Mistress of mistresses (34 page)

She
turned as the doors swung open in the middle of the side-wall to the left of
the great bay of the window, and, with four ladies of the bedchamber to bear
the candles before her and behind, the Queen entered, like a lily, from her
bath. Surely her eyes outdanced the shining candles as Raviamne and Paphirrhoe
lighted them, a dozen candles by the mirror that stood on the table to the
right of the fire and another dozen by the tall mirror, framed in silver and
white coral, to the right again, in the corner; surely the warmth of her
presence hushed the encircling firelight and outglowed its glow. Zenochlide brought
from a chair beside the fire, one by one, garments fine as the spider's web,
fragrant, delicate as the butterfly's wing, and the Queen put them on.
Anamnestra brought her coat-hardy of rich sarsenet, with a silver taint like a
lily, yielding and clinging, wide-skirted downward from the hips: the Queen,
pointing her white arms above her head, bowed and entered it like a diver, and
like a diver came up laughing and shaking the hair from her eyes. The silken
sleeves ended an inch or two below the shoulder, continuing thence with pale
blue transparent gauze cut wide, shimmering with dust of gold, and gathered at
the wrists to bracelets of fretted silver and margery-pearls. The skirt was
purfled upon its lower edge, two spans deep, with flower-work in seed-pearls
and the soft blue of turkey-stones and thread of gold, upon pale rose-coloured
silk. Raviamne brought her shoes, sewn all over with pearls and amber.

The
Queen now, standing before the mirror, took out the pins and, with a shake of
her head, let down her hair like a garment of netted sunlight falling nearly to
the purfled flounce of her dress. Zenianthe came with the little white cat and
held it out to be kissed: To salute your highness respectfully on your natal
day, and ask you kindly admire my birthday collar Zenianthe gave me.' Antiope
bent and kissed it between the blue eyes. 'And now,' she said, sitting down
with it in her lap upon a long backless tapestry-cushioned seat of sandalwood
before the table and mirror, 'you were best go and make ready yourselves.
Zenianthe is dressed already: will help me do my hair.

The
peace of it!' she said, when they were alone, parting and combing the masses
of her hair with a golden comb: hair that was like to the pallid soul of gold
breathed into a mist at the foot of some waterfall. Tt is most strange calm
weather, cousin: i' the court, I mean.'

'Peace?'
said Zenianthe, fingering the jewels on the table. 'Well, for a fortnight:
since Lessingham's killing of those five, and the hubble-bubble that that made,
and your making the whole pack of 'em lodge henceforth without Teremne;
certainly it is more peacefuller now.'

'Ah,
but I meant from our own folk,' said Antiope. 'Bodenay; old Madam Tasmar; our
vulpine friend Romyrus; they let me have my way now. Do they give me line, but
the readlier to pluck me in? I know them too well, my puss,' she said, stroking
it: 'twisty plots, but little sense. No, I am sure 'tis this: they are
altogether carried by this man; and being by him taught sense, let me alone to
go my ways. And for that,' she said, meeting Zenianthe's eyes in the glass with
a most limpid, unconscious, and merry look, 'I am much beholden to him, and but
wish he'd a come here sooner.'

'Must
this Derxis be at your festivities to-night?' Zenianthe asked. 'Planted near
two months, he begins to take root I think in Rialmar. Will you wear your
sapphire comb, cousin, or the turkey-stone to go with your gown? or will you
have your hair low on the neck and no comb at all?'

'I'll
have the little half-moon crown of flower-delices, and do it the Greek way, and
with those long strings of margarets you did give me, dear cousin.' She was
silent a minute, a dimple coining and going near to her mouth's corner. Then,
'Must have been wormwood in his mouth, that business of Alquemen.'

'These
little margarets tangle in your hair, cousin, as if they were fain to wind
cocoons in it and sleep themselves into fire-flies, or whatever 'tis
margaret-chains turn to after their sleep.'

'White
moths,' said the Queen: 'owly faces and furry wings.'

