Mistress of mistresses (35 page)

Not
with the flicker of muscle nor eyelash did the countenance of Derxis uncover his
mind as he, for a full minute, steadfastly regarded Lessingham across the
hall. Then in that chill unruffled lady-like voice he said to Orynxis, taking
his arm, 'Behold yonder woman-server, come to ruffian it out in the company of
his betters. A soldier of fortune: hireth out his sword, and body too, for
trash. How call you such an one, Orynxis?'

'So
please your grace, how but shortly thus?' answered Orynxis: 'a male harlot.'

'O
sweet and excellent!' said Derxis. 'Go, tell him so, from me.'

His
eyes, like pebbles, rested upon Orynxis, noting how the blood shrank, leaving
the brutal face white and pappy, then rushed to it once more as under the lash
of shame: noting the fumbling of irresolute fingers for the sword-hilt that was
not there, for no man was admitted armed to that presence. Squaring his
shoulders, Orynxis began to go, as a condemned man towards the beheading-block.
The king stayed him with his hand. "Thou fool,' he said, and there was a
muted evil music of laughter in his voice that cut like the east wind: 'shall I
unfeather me of all my friends, aids, and helps, because you are like pilled
rabbits when't cometh to facing this bloody bully? Alquemen could eat up two
such as thou: yet did not this fellow whip him? As I'll whip this puling girl,
might I but come at her i' the happy occasion and where I would. Whip her flesh
till the blood spurt.'

Almost
in manner of a royal progress was Lessingham's passage among the guests: not by
his doing, for he seemed ever as a man whose thoughts and looks went outwards,
not busied with his own self. But, as the lily of the compass is turned always
towards the pole, so of that throng of great court-men and ladies in their
summer beauty and others of worship from up and down the land, were eyes turned
towards him. 'So you live not always upon gondolas or islands?' said a light
bantering voice at his elbow. He looked down into beady eyes whose strange shy
gaze captured the gaze that looked on them, allowing it no liberty to look well
at the face that owned them.

'My
pleasure is my power to please my mistress
My
power is my pleasure in that power.—

Are
you still so roundabout in your philosophy, my Lord Lessingham?'

'I
had thought, madam,' said he, bowing over her small hand, gloved to above the
elbow in velvet-soft brown leather that had the sharp sweet smell of summer evenings
amid rush-grown sleepy waters, 'that I had demonstrated to you that 'twas a
philosophy agreeable to extreme directness of practice. May I have the honour
to tread a measure with you when the music shall begin?'

'Please
you, I'll be asked rather when that time shall come,' she replied. ‘I know not
yet what orders have gone forth for to-night. Care not, my lord: once had, you
cannot lose me.' As she spoke, the brown paw had slipped from his fingers, and
she in her brown fur-trimmed gown was lost among the press, as if she had slid
noiselessly into water, and no ripple left behind.

Lessingham,
under a singular unseizable exhilaration of spirit, looked round for her awhile
in vain, then went on his way. It was as if the bright lights of that hall
burned brighter, and as if secret eyes watched from the lamps themselves, and
from the hangings and from the golden chapiters of the pillars, and from the
walls themselves: a thousand eyes, unseen, that watched and waited on some
event. Lessingham, stroking his black beard, bethought him that he had drunk no
wine: bethought him then that wine has no effects like these. For now a
tranquillity possessed him, and a clarity of thought and vision; wherein, as
he looked round upon all that company, he was aware of a new grandeur come upon
them. Zenianthe, passing through the hall, acknowledged his salutation: it
seemed to him that he beheld for the first time her beauty, of her that he had
thought but a princess among princesses, but clothed now with the perfection of
the ancient earth, as on the hills shepherds trample the hyacinth under foot,
and the, flower darkens on the ground. A change, not of the like quality yet of
like measure, was come upon a hundred fair women that he now gazed on, so that
they seemed like Galateas in marble quickened to a cold stately movement of
life and breathing: statuesque presences of nymphs, or of persons half divine,
brqught back to the visitations of the common earth, and that September
evening, and the young moon setting. Yet had this alteration no character of
dream nor vision: it was a hardening rather of sensual solid fact, as if some
breath had passed, blowing away all dissembling mists and exhalations and
leaving naked the verity of things. Lessingham now, without surprise, met,
levelled at him from the re-entrant corner of the southern hall to the right
of the seahorse staircase, the unblinking, cat-like, stare of his oread lady,
Anthea. In her, as flame held in flame remains flame still, he beheld no
change. Making his way towards her, he walked across that very place where
Derxis and his gentlemen were standing: walked indeed through the midst of
them, knowing not that he did so, nor that they in angry astonishment gave back
right and left to let him pass. For they, under that alteration, were become so
unremarkable that he did not, for the while, perceive their presence.

