Mistress of mistresses (5 page)

I
*A
Spring Night in Mornagay

a commission of peril
 
the three kingdoms masterless 
 
policy of the vicar
 
the promise heard in zimiamvia.

*By
all
accounts, 'twas to give him line only,' said Amaury; 'and if King Mezentius had
lived, would have been war between them this summer. Then he should have been
boiled in his own syrup; and 'tis like danger now, though smaller, to cope the
son. You do forget your judgement, I think, in this single thing, save which I
could swear you are perfect in all things.'

Lessingham
made no answer. He was gazing with a strange intentness into the wine which brimmed
the crystal goblet in his right hand. He held it up for the bunch of candles
that stood in the middle of the table to shine through, turning the endless
stream of bubbles into bubbles of golden fire. Amaury, half facing him on his
right, watched him. Lessingham set down the goblet and looked round at him with
the look of a man awaked from sleep.

'Now
I've angered you,' said Amaury. 'And yet, I said but true.'

As
a wren twinkles in and out in a hedge-row, the demurest soft shadow of
laughter came and went in Lessingham's swift grey eyes. 'What, were you reading
me good counsel? Forgive me, dear Amaury: I lost the thread on't You were
talking of my cousin, and the great King, and might-a-beens; but I was fallen
a-dreaming and marked you not'

Amaury
gave him a look, then dropped his eyes. His thick eyebrows that were the colour
of pale rye-straw frowned and bristled, and beneath the sunburn his face,
clear-skinned as a girl's, flamed scarlet to the ears and hair-roots, and he
sat sulky, his hands thrust into his belt at either side, his chin buried in
his ruff. Lessingham, still leaning on his left elbow, stroked the black curls
of his mustachios and ran a finger slowly and delicately over the jewelled
filigree work of the goblet's feet. Now and again he cocked an eye at Amaury,
who at last looked up and their glances met. Amaury burst out laughing. Lessingham
busied himself still for a moment with the sparkling, rare, and
sunset-coloured embellishments of the goldsmith's art, then, pushing the cup from
him, sat back. 'Out with it,' he said; ' 'tis shame to plague you.
_v
Let me know what it is, and if it be in my nature I'll be schooled/

'Here
were comfort,' said Amaury; 'but that I much fear 'tis your own nature I would
change.'

'Well,
that you will never do,' answered he.

'My
lord,' said Amaury, 'will you resolve me this: Why are we here? What waiting
for?’What intending?'

Lessingham
stroked his beard and smiled.

Amaury
said. 'You see, you will not answer. Will you answer this, then: It is against
the nature of you not to be rash, and against the condition of rashness not to
be 'gainst all reason; yet why, (after these five years that I've followed you
up and down the world, and seen you mount so swiftly the degrees and steps of
greatness that, in what courts or princely armies soever you might be come, you
stuck in the eyes of all as the most choice jewel there): why needs must you,
with the wide world to choose from, come back to this land of Rerek, and, of
all double-dealers and secretaries of hell, sell your sword to the Vicar?'

'Not
sell, sweet Amaury,' answered Lessingham. *Lend Lend it in cousinly
friendship.'

Amaury
laughed. 'Cousinly friendship! Give us patience! With the Devil and him together
on either hand of you!' He leapt up, oversetting the chair, and strode to the
fireplace. He kicked the logs together with his heavy riding-boots, and the
smother of flame and sparks roared up the chimney. Turning about, his back to
the fire, feet planted wide, hands behind him, he said: 'I have you now in a
good mood, though 'twere over much to hope you reasonable. And now you shall
listen to me, for your good. You do know me: am I not myself by complexion subject
to hasty and rash motions? yet I it is must catch at your bridle-rein; for in
good serious earnest, you do make toward most apparent danger, and no tittle of
advantage to be purchased by it. Three black clouds moving to a point; and
here are you, in the summer and hunting-season of your youth, lying here with
your eight hundred horse these three days, waiting for I know not what cat to
jump, but (as you have plainly told me) of a most set obstinacy to tie yourself
hand and heart to the Vicar's interest. You have these three months been closeted
in his counsels: that I forget not. Nor will I misprise your politic wisdom:
you have played chess with the Devil ere now and given him stalemate. But
'cause of these very things, you must see the peril you stand in: lest, if by
any means he should avail to bring all things under his beck, he should then
throw you off and let you hop naked; or, in the other event, and his ambitious
thoughts should break his neck, you would then have raised up against yourself
most bloody and powerful enemies.

'Look
but at the circumstance. This young King Styllis is but a boy. Yet remember, he
is King_Mezentius' son; and men look not for lapdog puppies in the wolf’s lair,
nor for milksops to be bred up for heirship to the crown and kingdom of
Fingiswold. And he is come south not to have empty homage only from the regents
here and in Meszria, but to take power. I would not have you build upon the
Duke of Zayana's coldness to his young brother. True, in many families have
the bastards been known the greater spirits; and you did justly blame the young
King's handling of the reins in Meszria when (with a warmth from which his
brother could not but take cold) he seemed to embrace to his bosom the lord
Admiral, and in the same hour took away with a high hand from the Duke a great
slice of his appanage the King their father left him. But though he smart
under this neglect, 'tis not so likely he'll go against his own kindred, nor
even stand idly by, if it come to a breach 'twixt the King and the Vicar. What
hampers him to-day (besides his own easeful and luxurious idleness) is the
Admiral and those others of the King's party, sitting in armed power at every
hand of him in Meszria; but let the cry but be raised there of the King against
the Vicar, and let Duke Barganax but shift shield and declare himself of's
young brother's side, why then you shall see these and all Meszria stand in his
firm obedience. Then were your cousin the Vicar ta'en betwixt two millstones;
and then, where and in what case are you, my lord? And this is no fantastical
scholar's chop-logic, neither: 'tis present danger. For hath not he for weeks
now set every delay and cry-you-mercy and procrastinating stop and trick in the
way of a plain answer to the young King's lawful demand he should hand over
dominion unto him in Rerek?'

