A Fish Dinner in Memison - Zimiamvian Trilogy 02 (30 page)

Utterly still she abode, save for the upward mounting of her bosom and deep fall and swell again, like the unquiet sea remembering.

Barganax said:
‘
You are unattainable. I have proved it. The sun rising, a roundel of copper incandescent against purple cloud: you'd swear—upon witness of your senses—'tis come near, divinely come down to earth 'twixt us and that cloudbank; and yet, with the drifting of some thicker fold of that cloud 'twixt us and the sun's face,—suddenly we know. So you. Even in the extreme having of you, I had you not. The knownest and unknownest thing in the world.'

'And that,' said she: 'is it not in the essence and very perfect nature of love?' Her words were as the plumed silence of the owl's flight that, sudden as it came, now departed, sudden from her shoulder on noiseless wing. The plague that sat dozing in her mouth's corner proked at him swiftly, an unslockened burning merry look, as she turned to him, hands behind her head, settling the plaits of her hair. 'I hope it remains not unkindly with your grace that I am not one that will eat a pear un-pared? Nor that there's more than but make me dress and undress because you find me pliant?'

'You and I!' said the Duke. In their stilled eye-parley, darkness trembled upon darkness. 'And I think I shall carry to my grave,' here he touched his left shoulder, 'the print of your most eloquent teeth, madam!'

As golden bells
pealing down star-lit sleep-muffl
ed corridors of all dreaming worlds, Fiorinda laughed. 'Come she held out her hand. 'Your grace may take your revenge upon this.'

He took the divine white daisy-hand: took the little finger: delicately, his eyes on hers, as might a cat in play, to let feel the teeth but not to hurt, bit it

'Your ladyship smiles.'

'Perhaps. At my thought.'

The hand rested soft in his. He turned it up slowly: the under-part of the wrist: that place where hand joins arm, and the bluish tracings of veins but enhance the immaculation of skin, beneath which, a bird in prison, the pulse flutters or quiets. He kissed the hand suddenly, full in the warm palm of it: then, very formally, gave it back. 'At your thought? And it is—if one may know?'

'That your grace is an artist.'

'You like an artist?'

'I am hard to please. I like a good servant.' 'And, for you, the better artist the better servant?' Her eyelids flickered.

'Enough. Your ladyship shall take me as servant' ' 'Las, my unpatient lord, and have I not taken,' said she, and the sidelong downward halcyon-dart of her eyes was a caress, secret, precise, butterfly-fingered, mind-unthroning, 'all eleven-tenths of the journey toward that consummation already?'

Barganax's glance flashed and darkened. 'Ah,' he said:
‘
but I look to perpetuity. I mean, 'pon indenture.'

'O no indentures. I keep my servant so long as he please me.'

'And I my mistress, 'pon like terms: so unsure, both of us, what manner mind we will have to-morrow. To avoid which, madam, no remedy but we must instantly be married.'

'Never. I have twice answered that.'

‘
With answers which are not worth an egg.'

'I have answered unanswerably.'

'To be Duchess of mine? Your ladyship is the first woman was e'er so stubborn set as say no to that offer.'

'And the first, I dare say, e'er had the offer, to say yea to or nay to?'

Instance again, we be like-minded.'

'You mean, you to offer
in extremis
a bond you'd hate to be tied withal? while I, in sheer discerning bounty, please my own self—and you—by refusing of it?'

'My life's-queen, once more your hand,' said the Duke. 'As for this suit, the court's up: stands adjourned—till to-morrow. But,' he said, 'there's measure in all things. Summer nights are but half-length. I hold me bound for to-night.'

‘
Well, and for to-night, then,' said she, letting him by her hands in his, draw her: letting herself be drawn so, from arm's-length, in a slow and level gradualness of air-light sailing motion, nearer and nearer, as a swan descending calm streams in windless July wea
ther: 'for to-night, may be, I’ll
not tie up all refusals fast beyond untying.'

'Then, to seal the title': for all the supple strength of her striving and eluding, he kissed her in the mouth.
‘
Copula spiritualis.
And, 'cause One is naught: 'cause all university's reckoned in Two alone: therefore'—and again, deep and long, he kissed her, pasturing his eyes, in that close-ranged nearness, on hers which, open-lidded, impersonal as a dove's eyes, still avoiding his, seemed as in soft amazement all unperceiving of outward things, their sight turned inward. 'And the third: nay, then, by heaven! but 'cause I will!' From her quickened breaths new intoxications disclosed themselves and spread abroad, and from that lily, crushed in the straining of her sweet body to his, and, in that
crushing, yielding up its deli
ciousness. "Cause must be must be. 'Cause blind men go by feeling. 'Cause,—What's here?'

