Mistress of mistresses (29 page)

They
kept silence, each waiting on the other. Lessingham's patience outstayed the
Vicar's in that game, and the Vicar spoke. ‘I have bethought me, cousin, and if
there's aught you can say may extenuate the thing, I'll hear it'

'Extenuate?'
Lessingham said, and his voice was chilling as the first streak of a winter's
dawn on a frozen sea. As the Vicar held the lantern, so his own face was
shaa-owed, but the eye of Lessingham in full light: the eye of such a man that
a prince would rather be afraid of than ashamed of, so much awfulness and
ascendancy it lent to his aspect over other mortals. 'Is it morning then,
outside of this hole you have thrust me in?'

'Two
hours past midnight'

'It
shall at least be set down to you for a courtesy,* said Lessingham, 'that at
this time of night you are gotten up out of your bed to make me amends. Pray
you unlock.' He held out his right wrist, chained: ' 'Tis a kind of gewgaw I
ne'er put on till now and not greatly to my liking.'

'There's
time to talk on that,' said the Vicar. 'I'll first hear if there be any good
face you can put on this ill trick you have played me.'

Lessingham's
eye flashed. He held out his wrist, as might a queen to her tiring-woman. 'An
ill trick you', he said, 'have played me! By heavens, you shall unlock me
first, cousin. We'll talk outside.'

The
Vicar paused and there was a cloud in his face. 'You were a more persuasive
pleader for your safety but now, cousin, when you lay sleeping. Be advised, for
I have cause against you enough and beyond enough; and be sure you satisfy me.
For except you do, be certain you shall never go from this place alive.'

'Indeed
then you might a spared your sleep and mine,’ said Lessingham then, shaking his
cloak up as if to lie down again. The Vicar began pacing to and fro like a
wolf. ' 'Tis simplicity or mere impudent malice to say I did betray you; and
this an insolency past forgiveness, to use me so. So touching this concordat
not a word will I say till I am loosed, and 'pon no conditions neither.'

The
Vicar stopped and stood for a minute. Then he gave a short laugh. 'Let me
remember you', he said in a clear soft voice, glaring in Lessingham's face by
the light of the lantern, 'of Prince Valero, him that betrayed Ar-gyanna a few
years since to them of Ulba and led that revolt against me. The Gods delivered
him into my hand. Know you the manner of his end, cousin? No: for none knew it
but only I and my four deaf mutes you wot of, that were here at the doing on't,
and I have told no man of it until now. Do you see that hook in the ceiling?'
and he swung the light to show it. 'I'll not weary you with particulars,
cousin. I fear 'twas not without some note and touch of cruelty. Such a pretty
toying wit had I. But we've washed the flagstones since. 'Well?' he said, after
a silence.

'Well,'
said Lessingham, and from now he held the Vicar constantly with his steel-cold
eye: ‘I have listened to your story. Your manner of telling of it does you
credit: not so greatly the substance of it.'

*Be
you ware,' said the Vicar with a loud sudden violence, and give him an ill
look. 'The case you are in, this place you lie in, which is my hidden
slaying-place in Laimak: think on't. And I can make that laughing face of yours
turn serious.'

‘I
laugh not', replied he. "Tis not a laughing matter. They looked one
another in the eye without speaking. In that game too Lessingham outstayed the
Vicar.

Then
Lessingham said: 'Do not mistake me. If I fear you not, I am not so foolish as
hold you for a man not worthy to be feared. But to threaten me with death, 'tis
as the little boy that sat on a bough and would cut away from the tree the
bough he sat on. I think you have more wit than do that.'

In
a deadly stillness, with feet planted wide apart, the Vicar stood like a
colossus looking down upon him. The Vicars' own face was now in shadow, so that
when, after a long time, Lessingham spoke to him again, it was as a man might
speak to an impending great darkness. ‘I know it is a hard choice for you,
cousin. Upon this side, you have no true friend in the world but me; lose me,
and you stand alone amidst a world of enemies, your back bare. And yet, against
this, you have done me a gross injury, and you know me for a man who, albeit I
have looked upon this world for but half your span of years, have yet slain
near as many men upon matter of honour alone, in single combats, as yourself
have slain whether by murder or what not. I have slain a dozen, I think, in
these eight years, since I was of years seventeen, not to reckon scores I have
slain in battle. So, and to judge me by yourself, you must see great danger in
it to release me. A hard choice. As if you must run hazard either way to lose
me. And yet, my way you stand some chance of keeping me: your way, none.'

