Mistress of Mistresses. E. Eddison R.
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when his name was called, grovelling and unwilling to his master’s feet. Bushy-tailed prick-eared heavy-chested long-fanged slaver-mouthed beasts were they all, a dozen or more, some red, some black, some grey, some yellow, as big as wolves and most wolfish to look upon. Each as his turn came the Vicar seized by the scruff of the neck and by the loose skin above the haunches and, lifting it as it had been a kitten, set it in the bath. He was a huge, heavy, ugly man, nigh about fifty years of age, not tall as beside tall men, but great-thewed and broad of chest and shoulder, his neck as thick as a common man’s thigh, his skin fair and full of freckons, his hair fiery red, stiff like wires and growing far down on his neck behind; he wore it trimmed short, and it had this quality that it stood upright on his head like a savage dog’s if he was angry. His ears were strangely small and fine shaped, but set low; his jaw great and wide; his mouth wide with pale thin lips; his nose jutting forth with mighty side-pitched nostrils, and high and spreading in the wings; his forehead high-domed, smooth, and broad, and with a kind of noble serenity that sorted oddly with the ruffianly lines of his nose and jaw; his beard and mustachios close-trimmed and bristly; his eyebrows sparse; his eyelids heavy, not deep set. He had delicate lively hazel eyes, like the eyes of an adder. He had none of his servants by him at this dog-washing, save only his secretary, Gabriel Flores, for his mind was sprightly and busy a-mornings, and he would have the convenience to talk, if occasion were, secretly with this man, who were aptly styled (to overpass his swarthy hue, and lack of all nobleness in his softer and more bloated look) for his highness in duodecimo.
‘Come hither, Pyewacket!’ shouted the Vicar, letting go that dog that was then in the bath and turning to peer into the shadows of the gate. ‘Pyewacket! Satan’s lightnings blast the bitch! Woo’t come when th’art called?’ He hurled the heavy scrubbing-brush at a brindled shadowy form that stole away in hoped obscurity: a yelp told him that his aim was true. The great beast, her tail between her legs, trotted away; he shouted to her again; she glanced back, a harried reproachful glance, and trotted faster; the Vicar was upon her with a lion-like agility; he kicked her; she laid back her ears, snarled, and snapped at his leg; he caught her by the neck and beat her with his fist about the ribs and buttocks till she yelped for pain; when he had done she growled and bared her teeth; he beat her once more, harder, then waited to see what she would do. She gave in, and walked, but with no good grace, to the distasteful bath. There, standing shoulder-deep in the steaming suds, grown thin to look on beyond nature, and very pathetical, with the water’s soaking of her hair and making it cling close to the skin, she suffered sulkily the indignities of soap and brush, and the searching erudite fingers that (greatly indeed for her good) sought out and slew the ticks that here and there beset her. All the while her staring eyes were sullen with bottled-up anger, like a bull’s. The Vicar’s eyes had the like look in them.
‘Well,’ said he in a while, ‘is he coming? You did say I would have speech of him, and that instantly?’
‘I did give him your highness’ very words,’ said Gabriel. He paused: then, ‘’Tis a strange folly, this tennis: racket away a hundred crowns afore breakfast, and till that’s done all sober business may go hang.’
‘Did he not answer you?’ asked the Vicar after a minute.
Gabriel smiled a crooked smile. ‘Not to say, answer,’ he said.
‘What said he, then?’ said the Vicar, looking up.
Gabriel said, ‘Faith, ’twas not for your ear intended. I were to blame did I blab to your highness every scurvy word, spoke in unconsiderate haste, that your highness should magnify past all reason.’
