Mistress of Mistresses. E. Eddison R.

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 today (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 tomorrow 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