xii

Noble Kinsfnen in Laimak

 

THE VICAR'S DREAM  ARGUMENT OF MIDNIGHT  ADAMANT GRINDS ADAMANT  THE RIDER IN SADDLE AGAIN  'POLICY AND HER TRUE ASPECT'  NUPTIAL FLIGHT OF THE PEREGRINES  LESSINGHAM CAPTAIN-GENERAL  CONCEITS OF A LORD PROTECTOR  REVELRY; AND A MEETING AT DAWN  NORTH.

 

The Lord Horius Parry awoke between midnight and cock-crow, being troubled and vexed with a certain un-pleasing dream. And this was the beginning of his dream: that Gabriel sat at his knee reading in a book of the Iliad wherein was told the fate of the lady Simë that she was (and here Gabriel, not knowing the meaning of the Greek word, asked him the meaning.) And though upon waking he knew not the word, and knew besides that in the Iliad is no such tale and no such lady, it seemed to him in his dream that the word meant 'gutted like a dog.' Thereupon in his dream the Vicar was remembered of that old tale of Swanhild, Gudrun's daughter, wed in the old time to King Jormunrek, and by him, upon lying slanders of Bikki, adjudged to die and be trod with horses in the gate; but, for the loveliness of her eyes that looked upon them, the horses would not tread upon her, but still swerved and reared and spared her, until Bikki let do a sack about her head, hiding her eyes, and she was trodden so and so slain. And now was the dream troubled and made unclear, as a breeze ruffles water and does away the reflected shapes and colours; and when it cleared, there was a wide plain lay amid mountains, all in a summer's evening and pleasant sunshine air, and in the midst upon a little rise of ground a table, and before the table three thrones. And the Vicar thought he saw himself sitting upon the left-hand throne, and he thought he knew in his dream that he was a king; and the plain was filled with people assembled as for some occasion, and they waited there in silence in their multitude, innumerable as the sands of the sea. And the Vicar looked upon himself, upon the king, and saw that he was both in feature and in apparel like to the Assyrian kings in the great stone likenesses carved of them of old, and his beard long and tightly frizzed and curled, and his belted robe incrusted with every kind of precious stone, so that it glittered green and purple and with sparkles of fiery red; and he was cruel and fell to look upon, and with white glinting teeth. And behold there walked a woman before the thrones, fair as the moon, clothed in a like glittering garment as the king's; and he knew in his dream that this was that lady Sime, and when he beheld her steadfastly he saw (yet without mazement, as in dreams the singularest and superlative wonder, impossibilities and fictions beyond laughter, will seem but trivial and ordinary) that she was Lessingham. It seemed to him that this she Lessingham did obeisance to the king, and took her seat on the right-hand throne; and immediately upon the third throne he beheld the queen that sat there betwixt them, as it had been a queen of hell. She was attired in a like garment of precious stones; her hair was the colour of wet mud, her eyes like two hard pebbles, set near together, her nose straight and narrow, her lips thin and pale, her face a lean sneak-bill chitty-face; she had a waiting, triumphing look upon her face; and he loathed her. And now went men before the thrones, bearing on a great stand or easel a picture framed, and showed it to that bright lady; and it seemed to the Vicar that she gave a terrible cry and covered her eyes; and the men turned the picture that all might see, and he could not discern the picture to understand it; but only the writing upon it, in great letters: UT COMPRESSA PEREAT. And he thought the whole multitude in their thousands took up those words and howled them aloud with a howling like the howling of wolves. And he shouted and leapt awake, sitting up in the dark in his great canopied bed in Laimak, all shaking and sweating.

For a minute he sat so, listening to the darkness, which was as if some vast body had been flung into the pool of night and made waves upon it that were his own blood-beats. Then with an obscene and blasphemous oath he felt for tinder, struck a light, and lighted the candles on the table by his bed in the silver candlesticks that stood there, and his sword beside them, and a goblet, and wine in a great-bellied bottle of green glass with a stopper of gold. As the new-kindled candleflames shrank dim kuthe moment before the melting of the tallow, questionable shadows crouched in the recesses of the walls and vaulted ceiling. A puff of wind stirred the curtain by the window. Then the candles burned up. Pyewacket, waked by his shout, was come from the foot of the bed and laid her chin on his thigh, looking up at him with great speaking eyes in the bright beams of the candles. The Vicar poured out wine, a brimming goblet, and guzzled it down at one gulp. Then he stood up and abode for a while staring at the candleflames and as if listening. At length he clad himself in breeches and gown, buckled on his sword, took and lighted a lantern, and unbolted the door. Gabriel was in his place without, asleep on his bed made up upon the floor across the threshold. The Vicar woke him with his foot and bade him give him the keys. He gave them in silence and would have come with him, but the Vicar with a kind of snarl bade him remain. Gabriel, considering this, and his disordered looks, and the sword at his thigh, watched him go with his bitch at his heel, through the ante-room and through the further door, that led to his private chamber, and when he was gone sat down on his pallet bed again, licking his lips.