Zenianthe
said, 'Methought I never saw so delicate playing as my Lord Lessingham's, when
you did send for him after that affair, 'pon Derxis's complaint, and did confront
them. So penitent and good as he bore himself toward the king, so's who could
take exceptions at it? And yet never to leave you in doubt, cousin, that he
knew your mind and purpose; as if he should look through his fingers and wink
at it. Faith, I near gave away all by laughing, 'twas so pretty. So remorseful,
cousin: "Yes, now 'twas put so, he did see indeed 'twas hardly to be
pardoned: kill five of the king's men, and all in five minutes. And yet might
he be indulged a little for ignorance sake; for truly he had not understood
till now that Derxis, as a royal person, had free licence to set men in the
dark under archways to kill and murder whom he pleased while guesting here in
Rialmar."'

Antiope
smiled. 'And there the other walked so neatly into it.'

'Yes,'
said Zenianthe. ' "By my soul, madam, I had nought i' the world to do with
it!" And then you, so sweet and harmless, "O I see, sir, then 'twas
not upon your business they went then?" And while he felt about for firm
ground then Lessingham again, most courtly and submissive, remembering Derxis
of that former passage with Alquemen (I was the distressed lady there, cousin:
the beast had laughed when Derxis did me that insolency). Precious heaven! I
near burst myself keeping of my face, thinking (while Lessingham discoursed so
formal and serious) of the true tale we had had of that encounter: of his
snicking of the beastly fellow's wrist at the third pass and flicking the sword
from his hand, contemptuous as dust away a fly: and this their notable great
duellist with twenty men's deaths to's credit: and then,' she lowered her
voice, that shook with suppressed merriment: 'and then making him put offs
breeches, and slashing 'em to ribbons, and then bid him go in that pickle, and
learn when and when not to laugh from henceforth—'

'O
Zenianthe!' said the Queen.

'And
then you,' said Zenianthe: ' "O, I'm sorry, sir. I understand. You are as
blameless as I am in these mischances. This Alquemen of yours I see hath broke
leash, run past your controlling, and 'twas he, not you, did fee these ruffians
to sit for my officer to perform his death. Shall I punish him for you?"
Cousin, I never saw man so angry, nor so checkmated. Worst of all, when, 'pon
pretext to avoid such pothers from henceforth, you did decree them all lodging
henceforth without Teremne.'

Her
hair being done, Antiope stood up now. 'What's good in Lessingham is right
sense,' she said, 'and a wit so turnable for all things alike. What needs
doing, this man doth it, and that often even before I knew I needed it. And
best of all, a man that stands on's own feet in's own place. Not with your own
self, cousin, was I ever more at ease; that I can talk to as 'twere my brother,
and never shadow nor taint of that folly that ruineth all."

The
princess was silent. She fetched from the bed a girdle which Antiope now put
on, of clouded pink tourmalines; and after that her outer dress of white
crinkled silken gauze, transparent as an April shower. Little blue flowers of
the squill and the blue-bell were worked on it here and there, and little
specks of gold. Soft it was, fitting itself to every movement, even as
loveliness itself. And about her delicate neck was a ruff, heart-shaped,
open-cut, edged with pearls, going down to a point between her breasts where
it was fastened with a flower-delice of little diamonds, so fine that it seemed
to be made of mere light. 'As for this tedious king,' she said, ‘I have in mind
a way to rid us of him tonight, if aught may rid him.'

'What
is that?'

'O,
a nice and courteous point of precedence I am minded to show him. You shall
see.'

'And
but only this morning,' said Zenianthe behind her, setding the ruff, 'you did
directly refuse, the third time, his offer of marriage. Poor king, he must be
most pitifully fallen into your highness' toils.'

"Poor
king. Well, shall I take him after all, Zenianthe? For indeed I am sorry for
him. And indeed I find him most displeasing. And indeed it is pitiful to
consider of a person so lost in the world: pleasing of himself, but displeasing
of all other. Well, then, shall I take him then?— 'Las, cousin, you must not
prick me with that pin so!'