At that word, came Lessingham hastily towards them out of the low dark passage that sloped upward into the long and narrow yard, at the far, or eastern, end whereof was Hagsby’s Entry where the washing was. And at that word, whether seeing him or no, the Vicar gave his Pyewacket a damnable slap across the nose, grabbed her fore and aft, and flung her out in the way of Lessingham that walked hastily to greet him. She, with the gadflies of pain and outraged dignity behind her and a strange man before, sprang at his throat. Lessingham was in his shirt, tennis-racket in hand; he smote her with the racket, across the fore-leg as she sprang: this stopped her; she gave way, yowling and limping. ‘God’s death!’ said the Vicar, ‘will you kill my brach?’ and threw a long-bladed dagger at him. Lessingham avoided it: but the singing of it was in his ear as it passed. He leapt at the Vicar and grappled him. The Vicar wrestled like a cat-a-mountain, but Lessingham held him. Gabriel, at his master’s skirt, now kept off the dogs, now pleased himself with looking on the fight, ever side-stepping and dodging, like a man caught in a hill-forest in a whirlwind when the tall pines loosened at root reel and lock together and lurch, creaking and tottering, towards the last downward-tearing ruinous crash. The Vicar’s breath began to come and go now in great puffs and hissings like the blowing of a sea-beast. Lessingham rushed him backwards. The edge of the wash-tub caught him behind the knees, and he fell in, body and breeches, with Lessingham a-top of him, and with that violence the tub was overturned.
They loosed hold and stood up now, and in that nick of time came Amaury into the yard. The Vicar barked out a great laugh, and held out his hand to Lessingham, who took it straight. There was in Lessingham’s eye as it rested upon his cousin a singular look, as if he fingered in him a joy too fine for common capacities: such a look as a man might cast, unknowingly and because he could not help it, on his dear mistress. And indeed it was strange to consider how the Vicar, standing thus in nasty clothes, but even risen from a rude tussling-bout and a shameful fall, stood yet as clothed upon with greatness like a mantle, sunning in his majesty like adders in warm beams.
Lessingham said, ‘You did send for me.’
‘Yes,’ answered he: ‘the matter is of weight. Wash and array us, and we’ll talk on’t at breakfast. Gabriel, see to’t.’
‘I’ll meet you straight in my lodging, Amaury,’ said Lessingham.
When they were alone, ‘Cousin,’ said Lessingham, ‘you did throw a knife at me.’
The Vicar was ill at ease under Lessingham’s secure and disturbing smile. ‘Tush,’ he said, ‘’twas but in sport.’
‘You shall find it a dangerous sport,’ said Lessingham. ‘Be advised, cousin. Leave that sport.’
‘You are such a quarrelling, affronting—’ the words ceased in his throat as his eye met Lessingham’s. Like his own great hell-hound bitch awhile ago, he, as for this time, bared fang yet owned his master. And in that owning, as by some hidden law, he seemed to put on again that greatness which but even now, under Lessing-ham’s basilisk look, had seemed to fall off from him.
That was an hour later when those kinsmen brake their fast together on the roof of the great main keep, over the Vicar’s lodging: a place of air and wide prospect; and a place besides of secrecy; for when the door in the north-west turret was shut, by which alone was a way up to the roof and the battlements, there was none save the fowls of the air and the huge stones of the floor and parapet to be eavesdroppers at their conference. Here in the midst of the floor was a narrow table set under the sky, with musk-millions and peaches in silver dishes, and a great haunch of cold venison, and marmalades of quince and crab-apple, and flagons of white and red hippocras, with chased gold goblets; and there were diapered linen napkins and silver-handled knives and silver forks to eat withal; all very noble and sumptuously arrayed. Two heavy armchairs of old black oak were set at the table; the Vicar sat at the northern side, and over against him Lessingham. They were washen now, and in fair and fine clothes. The Vicar had put on now a kirtle of dark brown velvet edged with rich embroidery of thread of gold, but frayed and dirted and rubbed with wearing; it was cut wide and low about the neck, with a flat collar of white pleated lace tied with silken cord. Lessingham was in a buff-coloured kirtle of soft ribbed silk with a narrow ruff and narrow wristbands of point-lace spangled with beads of jet of the bigness of mustard seeds, and tight-fitting black silk breeches and velvet shoes.
For a time they ate in silence. Every other while, the Vicar’s sudden eye glinted upon Lessingham; it was as if he had a mind to propound some matter, but would be besought for it first. But Lessingham sat sphinx-like and unconcerned in his pleasant ease, as wanting nothing, desiring nothing, at peace