The Vicar went down by a privy passage of his own to the prison where Lessingham was mewed up; went in by means of his private key, and locked the door behind him. He held up the lantern. Lessingham lay in the far corner, with his ankles shackled to a ball of lead great as a man's two fists. His left arm was free, but the other wrist locked in a manacle with a long chain from that to his foot. His cloak of costly silken stuff was rolled for a pillow for his cheek. The Vicar came nearer. With his dream still upon him, he stood looking upon Lessingham and listening, as upon some horrid sudden doubt, for the sound of his breathing. In a deep stillness he lay there on the cobblestones, and with so much lithe strength and splendour of limb and chest and shoulder that the mould and dank of that place and the sweating walls, with trickles of wet that glistered in the lantern-light, seemed to take on an infection from his presence and put on a kind of beauty. Yet so still and without sound as he slept, had he been dead he could scarce have lain more still. Pyewacket gave a low growl. The Vicar caught her by the collar and flashed the lantern near Lessingham's face. Upon that, he sat up wide awake, and with great coolness looked upon the Vicar.

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.'

After a while the Vicar stood up and began to walk again. Lessingham walked beside him.

Lessingham said: 'Once you have the main picture, the points of my concordat are as easily seen as we can discern flies in a milkpot. I know this Duke, cousin, as you do not. He is proud and violent: will stick at no extremity if you drive him and hold him at bay. But he is given to laziness: loveth best his curious great splendours, his women, voluptuousness, and other maddish toys, delicate gardens where he doth paint and meditate. And he is an honourable man, will hold firmly by a just peace; and this peace is just.'

'Will not she hound him on to some foul turn against me? that woman of his?'

'What woman?' said Lessingham.

'Why, is't not the Chancellor's sister? Zayana loveth her as his life, they say: 'can wind him to her turn, I'm told.'

'Again,' said Lessingham, not to follow this vein, "tis weapons in your hand to a won Jeronimy, Beroald and Roder to your allegiance. The point of law hath stuck,

I know, in the Chancellor's gullet since the testament was first made known: by this largesse of amnesty you purchase much secureness there.'

'Ay, but 'twas put in 'pon urgency of Zayana: he'll get the thanks for it when he shows it them, not I. And why needs he your warranty, cousin, as if you should compel me to abide by it? By Satan's ear-feathers! there's neither you nor any man on earth shall so compel me.'

'Compel's not in it,' answered he. 'He knows I am in your counsels and that you would listen to me: no more. Another great good: these vexations in north Rerek should go off the boil now, when he hath called off Ercles and Aramond from that business. Brief, we are not presently strong enough to hold down by force no more than Outer Meszria, and that but with his good will. By so much the more had it been folly to a carried the war south after this victory to Southern Meszria and Zayana.'

They walked the whole length of the parapet in silence, then the Vicar stopped and took Lessingham by both arms above the elbow. 'Cousin,' he said, and there sparkled in his eyes a most strange and unwonted kindness:

'That Friend a Great mans mine strongely checks,

Who railes into his beliefe, all his defects.

You have saved me, very matter indeed. By God, your behaviour hath not deserved such doggish dealing. Ask your reward: will you be Warden of the March of Ulba? I'd told Mandricard he should have it: 'tis yours. Or will you have Megra? What you will: you shall have it.'

Lessingham smiled at him with that measure of admiration, contented and undeluded, that is in a skilled skipper's eye when he marks, on a blue and sunny sea, the white laughter of breakers above a hidden skerry. 'A noble offer,’ he said, 'and fitting in so great a prince. But I will not be a lord of land, cousin. Like those birds Mamuques, that fly upon wingless wings and the air only feeds them, such am I, I think: a storm-bird, and to no place will I be tied but live by my sword. But, for such as I am I will take this good offer you have made me; and two things I will choose: one a great matter, and one little.'

'Good. The great one?'

'This it is,' said Lessingham: 'that wheresoever I may be within the realm I bear style and dignity of Captain-General of the Queen, having at my obedience, under your sovereignty as Lord Protector, all armed levies in her behalf whether by land or sea.'

The Vicar blew out with bis lips.

Lessingham said, 'You see I can open my mouth wide.'