There
was a pause when he ended. Then said the Vicar with his face yet in darkness,
'You are a strange man. Doth not death then terrify you?'

Lessingham
answered, 'The horror and ugsomeness of death is worse than death itself.'

The
Vicar said, 'Is it one to you: live or die? Do you not care?"

'O
yes,' said Lessingham. ‘I care. But this choice, cousin, is in the hand of fate
now: for you even as for me. And for my part, if the fall of the dice mean
death: well, it was ever my way to make the best of things.'

With
the cadence of his voice falling away to silence, it was as if, in that quiet
charnel under Laimak that knew not night nor day, scales were held and swung
doubtful, now this way now that. Then the Vicar slowly, as if upon some
resolution that came near to crumbling as he embraced it, turned to the door.
Behind him his shadow as he went rushed up and stopped like a winged darkness
shedding obscurity from wall and ceiling over half the chamber. Then he was
gone, and the door locked, and all darkness; and in that darkness Lessingham
saw Pyewacket's eyes, like two coals burning. He reached out a hand to her,
open, palm downwards. He could not see her, save those eyes, but he felt her
sniff cautiously and then touch the back of his hand lightly with her cold
nose.

The
Vicar was mid-part up the stairs when he missed her. He called her by name: then
stood listening. Cursing in his beard, he was about turning back; but after a
few steps down, halted again, swinging his keys. Then, very slowly, he resumed
his mounting of the stairs.

Betimes
in the morning the Vicar let fetch out Amaury from the place where he had been
clapped up: gave him in charge to Gabriel and those six close men: made these
wait in the ante-chamber: gave Amaury, in private audience, keys for
Lessingham's prison by the secret door: walked the room a dozen turns, eyes
still bent upon the floor, then said: 'You are free, lieutenant. Go to your
master: conduct's provided, Gabriel and them: strike off his chains: here's
keys, enlarge him. Tell him I'm sorry: a jest: went too far: he and I am
friends, understand each other: therefore let us meet as if this nee'r had
befallen. He and I be two proud men, tell him. I've took a long step to meet
him: 'tis for him make it easy for me now.'

Amaury
said with flaming face, 'I humbly thank your highness. I am a blunt soldier,
and there is this to be said: my lord is your highness' true and noble friend.
And strangely so. And a thousand times better than you deserve.'

'Have
you got it by rote? say it over,' said the Vicar, not hearing, or choosing not
to be thought to have heard, that bearding boldness. Amaury said over his
message, word by word, while the Vicar paced the room. 'Away then.'

Lessingham
woke and came forth into the air and day with as much of careless equanimity as
a man might carry who rises from the accustomed bed he has slept upon, night by
night, for ten years in peace. Only there sat in his eyes a private sunbeamed
look, as if he smiled in himself to see, like a sculptor, the thing shape
itself as he had meant and imagined it. Amaury sat with him in his chamber
while he bathed and donned clean linen. 'Praise be to the blessed Gods,' he
said, leaping from the bath where he had rinsed away the suds, for curling of
my hair by nature: not as yonder paraquitos, must spend an hour a day with
barbers to do't by art.' His skin, save where the weather had tanned or the
black hair shadowed it, was white like ivory. Then, when he was well scrubbed
dry with towels: 'Boy! when, with orange-flower water for my beard! Foh! I
smell her yet.' He gave his boy kirtle, hose, ruff: all the upper clothing he
had worn in prison: bade him burn it.

Amaury
spoke. 'What o'clock do you mean to set forward?'

'Set
forward?'

'Leave
this place,' said Amaury: 'out of his fingers: out of Rerek?'

'Not
for some weeks yet. There's a mort of work I must first set in hand the conduct
of.'

Amaury
sprang up, and began to walk the room. 'You are preserved this time beyond
natural reason. If a man take a snake or serpent into his handling,—O he spoke
true when he said you do understand each other. And there's the despair on't:
and your eyes were not open to your danger, there were hope yet, by opening of
'em, to save you from it. But you do know your danger, most clearly, most
perfectly and circumspectly: yet rejoice in it, and laugh at it.'

