III THE TABLES SET IN MESZRIA

      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 lighter 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