Mistress of mistresses (7 page)

The
Duke laughed lightly. 'Why there was good in that, too. Some drowsy beast
within me roused himself and suddenly started up, making himself a horror to
himself, and, now the blood's cooled, happily sleeps again.'

"Sleeps!'
Fiorinda said. Her lip curled.

'Come,'
said the Duke. 'What shall it be then? Inspire my invention. Entertain 'em all to
a light collation and, by cue taken at the last kissing-cup, let split their
weasands,. stab 'em all in a moment? Your noble brother amongst them, 'tis to
be feared, madam; since him, with a bunch of others, I am to thank for these
beggar-my-neighbour sleights and cozenage beyond example. Or shall't be a grand
night-piece of double fratricide? yours and mine, spitted on one spit like a
brace of woodcock? We can proceed with the first to-day: for the other, well,
I'll think on't.'

'Are
you indeed that prince whom reputation told me of,' said she, 'that he which
did offend you might tremble with only thinking of it? And now, as hares pull
dead lions by the beard—'

The
Duke swung away from her a step or two, then back, like a caged beast. His brow
was thunderous again. 'Ever going on beyond your possession,' he said, 'beyond
your bounds. Tis well I am of
a
cool judgement. There*s more in't than hold up my
hand, or whistle in my fist Content you that I have some noble great design on foot,
which in good time shall prove prodigious to 'em all: and once holding good my
advantage over them,
in
their fall I'll tempt the destinies.'

With
an infinite slow feline grace she lifted up her head: her nostrils widening,
the flicker of
a
smile
on her parted lips: from beneath the shadow of long black lashes, half-moons of
green lambent fire beheld him steadily. 'You must not speak to me as if I were
a
child or an animal,* she said. 'Will you swear me
all this?'

'No,'
answered he. 'But you may look back and consider of time past: I have been so
sparing to promise, that (as your ladyship will bear me out) I have ever paid
more than either I promised or was due.'

'Well,'
she said: 'I am satisfied.'

'I
must to the throne-room,' said the Duke. "Tis
an
hour past the hour of audience, and I would not
hold 'em too long tarrying for me; 'tis an unhandsome part, and I use it but to
curb the insolencies of some we spoke on.' The Lady Fiorinda gave him at arm
's
length her white hand: he bowed over it and raised
it to his lips. Standing erect again, still unbormeted before her, lie rested
his eyes upon her
a
moment in silence, then with
a
step nearer bent to her ear: 'Do you remember the
Poetess, madam?—

Once
more Love, the limb-loosener, shaketh me:

Bitter-sweet,
the dread Worm ineluctable.

As
if spell-bound under the troublous sweet hesitation of the choriambics, she
listened, very
still.
Very
still,
and dreamily, and
with
so
soft
an intonation that the words
seemed
but to
take
voiceless
shape
on her ambrosial breath, she answered,
like
an echo:

'It
is my birthday, I am reminded,' said the Duke in the same whispered quietness.
'Will your ladyship do me the honour to sup with me to-night, in my chamber in
the western tower that looks upon the lake, at sunset?'

There
was no smile on that lady's lips. Slowly, her eyes staring into his, she bent
her head. Surely all of enchantment and of gold that charged the air of that
garden, its breathless promise, its storing and its brooding, distilled like
the perfume of a dark red rose, as 'Yes,' she said. 'Yes.'

III

The Tables Set in Meszrza

PRESENCE-CHAMBER
IN ACROZAYANA
  
THE HIGH ADMIRAL
JERONIMY
  
THE LORD CHANCELLOR
BEROALD
  
CARES THAT RACK GREAT STATESMEN
  
THE BASTARD OF FINGISWOLD
  
EARL RODER
 
CONFERENCE IN THE DUKE'S CLOSET
  
KING STYLLIS'S TESTAMENT
  
RAGE OF
THE DUKE
  
THE VICAR SUSPECTED
KING-KILLER
  
LEAGUE TO UPHOLD THE
TESTAMENT.