'Ay,' said the Vicar, after a minute. 'But I will fill it. To-day there's no such office, save I suppose it vesteth in me by assumption, flowing from my powers vicarial. I cannot tell where I should better employ it than on you. Conceive it done. The next?'

'Thanks, noble cousin,' said Lessingham. 'After so high a thing, 'tis almost churlish ask you for more. Yet this goes with it. I wish your highness will, by decree general throughout your realm of Rerek, proclaim, as for my body, like dispensation and immunity as for your own particular. By this must all attempts 'gainst me, were they by your very commandment, carry from this time forth like guilt as attempts 'gainst you and your throne and state do carry: and like punishment.'

The Vicar gave a scoffing laugh. 'Come, you would be witty now.'

'I was never in plainer earnest,' said Lessingham.

Then 'tis a saucy claim, deserveth no answer.'

Lessingham shrugged his shoulders. 'Be not sudden, cousin, the matter is of weight. Indeed, it is no more than need.'

'I wonder you will not ask me deliver up to you Gabriel and those six men: 'twere scarcely more monstrous.'

'That were one way,' said Lessingham, 'But I am reasonable. That were to shake your authority: a thing you could never grant. But this, easily. And this is as good for me.'

'Dear Gods!' The Vicar laughed in his anger. 'If you but heard yourself speaking with my ears! I'll tell you, cousin, you are like a kept woman: and the cost, I 'gin to think, beyond the enjoyment. Sink away to hell then, for this is a thing you could not in your senses hope for.'

The falcon was perched still on the crag, alone and un-merry. At an instant suddenly out of the sky there swept down at her a little unknown, as if she were his prey: barely avoided her as he stooped, swept up again, and stooped again. She, with wings half lifted and head lowered snakelike betwixt her shoulders, faced with sudden beak each teasing stoop of his; and now she took wing, and in ever widening spirals they rose skywards above Laimak, racing for height. Lessingham, imperturbable with folded arms, watched that play. The Vicar, following his eye, noted it too. And now as they swung wide apart, the tassel-gentle from a momentary vantage in height stooped at her in mid-air, avoiding her by inches as he dived past, while she in the same instant turned on her back to face his onset, scrabbling in air at him with her pounces and threatening with open beak. Twice and thrice they played over this battle in the sky: then he fled high in air eastward, she pursuing, till they were lost to sight.

‘I have strained a note above Ela for a device,' said Lessingham upon an unruffled easy speech, 'but you can scarce expect me, for safety of my person, be content with less than this. I would not, by speaking on't, move an evil that is well laid; yet partnership betwixt us can scarce hold if I must get a good guard to secure me with swords and so forth, whensoever I am to lodge in your house of Laimak.'

The Vicar ground his teeth, then suddenly facing round at him, 'I know not', he said, 'why I do not go through and murder you.'

'Why, there it is,' said Lessingham. 'Have you not this moment laid great trust and charge upon me, and will you sup up your words again? Have you not a thousand tokens of my love and simple meaning to your highness? Yet, like some girl ta'en with the green sickness, you will turn upon me: and as you are, so will you still persist. 'Tis pity. Our fortunes have bettered soonest, I think, when we have gone arm in arm.'

She was back again, perched. And now came her mate again and stooped at her; and again they mounted and went to their sport again, high in the blue. Lessingham said, 'I'll go take a walk: leave you to yourself, cousin, to employ your mind upon't.'

The Vicar replied neither with word nor look. Left to himself, he leaned upon folded arms looking north from the battlements: his brow smooth and clear, his mouth set hard and grim, and his jowl, under the red bristly clipped growth of beard, as if carved out of the unyielding granite. As a film is drawn at whiles over the eyes of a hawk or a serpent, thought clouded his eyes. The tassel-gentle was fled away again into the eastward airt, and the falcon at length, returning from the pursuit, perched once more on her little rock. She looked about, but this time he came not back again. And now she sat hunched, alone, discontented.

So it was in the end, that Lessingham had his way: confirmed by letters patent, under hand of the Lord Protector and sealed with the great seal, Captain-General of the Queen, with like inviolability of person and like guilt laid upon any that should raise hand or weapon or draw plot against him, as were it the Vicar's own person in question or one of the royal blood and line of Fingiswold. With so much honour was Lessingham now entertained and princelike estate in the open eye of the world, and proclaimed so, not in Laimak only but up and down the land. And now, for certain days and weeks, he was whiles with the Vicar in Laimak, and at whiles in the March, or south beyond the Zenner, putting in order matters that were necessary for carrying out of that concordat made at Ilkis. Nor was there found any man to speak against that measure, but it was accepted of by all of them: by the High Admiral Jeronimy, and by Earl Roder, and by the Chancellor. And all they with an industrious loyalty upheld the Duke and Lessingham in the conduct of this work, in so much that, as summer wore and July was turning toward August, things were well set in order for a good peace; and that seemed like to hold, since all were contented with it. With things in such case, Lessingham came north again to Owldale, and men thought that he, that had been great before, was by all these things grown greater.