'Well,
that is true,' said Lessingham, giving a touch to his ruff. 'What shall's do
then?'

The
heat of the summer noonday stood over Laimak when Lessingham at length came,
with Amaury and two or three of his gentlemen attending him, to meet the Vicar
on that long straight paven walk that runs, shaded at that hour by the
tennis-court wall, along the battlements above the north face. Their folk, of
either side, hung back a little, marking, these in the one, those in the other,
their looks as each faced each: the Vicar a little put out of his countenance,
Lessingham, under a generous noble courtesy, a little amused. After a while
Lessingham held out his hand, and they shook hands without speaking. 'Give us
leave,' said the Vicar and took him apart.

When
they had measured a few paces in silence, 'I hope you slept well,' said
Lessingham. 'It was prettily done to leave me your bitch for company.'

'What's
this?' said the Vicar. 'The Devil damn me! I had clean forgot her.'

'I
had thought,' said Lessingham, *you were hard put to it to make up your mind,
and conceited you might cast her for the part of Fate. A chained man: 'twas a
nice poising of the chances. I admired it. And you feed 'em on man's flesh now
and then I think? of ill-doers and such like.'

'I
swear to you, cousin, you do me wrong. By all the eternal Gods in heaven, I
swear I had forgot her. But let's not talk on this—'

'Waste
not a thought upon't. I ne'er slept better. Being of that sort, may be 'twas
that made her take to me:

O
we curl'd-haird men Are still most kind to women.

Or
how think you?'

'Cousin,'
said the Vicar: 'this concordat.' Here he took him by the arm. ‘I would know
the whole carriage on't I question not there's good in't, for, by my soul, you
have ever done me good: but let me die bursten if I understand the good of this.'

'An
answer so fairly besought,' said Lessingham, 'should be fairly given. But first
I would have you, as a politic prince who will not lay your foundations in the
dirt but upon the archaean crust, refer the whole estate you are in to your
highness' deliberate overviewing again. This kingdom, whiles the old King
lived, was set in its seat unshakable: terrible to kings and peoples upon
lengths of seas and shores. A main cause was, 'twas well knit: at one unto
itself. True, at the last you had been already straining at the leash in
new-conquered Rerek: unwisely, to my thinking, as I plainly told you. Then the
King died, and that changed all: a hard-handed young fool in the saddle 'stead
of a great wise man: and that shook all from withinwards. You had experiment
then, cousin, of my mind towards you: did not I stand for you at Mornagay with
my eight hundred horse, as a boy with a stick 'gainst a pack of wolves? had you
miscarried I mean; and that was not past likelihood. Then you took a means that
both rid you of present danger and, 'cause men shrewdly guessed it, weakened
you, 'cause it blasted your reputation (and a sickly browned flower was that
already);—and then immediately, by direct bounty of Heaven, was all given into
your lap by handfuls: named in the testament Lord Protector and Regent for the
young Queen's minority. Why, 'tis all in your hand, cousin, and you will but
use it. The realm is in your hand, like a sword; but all in pieces. And first
is to weld the slivers: make it a sword again, like as King Mezentius had: then
strip it out against Akkama, or what other heads were best plucked off that
durst threaten you.'

They
walked slowly, step with step, the Vicar with a brooding look, silent.
Lessingham hummed under his breath a lilting southern song. When they came to
the corner against the wall of the round north-western tower the Vicar stopped
and, resting his elbows on the battlement, stood looking over the landscape
where all colour was burnt to ashes under the sunlight. Near at hand, to the
northward, a little crag rose solitary, a mimic Lai-mak, may be fifty feet
above the marsh; and on its highest rock sat a falcon-gentle all alone, turning
her head sharply every now and then to look this way and that. Once and again
she took a short flight, and small birds mobbed her. And now she sat again on
her rock, hunched, with a discontented look, glancing about this way and that.
The Vicar watched her in his meditation, spitting at whiles thoughtfully over
the parapet. 'Remember, I have taught 'em,' said Lessingham, 'first in Zayana,
and now with sharp swords upon the Zenner, there's
a
higher here to o'ersway them if need be. Next is
to reclaim 'em, call 'em to heel, be kind to 'em. By this, eased of your
present fears lest they of your own house shall pluck the chair from under you,
you may frown upon the world secure.'