Meanwhile
,
for nearly two hours in the great throne-room in Zayana had the presence begun to
fill against the Duke's appearing. Now the fashion of that hall was that it was
long, of a hundred cubits the length thereof and the breadth forty cubits. The
walls were of pale hammered mountain gold, rough with an innumerable variety of
living things graven some in large some in little, both hairy kinds and
feathered, and scaly kinds both of land and sea, oftenest by twos and twos with
their children beside their nests or holes, and the flowers, fruits, leaves,
herbs and water-weeds native to each kind winding in the interspaces with a
conceited formal luxuriance. Massy columns, four times a man's height, of
carved black onyx with milky veins, made caryatides in form of monstrous
snakes, nine lengthwise of the hall on either side and four at either end.
These supported on their hooded heads a frieze of tesselated jet four cubits
deep, whereon were displayed poppies and blooms of the aloe and the forgetful
lotus, all in a cool frail loveliness of opals and
rose-coloured sapphires as for their several blooms
and petals, and as for their stalks and leaves of green marmolite and
chalcedony. Above this great flowered frieze the roof was pitched in a vault of
tracery work of ivory and gold, so wrought that in the lower ranges near the
frieze the curls and arabesques were all of gold, then higher a little mingling
of ivory, and so more and more ivory and the substance of the work more and
more fine and airy; until in the highest all was but pure ivory only, and its
woven filaments of the fineness of hairs to look upon, seen at that great
height, and as if a sudden air or a word too roughly spoken should be enough to
break a framework so unsubstantial and blow it clean away. In the corners of
the hall stood four tripods of dull wrought gold ten cubits in height, bearing
four shallow basins of pale moonstone. In those basins a child might have
bathed, so broad they were, and brimming all with sweet scented essences, attar
of roses and essences of the night-lily and the hyperborean eglantine, and
honey-dew from the glades beyond Ravary; and birds of paradise, gold-capped,
tawny-bodied, and with black velvet throats that scintillated with blue and
emerald fire, flitted still from basin to basin, dipping and fluttering,
spilling and spreading the sweet perfumes. The hall was paved all over with
Parian marble in flags set lozenge-wise, and" pink topaz insets in the
joints; and at the northern end was the ducal throne upon a low dais of the
same marble, and before the dais, stretching the whole width of the hall, a fair
great carpet figured with cloud-shapes and rainbow-shapes and comets and birds
of passage and fruits and blossoms and living things, all of a dim shifting
variety of colours, pale and unseizable like moonlight, which character came of
its cunning weaving of silks and fine wools and intermingling of gold and
silver threads in warp and woof. The throne itself was without ornament,
plainly hewn from a single block of stone, warm grey to look on with veins of a
fighter hue here and there, and here and there a shimmer as of silver in the
texture of the stone; and that stone was dream-stone, a thing beyond price,
endowed with hidden virtues. But from behind, uplifted like the wings of a
wild-duck as it settles on the water, great wings shadowed the dream-stone; they
sprang twenty cubits high from base to the topmost feather, and made all of
gold, each particular feather fashioned to the likeness of nature that it was a
wonder to look upon, and yet with so much awfulness of beauty and shadowing
grace in the grand uprising of the wings as made these small perfections seem
but praise and worship of the principal design which gave them their life and
which from them took again fulfilment. Thousands of-thousands of tiny precious
stones of every sort that grows in earth or sea were inlaid upon those mighty
wings, incrusting each particular quill, each little barb of each feather, so
that to a man moving in that hall and looking upon the wings the glory
unceasingly changed, as new commixtures of myriad colours and facets caught and
threw back the light And, for all this splendour, the very light in the
throne-room was, by art of Doctor Vandermast, made misty and glamorous:
brighter than twilight, gentler than the cold beams of the moon, as if the
light itself were resolved into motes of radiance which, instead of darting
afar, floated like snow-flakes, invisible themselves but bathing all else with
their soft effulgence. For there was in all that spacious throne-room not a
shadow seen, nor any sparkle of over-brilliance, only everywhere that veiling
glamour.

Twenty-five
soldiers of the Duke's bodyguard were drawn up beside the throne on either
hand. Their byrnies and greaves were of black iron, and they were weaponed with
ponderous double-edged two-handed swords. Each man carried his helm in the
crook of his left arm, for it was unlawful even for a man-at-arms to appear
covered in that hall: none might so appear, save the Duke alone. They were all
picked men for strength and stature and fierceness; the head of every man of them
was shaven smooth like an egg, and every man had a beard, chestnut-red, that
reached to his girdle. Save these soldiers only, the company came not beyond
the fair carpet's edge that went the width of the hall before the throne; for
this was the law in Zayana, that whosoever, unbidden of the Duke, should set
foot upon that carpet should lose nothing but his life.

But
in the great spaces of the hall below the carpet was such a company of noble
persons walking and discoursing as any wise man should take pure joy to look
upon: great states of Meszria all in holiday attire; gentlemen of the Duke's
household, and of Memison; courtmen and captains out of Fingiswold holden to
the lord Admiral's service or the Chancellor's or Earl Roder's, that triple
pillar of the great King's power in the south there, whereby he had in his
life-days and by his politic governance not so much held down faction and
discontents as not suffered them be thought on or take life or being. But now,
King Mezentius dead, his lawful son sudden where he should be wary, fumbling
where he should be resolute; his bastard slighted and set aside and likely (in
common opinion) to snatch vengeance for it in some unimagined violence; and
last, his Vicar in the midland parts puffed up like a deadly adder ready to
strike, but at whom first none can say: these inconveniences shook the royal
power in Meszria, patently, for even a careless eye to note, even here in Duke
Barganax's presence-chamber.

A
bevy of young lords of Meszria, standing apart under the perfume tripod in the
south-eastern corner whence they might at leisure view all that came in by the
great main doors at the southern end, held light converse. Said one of them,
'Here comes my lord Admiral.'

'Ay,'
said another, 'main means of our lingering consumption: would the earth might
gape for him.'

'Nay,'
said a third, that was Melates of Vashtola, 'I do love my Jeronimy as I love a
young spring sallet: cold and safe. I will not have you blame him. Do but look:
as puzzled as a cod-fish! For fancy's passion, spit upon him. Nay, Roder and
Beroald are the prime blood-suckers, not he.'

'Speak
lower,' said the Lord Barrian, he that spoke first; ‘there's jealous ears
pricked all-wheres.'

With
a grave salutation they greeted the High Admiral, who with a formal bow passed
on. He was somewhat heavy of build, entered a little into the decline of years;
his pale hair lay lankish on the dome of his head, his pale blue eyes were
straight and honest; the growth of his beard was thin, straggling over the
great collar and badge of the kingly order of the hippogriff that he wore about
his neck; the whole aspect of the man melancholy, and as if strained with
half-framed resolutions and wishes that give the wall to fears. Yet was the man
of a presence that went beyond his stature, which was but ordinary; as if there
hung upon him some majesty of the King's power he wielded, of sufficiency (at
least in trained and loyal soldiery under arms) to have made a fair adventure
to unseat the Duke upon Acrozayana, red-bearded bodyguard and all.