The
great Hall of the Sea-horses in the royal palace in Rialmar was shaped like a
cross: a square central hall and four others, lower of roof, opening upon it:
and each of these five was well thirty paces either way. The walls were
panelled with green jasper between pillars of lapis lazuli. At the northern
end, facing the main doors, was a staircase all of jasper; a broad flight
leading down to the floor of the northern hall, and side-flights branching up
right and left from it to the gallery. Windows, five times the height of a man,
filled all the space upon the end walls east and west; in the west, the moon at
this time looked in, three days old, a reaping-hook of silver fire. The main
doors were in the southern side of the southern hall: doorways with pointed
arches, and the doors all covered with leather of peacock blue, nailed all over
with golden stars, and edged with rims of rose-pink crystal. The roofs of the
side-halls were flat, of a dark stone full of fiery sparkles. Slender jasper columns,
two rows down the middle of each hall, dividing it so into three aisles, bare
up the ceilings. But of the main middle hall the roof was domed and exceeding
high, and the whole floor of the middle hall empty and without pillars.
Curtains or hangings of tapestry came down from the dome and, looped up at
each corner at the level of the frieze, tumbled thence in billowy masses upon
the floor: all of dusky stuff that showed blues or greens as the light moved or
the eye that beheld them, and with streamed stripes of ultramarine, and roses
worked in pink silk here and there, and at the converging of the stripes or
streamers, bosses, broader than a man's arms might span, of cushioned black
silk, sewn with vast sunflowers in gold thread. One enormous lamp swung high
in the dome, of silver and topaz and yellow sapphires, shedding a radiance very
warm and golden: and everywhere, suspended by iron chains, were censers of
bronze hammered and damascened, some in green and white enamel, some dusky
bronze, some lacquered red, and in the chains were flowers twined and the
verdure of creeping plants and leaves and fruits. Alternating with the
censers, scores of small hanging lamps burned with a rose-red light. The floor
was of inlaid work of rare and sweet-smelling woods, divers-coloured, but with
a general show of redness, bare in the main middle hall for dancing, but with
crimson carpets in the four outer halls. And at the ends of the balustrades of
that great staircase where it came upon the floor, (and from these had the hall
its name), were two sea-horses rampant, with webbed feet and finny wings and
scaly fish-like bodies with fishes' tails. Bigger they were than the biggest
horse that ever went upon the earth, and were carved each from a single stone
of sea-blue rock-crystal.

Amid
this magnificance hundreds of guests were now assembled to rejoice upon Queen
Antiope's eighteenth birthday. And as they walked and mingled, it was as the
shining forth of the sun after long and heavy rain, when the beams suck up from
a wet hedge of box or yew a mist that shimmers with rainbow colours, and the
drops upon the leaves change, as the wind shakes them, from emerald to
amethyst, from that to ruby, from ruby to liquid gold. King Derxis, surveying
the scene with the look of one that has yet in his mouth the taste of a sour
mixture, stood with his folk in the main hall. Some saluted him with a formal
respect as they passed by^ more went about some other way; none joined his
company. Every while, the furrow betwixt his brows knit at the sight of some
young lord of Fingiswold or some proper man among the company; but his eyes
turned oftenest towards the stairs. 'Rialmar fashions,' he said under his
breath at last. 'I am nigh sickened of these meant discourtesies. The bitch!
am I her monkey to be led in a string? Esperveris!' he said, aloud.

'Humbly
to your highness' wish.'

'Send
in another messenger. Say the King of Akkama tarrieth, and 'tis not our custom
to wait on women
's
leisures.

'Hold
thee. Send not.' Esperveris turned back. 'I've changed my mind.' Esperveris,
bowing his obedience, had in his eyes that brightened cringing look (seen
before in the little garden), of a man that has seen a sight behind the veil.

And
now, turning to look towards the eastern doors, Derxis set eye for the first
time that evening upon Lessingham, where he talked with old Bodenay and the
Lord Romyrus, Constable in Rialmar, and some young lords about him, Orvald,
Venton, and Tyarchus, and ladies besides, the Countess Heterasmene, Myrilla,
daughter to the^ lord Admiral Jeronimy, and others. Gay and easy seemed
Lessingham, and it was plain how their conversation danced to his tune and
opened under his presence as flowers to a warm sun. His attire was of great
richness and darkness: blacks and deep indigo blues, with figurings of silver
trefoils. He wore a narrow three-double ruff, and ruffs at the wrists besides,
below cuffs of silver lace. But a single jewel he wore, of the kingly order of the
hippogriff, about his neck; and upon his thumb a ring in the figure of that
worm
ouroboros,
that eateth his own tail.