'Girls,' she said, coolly disembroiling herself. 'Had your grace not seen such a beast before? Mistress Anthea: Mistress Campaspe: a kind of servants too of mine.
’
With all demureness, they made their courtesies to the Duke. They grow,' said the Lady Fiorinda, 'like rosemary, in any air: despatched now with commends, most like, from her grace, to desire us go in to supper. Nay, misdoubt them not: of a most exquisite tried discretion. Will you think her grace would employ 'em else? or that I would?'

'I wager no wagers upon that,' replied he. 'Enough that I ne'er beheld them till now; nor e'er heard tell of 'em neither.'

'And yet, since they first could prattle, have been of our lady Duchess's household. There yet remain matters hid from you, there, my lord.'

Barganax looked at them. 'If I should hear a cat low like an ox,' he said, 'that should surprise me. And so now, if I should see a pretty mountain lynx wear part-lets of cobweb lawn and go gowned in peach-coloured chamlet; or s
ee a peggy-
white-throat,' here he changed glances with Campaspe's shy black bead-like eyes, 'with red Tyrian hair-lace, and dressed in velvet the hue of the coat of a water-rat, and with little brown musky gloves,—'

Anthea laughed behind her fan. Her eyes, looking at him over the edge of it, were yellow, with upright fiery slits for pupils.

xv

The F
ish
D
inner: Symposium

I
t
was
in
her
asphodel
garden
, under the south wall of the old keep, overlooking Reisma Mere, that the Duchess of Memison gave supper that night to guests select and few. The table was ring-shaped, eleven or twelve foot across by outside measurement breadthways, and nine from back to front, and its top about two foot wide. Where the bezel of the ring should be, where the two ends of the table curved round to meet each other, was a gap, may be of some four-foot width, for the coming and going of serving-maids to serve the company where they sat ranged in order round about the outer side of the table. 'A fish dinner,' the Duchess said as they took their places: 'sea-fare, in Her praise that is bred of the sea foam.' Lower, for the King's ear beside her, she said,
'L'absente de tons bouquets.
You remember, my Lord?'

The great King said,
'I
remember.'

They sat them down now: in the midst, the King in his majesty, and the Duchess at his right hand, in high-seats of sweet-smelling sandalwood cushioned with rough-plumed silver plush and inlaid with gold and ivory and all kinds of precious stones. Next to the King, Duke Barganax had his place; next to the Duke, the Vic
ar of Rerek; next, the lord Adm
iral Jerommy; and so at the end upon that side the lord High Chancellor Beroald. Upon the other side, looking across to these, sat first, on the Duchess's right, the Princess Zenianthe, niece to King Mezentius and guesti
ng as now with her grace in Me
mison; on Zenianthe's right, my Lady Fiorinda; and beyond her again, making ten in all, Anthea and Campaspe.

The legs of the table were of all kinds and colours of marble, massive and curiously carved, and the table top of figured yew and elm and cedarwood and its edges filleted with inlay-work of silver and lapis lazuli and
pan
teron stone and pale mountain-gold. A lofty arbour with squared pillars of rose-pink clouded quartz partly shut out the sky above the table. From its trellised roof, over-run with ancient vines whose boles were big at the base as a man's thigh, grapes depended in a hundred clusters, barely beginning at this season of the year to turn colour: heavy sleepy-hued bunches of globed jewels hanging high on the confines of the candle-light Three-score candles and more burned upon the table, of a warm-coloured sweet-scented wax in branched candlesticks of glittering gold. So still hung the air of the summer night, the flames of the candles were steady as sleeping crocuses: save but only for a little swaying of them now and again to some such light stirring of the air as speech or laughter made, or the passing of serving-damsels in their sleeveless Grecian gowns, some green, some sky-colour, some saffron yellow, to and fro for changing of the plates or filling out of fresh wines. Pomegranates, lemons, oranges, love-apples, peaches of the sun, made an ordered show, heaped high upon mighty dishes of silver or of alabaster at set intervals along that table. Smaller dishes held dry and wet sweetmeats; and there was store of olives, soused haberdine, cavier on toast, anchovies, botargoes, pilchards, almonds, red herrings, parmesan cheese, red and green peppers: things in their kind to sharpen the stomach against luxurious feasting, and prepare the palate for noble wines. Cream wafers there were besides, and cream cheese; but, for the body and substance of their feasting, no meat save fish-meat alone, dressed in innumerable delicious ways and of all sorts of fishes, borne in upon great platters and chargers by turns continually: eels, lampreys, and crayfish: pickerells, salt salmon, fry of tunny; gurnards and thornbacks in muscadine sauce; barbels great and small, silver eels, basses, loaches, hen lobsters, eel-pouts, mussels, frogs, cockles, crabfish, snails and whilks; great prawns, a turtle; a sturgeon; skate, mackerel, turbot, and delicate firm-fleshed speckled trouts.