'Well,'
said Lessingham, 'I have listened most obediently. You have it fully: there's
not a word to which I take exceptions. Nay I admire it all, for indeed I told
you every word of it myself last night.'

'Then
would to heaven you'd be advised by't,' said Amaury. 'Too much light, I think,
hath made you moon-eyed.'

'Reach
me the map,' said Lessingham. For the instant there was a touch in the soft
bantering music of his voice as if a blade had glinted out and in again to its
velvet scabbard. Amaury spread out the parchment on the table, and they stood
poring over it. 'You are a wiser man in action, Amaury, in natural and present,
than in conceit; standing still, stirs your gall up: makes you see bugs and
hobthrushes round every corner. Am I yet to teach you I may securely dare what
no man thinks I would dare, which so by hardness becometh easy?'

Lessingham
laid his forefinger on this place and that while he talked. 'Here lieth young
Styllis with's main head of men, a league or more be-east of Hornmere. 'Tis
thither he hath required the Vicar come to him to do homage of this realm of
Rerek, and to lay in his hands the keys of Kessarey, Megra, Kaima, and
Argyanna, in which the King will set his own captains now. Which once accomplished,
he hath him harmless (so long, at least, as Barganax keep him at arm's length);
for in the south there they of the March openly disaffect him and incline to
Barganax, whose power also even in this northern ambit stands entrenched in's
friendship with Prince Ercles and with Aramond, spite of all supposed
alliances, respects, and means, which bind 'em tributary to the Vicar.

'But
now to the point of action; for 'tis needful you should know, since we must
move north by great marches, and that this very night. My noble cousin these
three weeks past hath, whiles he amused the King with's chaffer-talk of how and
wherefore, opened unseen a dozen sluices to let flow to him in Owldale men and
instruments of war, armed with which strong arguments (I have it by sure intelligence
but last night) he means to-morrow to obey the King's summons beside Hornmere.
And, for a last point of logic, in case there be falling out between the great
men and work no more for learned doctors but for bloody martialists, I am to
seize the coast-way 'twixt the Swaleback fells and Arrowfirth and deny 'em the
road home to Fingiswold.'

'Deny
him the road home?' said Amaury. ‘Tis war, then, and flat rebellion?'

"That's
as the King shall choose. And so, Amaury, about it straight. We must saddle an
hour before midnight.'

Amaury
drew in his breath and straightened his back. 'An hour to pack the stuff and
set all in marching trim: and an hour before midnight your horse is at the
door.' With that, he was gone.

Lessingham
scanned the map for yet a little while, then let it roll itself up. He went to
the window and threw it open. There was the breath of spring in the air and daffodil
scents: Sirius hung low in the south-west.

'Order
is ta'en according to your command,' said Amaury suddenly at his side. 'And
now, while yet is time to talk and consider, will you give me leave to speak?'

'I
thought you had spoke already,' said Lessingham, still at the window, looking
round at him. 'Was all that but the theme given out, and I must now hear point
counterpoint?'

'Give
me your sober ear, my lord, but for two minutes together. You know I am yours,
were you bound for the slimy strand of Acheron. Do but consider; I think you
are in some bad ecstasy. This is worse than all: cut the lines of the King's
communications northward, in the post of main danger, with so little a force,
and Ercles on your flank ready to stoop at us from his high castle of Eldir and
fling us into the sea.'

'That's
provided for,' said Lessingham: 'he's made friends with as for this time. Besides,
he and Aramond are the Duke's dogs, not the King's; 'tis Meszria, Zayana, all
their strings hold unto; north winds bring 'em the cough o' the lungs. Fear not
them.'

Amaury
came and leaned himself too on the window-sill, his left elbow touching Lessingham's.
After a while he said, low and as if the words were stones loosed up one by one
with difficulty from a stiff clay soil, ' 'Fore heaven, I must love you; and it
is a thing not to be borne that your greatness should be made but this man's
cat's-paw.'

Sirius,
swinging lower, touched the highest tracery of a tall ash-tree, went out like a
blown-out candle behind a branch, and next instant blazed again, a
quintessential point of diamond and sapphire and emerald and amethyst and
dazzling whiteness. Lessingham answered in a like low tone, meditatively, but
his words came light on an easy breath: 'My cousin. He is meat and drink to me.
I must have danger.'

They
abode silent at that window, drinking those airs more potent than wine, and
watching, with a deep compulsive sense of essence drawn to essence, that
star's shimmer of many-coloured fires against the velvet bosom of the dark;
which things drew and compelled their beings, as might the sweet breathing
nearness of a woman lovely beyond perfection and deeply beyond all soundings
desired. Lessingham began to say slowly, 'That was a strange trick of thought
when I forgot you but now, and forgot my own self too, in those bubbles which
in their flying upward signify not as the sparks, but that man is born for
gladness. For I thought there was a voice spake in my ear in that moment and I
thought it said,
I
have promised and I will perform.
And I thought it was familiar to me beyond all
familiar dear lost things. And yet 'tis a voice I swear I never heard before.
And like a star-gleam, it was gone.'

The
gentle night seemed to turn in her sleep. A faint drumming, as. of horse-hooves
far away, came from the south. Amaury stood up, walked over to the table, and
fell to looking at the map again. The beating of hooves came louder, then on a
sudden faint again. Lessingham said from the window, 'There's one rideth
hastily. Now a cometh down to the ford in Killary Bottom, and that's why we
lose the sound for awhile. Be his "answers never so good, let him not pass
nor return, but bring him to me.'