Now the Lord Horius Parry made a feast for his cousin Lessingham in the great banquet-room in Laimak, and there were there mighty men of account from all the dales and habited lands in Rerek, and they of the Vicar's / household and his great officers, and Amaury and others that followed Lessingham. And now when the feast was part done, the Vicar upon a pretext rose from his seat and made Lessingham go with him privately out of the banquet-hall, and so up upon the roof of the keep. Here they had many a time taken counsel together: as upon the morrow of Lessingham's coming from Mornagay, when he wrung from the Vicar the truth touching the taking off of King Styllis and undertook that embassage to Zayana. On this secret roof they walked now under stars which shone down with a mildness like sleep and with an un-twinkling steadfastness through the region air that was woven in web and woof of moonlight and where no wind stirred. Only Antares, sinking to the west above the ridges of Armarick, blinked red with sometimes a sparkle of green fire. The noise of feasting floated up faint from the banquet-hall. The hooting of owls, as they went about their occasions, sounded at whiles from the wooded hillsides and spaces of the sleeping valley afar. Breathing such airs, showered down upon with such influences, flattered with such music, that the season of sleep discourses and the ensphered peace of the summer's night, Lessingham talked with the Lord Horius Parry of men and their factions within the land and without, and of their actions and valour, and the ordering and grounding of their several estates and powers; deliberating which of these it were fit to encourage and rely upon, which were best coaxed and dallied withal, and last, which ought upon first occasion to be suddenly extinguished. After which mature deliberation they propounded to themselves this, that Lessingham should shortly go north and across the Wold to Rialmar, there to perform for a while his office of a commander, entertaining the people and assuring himself of the great men: a thing not to be done by the Vicar himself, in so much as they of those northern parts held him suspected and were not easily to be wooed to serve him faithfully or cancel that sinister opinion they had held of him. But Lessingham was not odious to them, but rather held in admiration, upon experience in late wars both by soldiers and people, for one of fair dealing, and for a man-at-arms fierce and courageous in his venturing upon and coming off from dangers.

And now while they walked, Lessingham, debating with himself of all these things, was ware that the Vicar talked now of women, and how unfit it was they should succeed to the government of states, where need was rather of princes that should be both venerable and terrible: and so forth of women in generality: Tn my conceit he understood it aright that said, "It is all but hogsflesh, varied by sauce." And I think you too are of that opinion, cousin?'

'Yes,' said Lessingham out of the starlight, as a man might answer a child: ‘I am of that opinion.'

'And, by that, the sured man for this further purpose. Cousin, it would comfort my hand mightily could I bring this pretty lady-bird and emblem of sovereignty to dwell here in Rerek. I do mistrust the folk about her in the north there. And remember, she's of manable age: wooers, I hear tell on: that Derxis for one, newly crowned in Akkama, a sweet young swanking: in Rialmar, I have't upon sure intelligence, this very instant. Phrut! the cat will after kind. Therefore, cousin, of this plain power I give you and make you commissionary: use what means you will, but bring her south to me in Laimak.'

Lessingham studied a season and at last said: 'In plain terms, cousin: this is not an overture of marriage?' 'Footra! I ne'er dreamed on't.'

"That is well; for 'pon first bruit of that, you should incur the hatred of them all, and all our work fly again in pieces. Well, I will undertake it, if your highness will wisely give me a large discretion: for it is a thing may seem mischievous or profitable, and whether of the two we know not till I be there to try.'

'Enough: you know my mind,' said the Vicar. 'Try how she stands affected to me, and do what you may. And now,' he said, 'let us go down and drink with them. Cousin, I do love you, but by my soul you have this fault: you do drink commonly but to satisfy nature. Let's you and I this night drink 'em all speechless.'

Lessingham said, 'Wine measurably drunken delighteth best. But to humour you to-night, cousin, I will drink immeasurably.'