But
ere, with mind a-surge now from memories of past love-sports in Ambremerine and
lately in Laimak, he might come within speaking-distance of that lady, seven
silver trumpets blew to a sennet, and upon the first blast was every person .in
that great hall stood still, and all eyes turned to the staircase. And now in a
silence, under the shadowy splendours of the looped hangings and betwixt those
mighty sea-horses, Queen Antiope came down the mid stairway and, upon the last
step, stood still.

The
silence broke with a stir of soft music. Guests of honour were marshalled and
presented before the Queen, to kiss hands upon her birthday: King Derxis first.
Lessingham, from his place a little removed upon the left or eastern side,
noted her face as Derxis, with a flowSry ceremony, lifted her hand: her eyes
caught Lessingham's in a private interchange, too slight for any else to detect
it, of comic intelligence and resignation.

Upon
the ending of these formalities, came a dozen waiting-men and spread a little
carpet of black velvet with selvage of silver a few paces forward from the foot
of the stairs, and set upon it a chair of mother-of-pearl and ivory. Thither
came the Queen now, still in her cloak of dull cloth of silver, gleaming to all
greys, and four little boys to bear up the train behind her, and sat in that
chair, and her ladies of presence took place behind her and upon either side.
Derxis came and stood at her right hand. She gave him short answers, and spoke
most to Zenianthe upon her left. The company now danced the sarabande; and in
this had Lessingham Madam Campaspe to his partner. Derxis craved the honour to
dance it with the Queen. She answered, it was custom for her to dance but in
the pavane only, since that was their royal dance. Derxis asked when would the
pavane begin. She answered, 'When I shall give order for it.' He prayed her then
give order now, soon as this dance was done, and so ease his impatient
longings. 'If this can any way oblige you,' she said, "tis a simple matter
to do it;' and bade her sergeant of arms see it given forth accordingly.

As
the last majestic chords of the sarabande grated, on the strings, and the
dancers paused and sundered, Lessingham said to his Campaspe, 'Dear mistress of
still waters and sallows and moonshine, may we dance again? The third from
this, or what, will you grant me? Or, for your warm darknesses have charms
beyond these bright lights, shall's walk then in a little garden I can find for
you, where a statue of the blessed Goddess Herself stands amid water and
lily-flowers?'

'So's
there you may explore again the mysteries of divine philosophy?' she said,
laughing in his eyes. 'As upon Ambremerine? But I'll be asked later. Nay, I'll
not play kiss-and-begone, my lord. Nor I'll not nurse it against you if you
find other 'ployment when the time comes. For indeed,' she said, very
prim-mouthed and proper, her soft arm touching his above the elbow as she with
tiny gloved fingers settled the pins in a loosening plait of her dark hair,
'the part, as we know, is but part of the whole.'

Mistress
Anthea he now claimed for his partner in the stately pavane, kissing her hand
(the nails whereof he noted were polished and sharpened to claw-like points)
and looking across it as he did so, from under his brows, into her yellow
lynx-like eyes: beacons that he had ere now learned well to steer by, into
enchanted and perilous seas wherein he had approved her to be a navigator both
practised and of adventurous resource. But, 'Madam,' he heard a man's voice
say at his side; 'I pray you pardon me.' Then, 'My Lord Lessingham, her serene
highness desireth your presence.'

'Madam,'
said Lessingham, 'there's a sovereignty ruleth here higher than even yours,
that you must let your servant go when that biddeth. Strengthen me to my duty
by saying I may find you anon?'

'Why,
here speaks a mortal truer than he knows,' said she, and the cold classic
features of her fair face were chilled yet the more for a certain disdain. 'It
must ever be an honour to me to be to your excellence—what was't you told the
learned doctor?—a "pleasurable interlude"? But indeed, to-night there
are changes in the air; and, were I you, my Lord Lessingham, I would not reckon
too far ahead. Not to-night, I think.' The upright slits narrowed in her eyes
that seemed to plunge into his own and read his thought there, and find there
matter of entertainment. Then she laughed: then turned from him.

