: 'that is over high meat for my weak stomach. Why, the sun in a
golden bush of glory standeth but a handbreadth above yonder woody hills beyond
the water; and yet, ten minutes since, it was white noon, blazing on our heads
from the meridian.'

Vandermast
said: 'Save for birds or reremice, winged emmets, wasps, flies, and such manner
of filths, there is but one only way into this garden, and it is through the
lobby of the silver doors. Your lordship and this froward young man did pass
the further door at noon, but the hither door some five hours after noon. It is
a nice point of disputation whether you did with tortoise-like slowness
transambulate that lobby, so as in five hours to proceed but twenty paces, or
whether
per contra
those five hours did, with a speed whipped to ten
thousand times its natural,
blow
by you as you walked.
Experinientum docet:
you are here, and 'tis late afternoon.*

'And
if I shall instantly go back again?' said Lessingham. 'What then?'

'You
shall find it then but a little past mid-day without. The Duke expects you, my
lord. He will be here ere long.'

Lessingham
walked and stood by the parapet, looking south. Amaury followed him. For a
minute or two Lessingham abode there, then turned, leaning with an elbow on the
parapet behind him, so as to face that garden. Amaury watched the look in his
eyes as they wandered from yellow lily to rose and alkanet and honeysuckle,
from bee-haunted lime to strawberry-tree with night-dark foliage, wine-red
twisted branches, and jewel-like flower and fruit; shaven sward, porphyry
seat, doves at the fountains; all in a sleepy plenitude of golden air and cool
long shadows. But once in his life before had Amaury seen that look, and that
was a month ago, when Lessingham had stared into the wine in Mornagay. He
turned, and saw that that learned man was gazing on Lessingham with a strange intention,
and that the look in the eyes of him and the look in the eyes of Lessingham
were the same.

The
silver doors opened in the blind northern wall, and one came to say that the
council was set now in the Duke's closet and he would there receive them. As
they turned to go, Lessingham halted and looked down at Doctor Vandermast. 'One
thing I would know,' he said, 'that hath strangely puzzled me since first I
came hither to Zayana. What are you, old sir?'

Vandermast
was silent for a moment, looking straight before him to those sunshiny hills
beyond the lake, through half-closed lids, as if remarking and appraising some
strange matter. He smiled. ‘I, my lord,' he said slowly, 'am one that am wont
to pry beneath the unstable course and fickle flower of man's affairs. Somewhat,
may be, I have digged up in my searchings. And I am an old faithful servant of
the Duke of Zayana.' Then; looking Lessingham in the eye, he said, 'Forget not,
my lord, that all things work together. If, spite all, his grace should bid you
guest here this night, in Acrozayana, be very sure you do it.'

So
now came they to the Duke's closet. He himself sat on the north side of the
table, his back to the fireplace, with the Admiral on his right, the Chancellor
on his left, and beyond the Chancellor Earl Roder. On the Earl's left was Count
Zapheles, and the Lords Melates and Barrian to the right of the Admiral.
Lessingham sat midmost of the table over against the Duke, Amaury and Doctor
Vandermast took notes. Amaury said privately as they sat down, 'Now that we are
gotten safe away, sir, out of yon sorcery-witched garden, I'll say I'm sorry I
was rude with you. I would not say it there. I would not , you should think I
was afeared of you.'

Vandermast
answered and said, ‘I have an eye to find out good, even as the margaret is
found growing in the meat of certain shell-fishes, in howsoever curious a sort
it shall disguise itself. Therefore, be at ease, young gentleman.'

But
even while he so spoke with Amaury, the eagle glance of him was busy with the
faces of the great men met about that table, and most of all with the Duke's
face and the Lord Lessingham's. The Duke, under his cloak of disdainful ease,
seemed as if gathered for his spring. Lessingham, stroking his black beard,
looking through half-dropped lashes now at the Duke, now at the Admiral or the
Chancellor, and still at the Duke again, seemed waiting for that spring should
land the springer in a pit he himself had digged for him.

'Will
you speak first, my Lord Lessingham?' said the Duke.

'Willingly,'
answered he, with a grave inclination of the head. 'But it can but be to invite
your grace to set forth the business you have called us to consider of upon so
much urgency.' There was in his voice as he spoke a lazy bantering music, full
of charm, redolent too of sleeping dangers. Amaury, that had been bred up with
him to manhood, knew it like his native air. Vandermast knew it too, but not
till now in a man's voice. For it bore, even as the troubled image in a lake at
midnight to the star it mirrors, some kinship to that languorous mocking lazy
music that awoke so often in the Lady Fiorinda's voice; and Vandermasrthought
he knew, looking at the Duke, that the Duke too felt the spell of it, albeit
without recognition, as a man listening to an air which he knows yet cannot
place.

'It
is now going upon the eleventh day', said the Duke, that your lordship hath
gladdened us with your company. In respect of persons, we could wish no end
to't But in respect of matters of state 'tis not convenient.'

'For
your princely entertainment I am greatly beholden,' answered Lessingham. 'For
the delays, they are none of mine. So far forth as it lay in me to do it, all
might
a
been
done and good-bye the first morning.'

'Yet
it draggeth on,' said the Duke. 'And thence ensueth idleness. And from
idleness, mischief. My lord, I mean this offer of yours unto my lord
Chancellor: I but heard on't this morning.'

'Your
grace will not hold me answerable', said Lessingham, 'for this failure to tell
good news round the family. Howsoever, I've not been answered yet;' and he
turned to Beroald.

'There,
my lord, is my answer,' said Beroald; and gave it him across the table.

Lessingham
took the letter: 'Is it yes?'

Beroald
replied, 'Your lordship hath the wit to know very well 'tis no.'

'That
is by so much the worser answer for us all,' said Lessingham, 'by how much it
is the shorter: by a letter. What next, then? May be your grace hath thought on
some way to please us all?'

Barganax
sat suddenly forward in his chair. 'We shall now', said he, 'play no more at
fair-and-softly, or king-by-your-leave. The Vicar's offers please nobody. You
are grown too bold, my lord. Or did you think I should sit content ever in my
curious pretty gardens, my delicate groves, while you fob me up with fair
speeches? lie sunning myself for ever, while you hawk the regency about the
town to find a higher bidder? Will you not offer it to my Lord Roder next?
There he is. Come, ask him.'

Lessingham
said nothing, but folded his arms.

Barganax
said, 'You shall find my patience but a gathering deadly cloud. And thus it
lightens into action:— These great officers of state to right and left of me,
bound by old allegiance to uphold the house of Fingiswold, stand in firm league
with me to say nay to the Vicar when he requireth abatement of our powers for
his behoof, whom we do utterly refuse and mistrust. Under the threats and
wrongfulness of whose tyranny, the lord Admiral hath solemnly resigned and
given over into my hand the regency of Meszria by testament royal conferred
upon him. My Lord Lessingham, I take up that regency, but under suzerainty of
no man. If the Vicar will receive me as his equal, lord of Meszria as he of
Rerek: good, we are at one. If not, shortest is to say to him that I will
maintain my dominion in his despite: in the midst of all his bloody ruff, I'll
cope with him.'