So came they again to the feast, in the hall of the great carven faces of black obsidian-stone whose eyes flung back the lamplight; and straightway there began to be poured forth by command of the Vicar cup upon cup, and as a man quaffed it down so in an instant was his cup brimmed a-fresh, and the Vicar shouted at every while that men should swiftly drink. And now he bade the cup-bearers mix the wines, and still the cups were brimmed, and swiftlier drank they, and great noise there was of the sucking down of wines and clatter of cups and singing and laughing and loud boastings each against each. And now were the wits of the more part of them bemused and altered with so much bibbing and quaffing as night wore, so that some wept, and some sang, and some embraced here his neighbour, there a cup-bearer, and some quarrelled, and some danced; some sat speechless in their chairs; some rolled beneath the table; and some upon it. The heat and sweat and the breath of furious drinking hung betwixt tables and rafters like the night mist above a mere in autumn. It was ever that the Vicar and Lessingham set the pace, carousing down goblet after goblet. But now the high windows, all wide open for air, began to pale, and the lamps to burn out one by one; and not a man remained now able to drink or speak or stand but all lay senseless among the rushes, or in their seats, or sprawled forward on the table: all save the Vicar and Lessingham alone.

The Vicar now dismissed the cup-bearers,, and now they two fell again to their drinking, each against each, cup for cup. The Vicar's countenance showed scarlet in the uncertain light, and his eyes puffy like an owl's disturbed at noon; he spoke no more; his breath laboured; the sweat ran down his brow and down nose and cheeks in little runlets; his neck was bloated much beyond its common size, and of the hue of a beetroot. He drank slowlier now; Lessingham drank fair with him as before, cup against cup. All that night's quaffings had lighted but a moderate glow beneath the bronze on Lessingham's cheek, and his eyes were yet clear and sparkling, when the Vicar, lurching sideways and letting fall from nerveless fingers his half-drained cup, slid beneath the table and there lay like a hog, snoring and snouking with the rest.

Two or three lamps yet burned on the walls, but with a light that weakened moment by moment before the opening dawn. Lessingham set cushions under his cousin's head and made his way to the door, picking his steps amongst bodies thus fallen ingloriously beneath the cup-din. In the darkness of the lobby a lady stood to face him, goblet in hand, quite still, clothed all in white. 'Morrow, my Lord Lessingham,' she said, and drank to him. 'So you go north, at last, to Rialmar?'

There was a quality in her voice that swept memory like harp-strings within him: a quality like the unsheathing of claws. His eyes could not pierce the shadow more than to know her hair, which seemed to have of itself some luminosity that showed through darkness: her eyes, like a beast's eyes lit from within: a glint of teeth. 'What, dear mistress of the snows?' he said, and caught her. 'Under your servant's lips? Ha, under your servant's lips! And what wind blew you to Laimak?'

'Fie!' said she. 'Will the man smother me, with a great beard? I'll bite it off, then. Nay and indeed, my lord,' she said, as he kissed her in the mouth, 'there's no such haste: I have my lodging here in the castle. And truly I'm tired, awaiting of you all night long. I was on my way to bed now.'

He suffered her to go, upon her telling him her lodging, in the half-moon tower on the west wall, and giving him besides, from a sprig she had in her bosom, a little leaf like to that which Vandermast had given him in the boat upon Zayana mere, that month of May. 'And it is by leaves like this', said she, 'that we have freedom of all strong holds and secret places to come and go as we list and accompany with this person or that; but wherefore, and by Whose bidding, and how passing to and fro from distant places of the earth in no more time than needeth a thought to pass: these are things, dear my lord, not to be understood by such as you.'

Lessingham came out now into the great court, with broadened breast, sniffing the air. In all the hold of Laimak none else was abroad, save here and there soldiers of the night-watch. Below the walls of the banquet-chamber he walked, and so past the guard-house and Hagsby's Entry and the keep, and so across to the tennis-court and beyond that to the northern rampire where they had had their meeting in June. Lessingham paced the rampart with head high. Not Maddalena treading the turfy uplands in the spring of the year went with a firmer nor a lighter step. The breeze, that had sprung up with the opening of day, played about him, stirring the short thick and wavy black hair about his brow and temples.

He stood looking north. It was a little past four o'clock, and the lovely face of heaven was lit with the first beams thrown upward from behind the Forn. The floor of the dale lay yet under the coverlet of night, but the mountains at the head of it caught the day. Lessingham said in himself: 'His Fiorinda. What was it she said to me? "I think you will find there that which you seek. North, in Rialmar."

'Rialmar.' A long time he stood there, staring north.

 

Then, drawing from the bosom of his doublet the leaf of sferra cavallo: 'And meanwhile not to neglect present gladness—' he said in himself; and so turned, smiling with himself, towards the half-moon tower where, as she had kindly let him know, Anthea had her lodging.