All the company were in holiday attire. The King wore a rich doublet of cloth of gold, with wine-dark velvet slashes. The linked belt about his middle was of massive gold set with emeralds and night-dark sapphires, every stone big as a thrush's egg: the buckle of the belt in the likeness of two hippogriffs wrought in gold; with wings expansed, and between the hippogriffs a lion's face, garnished with sparks of rubies, and for its eyes two es-carbuncles that glowed like hot burning coals. The Duke, upon his left, was clad from throat to toe in soft-woven dark-brown satin, cut about and bepinked with broidery of silken and silver thread: close-fitting, moulding itself to his lithe strong body's grace, upon such under-rhythms as, when a panther moves or a wakening python, with sleek-gliding ripple and swell inform the smooth outward skin. His ruff and wrist-ruffs were stiffened with saffron, and his sword-belt of bull's-hide edged above and below with beads of opal and fire-opal and balas ruby: its clasps, two dark hyacinth stones cabochon, of the colour of peat-water when the sun wades deep in it. The Vicar, sitting next to him, was all in scarlet, with a gorget of dull gold about his neck. There was, when he moved, a hard look about his chest and large broad belly, witness that beneath that peaceful outward covering of weak silk he carried a privy coat, against stabbers at unawares; having, indeed, many unlovers in the land, and especially here in Meszria, and of all estates. His beard, clipped and bristly, showed red as Thor's in the candlelight. For the rest, the Chancellor went in gold-broidered brocade the colour of a moonless night in summer where the blue shows blackest: the Admiral in a loose-sleeved coat of unshorn velvet of sober green, with black brocaded cloak and white trunk hose. But as for the costly gorgeous apparel of those ladies, hardly should a man have marked it, dazzling as it was, were he come suddenly to that board, but should have stood mute amazed by their first countenance, so untranspassably lovely of themselves—breathing, moving, discoursing—without need of all adornments in this flattering candlelight: each in herself a natural heaven in which, unmanured, all pleasure lies.

Malmsey presently and muscatel, being strong sweet wines, began to circle sunwise about the board; and now free ranged their discourse, with bandyings to and fro of the ball of wit, and with disputation, and laughter, and with sparkles struck, as from flint, out of thought by thought. King Mezentius, taking, for the while, little part in the game of words, yet of his only mere presence seemed to rule it. Almost it was as if this one man sat hooded, and unbeknown looker-on at a scene of his devising, and the players thereof but creatures engendered of his hid and deep judgements out of his own secretness. In whose free persons he seemed to call into being each particularly of speech or look or thought itself, when, how, in whom and from whom, he would.

'So silent, madonna?'

The Duchess dimpled her cheek. 'I was but considering how good a gift that were, to be able to .stay Time, make it stand still'

'To taste the perfect moment?'

'What else?'

'But how? when Time is put to a stop and no time left to taste it in?'

'I would taste it, I think,' said she, 'in a kind of timeless contemplation.'

'Timeless?' said the Princess Zenianthe.

'Why not?'

'Contemplation. Tis a long word. To say it takes time. To do it, more, I'd have thought'

'Ah, cut Time's claws, then,' said the Duchess. 'Let him be, for me, so he snatch not things away.'

Barganax smiled. 'Say I were a squirrel, sat in the fork of a nut-tree, pleasantly eating a nut. At first bite, Time stands still. Where's my second?'

The Duchess wrinkled up her nose. 'Why, just! into what distemper have the Gods let decline this sweet world of ours! It is so. But need it be so? in a perfect world?'

'A perfect?' said the King.

‘
Now and then I have conceived of it'

'Was it like to this world?'

She nodded. 'Most strangely like.' And now, while the sturgeon was ushered in with music in a golden dish, she said privately, 'Are you remembered, dear my Lord, of a thing I asked you: the night you rode north alone with Beroald and left me, good as fresh wed and fresh bereaved?—If we were Gods, able to make worlds and unmake 'em as we list, what world would we have?'
Zimiamvian Trilogy 02

'Yes, I remember.'

'And your answer? you remember that?'

'May be I could and I would. But natural present,
madonna mia,
should better best rememberings?'