Lessingham,
smoothing his tumbled thoughts and stifling in his mind, as he walked, his
discontent and his disappointed designs, threaded his way in the wake of the
Queen's chamberlain through couples that stood forth now for the pavane, and so
came before the Queen. She, at that instant rising from her pearly chair, let
fall her cloak that the little pages received as it left her shoulders, and so
stood in her rich and lovely dress, mistinesses of silver and rose and faintest
blue, like the new morning sky in gentle summer weather; and nobly she carried
about her shoulders that which, of all raiment worn by woman, is test of a
noble carriage: a shawl, of blue pale gauze, sprinkled with little diamonds and
edged with a fringe of rose-pink silk. The stringed instruments began now,
preluding in parts. Lessingham read in her eye swift advertisement, sudden and
gone as he made his obeisance, that here was somewhat he must swiftly do for
her, and be ready upon the instant to note and act it. Derxis, upon her right,
turned to her with proffered arm. She, as if not seeing it, looked round upon
Lessingham. 'Sir,' said she, 'you do here in person represent the Lord
Protector, who is to me
in
loco parentis.
In that quality
pray you take place of honour in this company, and lead on for the pavane.'

Derxis,
watching them go, stood rigid while a man might count ten. Amaury, chancing to
pass at that moment with the Lady Myrilla on his arm, saw the look in the
king's eye, and, seeing it, felt a sudden deadly weakness catch him behind the
knees. Lessingham, too, had sight of that look: the Queen was ware of a sudden
stiffening of the strong arm where her own hand rested. For even as the gentle
voice of that young prince if he were angry, so now in his countenance, pale as
ashes, and in his eyes, was something, a tang, a menace, a half-raised mask,
that even a brave man might sicken at, as if in the apprehended waiting
presence of the damnablest of all Furies found in hell.

When
Amaury, after a minute, had mastered his senses to look again, Derxis, and his
lords with him, was gone from the hall.

Above
measured beats, plucked, throbbing slow, from the strings of the bass viols,
came now the melody of the pavane, like the unrolling of the pageant of dawn
when vast clouds, bodied forth from the windy canopy of night, ride by in
smouldering splendours; and the splendours take fire, and in the glimpses qf
the sky, rain-washed, purer than dew or awakening airs upon the hill-tops,
comes the opal morn; even as that, was this music of the pavane. Lessingham,
treading its rhythm with the Queen's hand in his, beheld, as a man folded ever
deeper in contemplation, Anthea's face, and after a while Campaspe's, as they
passed in the dance: the one cameo-like in its setting of sun-bright hair; the
other the face of some little fieldish thing with features gathered to a
strange charm, not beautiful but akin to beauty, by beady and coal-black eyes.
In both faces he noted an air as if they, knowing somewhat, took a secret
delicate delight both in it and in him and his unknowingness.

He
looked at the Queen. On her face no such mystery sat. Only she smiled at him
with her eyes. He bethought him of that Lady Fiorinda, Barganax's lover: in no
woman's eyes save hers had he met, and now in Antiope's, that look of
friendship familiar, mere, unalloyed, unconscious, fancy-free, as of his own
inward self companioning him from withoutward.

Then,
while their eyes rested in that untroubled regard, as adrift together upon some
surgeless sea of quiet rest, suddenly he, for the first time, was ware of that
music. Like a spate roaring down from some water-spout among hills it thundered
upon his inner sense, blinded him, drowned him under. Well he remembered now
this music, with its deep-plucked throbbing beats, above which the melody
walked singing, and the thing desirable beyond all the stars of heaven
trailing in its train. He looked at Antiope as he had looked, in Ambremerine,
at that night-piece, of Fiorinda with glow-worms in her hair. For a moment it
was again as it then had been: her face was to him unseeable: nought save the
outshowering of spears of many lights and hues of fires. A chill-cold shivering
took him. But then, in memory he heard, as it had been in very presence, the
lazy caress of that voice that had seemed to play with time and the world and
love and change and eternity as with a toy: /
think you will find there that which you seek:
north, in Rialmar;
and
with that, as with the sudden opening of a window in heaven, he saw the~ Queen
truly, as in that dream in Acrozayana he had first seen her, and, for a second
time, when he walked like a sleep-walker onto Barganax's swordpoint. Almost, it
may be, as a God sees her, he saw her now; with eyes refined to look on the
world new born. He knew her. The web of memories which, with his first coming
up to Rialmar, had been torn up and scattered, was on the sudden whole again,
so that, remembering, he recognized beyond peradventure too her voice: that
voice which had spoken on that May night in Mornagay, unknown, yet beyond
peradventure his: his beyond all familiar things, speaking, closer than blood
or sinew, out of the abysses within his mind, while, with the meditation of
bubbles mounting for ever through golden wine, his thought had hung like a
kestrel stilled against the wind:
Be
content. I have promised and I will perform.