'Your very answer!' she said. 'Not word for word; but the mind behind the word.' She paused. 'Makes me frightened sometimes,' she said, in a yet lower voice, looking down.

'Frighted?'

'When I’
m alone.'

‘
We are as the Gods fashioned us.' Unseen, beneath the table, his hand clo
sed for a moment over hers: Ama
lie's hand, mistress
and outward symbol of so uncon
sumable store and incorruptible of shyest and tenderest particular wisdoms and goodnesses and nobilities of the heart, heaped through slow generations to that dear abundance, yet outwardl
y of so lamb-like an unprovided
ness against the crude nude gluttony of the world and iniquities of time and change and death.

'There's wits enough about this table, could we unmuzzle them,' he said aloud, after a moment's silence, 'enough to pick the world to pieces and devise it again span new. My Lord Horius Parry: what world will you make us, say, when we shall have granted you patent to be God Almighty?'

'Go, some have called me ere now,' answered he, 'and not always out of pure love of me, a man of high-vaulting ambitions. But, Satan shield us! here is a new puzzle. I ne'er looked above the moon. I can not how to answer.'

'Answer, cousin, without these protestations,' said the King;
‘
which be stale as sea-beef. I and you do know one another by this time.'

'Your highness knoweth me. Would God I were sure I as thoroughly knew your highness.' He guzzled down his wine, carouse: stayed toying a minute with the empty cup. 'Why, as for worlds,' he said, 'this world fits: I ask no other. A world where the best man'—here his eye, enduring the King's, had a look less unsearchable in its depths, belike, than the looker reckoned—'a world where the best man beareth away the victory. Wine, women, war: nay, I rate it fit enough. And, upon conditions,' he swept a hot bold stare round the table, 'even peace,' he said, 'can be tolerable.'

'Pax Mezentiana'
said the Duke to himself.

'But peace,' said the Vicar, 'softeneth, womanizefh a man'; and his stare, to the disembarrassing of the ladies, singled in turn the Chancellor, the Admiral, and the Duke. Fiorinda, catching the Duke's eye, did no more but act him again a gesture of his, of an hour since in the garden: look at her finger-nails.

'In sum, my Lord the King,' said the Vicar, 'I am a plain man. Know my trade. Know myself. Obey my master. And, for the rest (saving present company):' he glowered, right and left, upon Duke, Admiral, and Chancellor:
'nemo me impune lacessit,'

'In sum,' said the King, 'you like well this world and would let well alone?'

'Humbly, it is my judgement.'

‘
Which,' said the King, 'your excellency may very wisely and wholesomely act upon.'

It was as if, for a freezing instant, an axe had shown its mouth. The lean lines of the Chancellor's lip and nostril hardened to a sardonic smile.

‘
You and I,' said the
King, turning to the Lord Jero
nimy, 'are oldest here. What say you?'

'My Lord the King,' answered he, 'I am five years older, I think, than your serene highness. And the older I grow the more, I think, I trust my judgement, the less my knowledge. Things I thought I knew,' he said, leaning an elbow on the table, finger and thumb drawing down over his forehead one strand of his lank pale hair, while he cast about the company a very kindly, very tolerant, very philosophic look,
‘I
find I was mistaken. What in a manner were certainties, turn to doubt. In fine,—' he fell silent.

'There you have, charactered in speech, the very inwardness of our noble Admiral,' whispered the Duchess in Zenianthe's ear: 'a m
an wise and good, yet in discre
tive niceness so over-abounding that oft when it comes to action he but runneth into a palsy, from unability to choose 'twixt two most balanced but irreconcilable alternatives.'

Eyes were gentle, resting on the lord Admiral. A humorousness sweetened even Beroald's satirical smile as he said, answering the King's look, 'I, too, hold by the material condition. This world will serve. I'd be loth to hazard it by meddling with the works.'

The Duke shrugged his shoulders. 'Unless thus far only, perhaps,' he said, eyeing that Lady Fiorinda across the table: 'seeing that a world should be, to say, a garment, should it not be—to fit the wearer 'twas made for—' and something momentarily ruffled the level line of her underlids as the sun's limb at
point of day cuts suddenly
the level horizon of the sea, 'everchanging, never-changing?'

'And is this of ours not so?' said the King, his eyes too on that lady. .

'Ever-changing,' the Duke said: 'yes. But as for never-changing,' Campaspe heard the alteration in his voice! as the nightbreeze sudden among sallows by the margin of some forsaken lake,
‘
I know not. Best, may be, not to know.' Anthea, too, pricked ears at the alteration: scurry of sleet betwixt moraine and ice-cave when all the inside voices of the glacier are stilled by reason of the cold.