The Worm Ouroboros, E. R. Eddison [best e reader for academics txt] 📗

Gro saw the wild-deer look in Lady Mevrian’s eyes. She said, “This is talk I have not learned to understand, my lord.”

“I shall learn it thee,” said Corinius, his face aflame. “Lovers live by love as larks by leeks. By Satan, I do love thee as thou wert the heart out of my body.”

“My Lord Corinius,” said she, “we ladies of the north have little stomach for these fashions, howe’er they commend them in waterish Witchland. If thou’lt have my friendship, bring me service therefor, and that in season. This is no fit table-talk.”

“Why there,” said he, “we’re in fast agreement. I’ll blithely show thee all this, and a quainter thing beside, in thine own chamber. But ’twas beyond my hopes thou’dst grant me that so suddenly. Are we so happy?”

In great shame and anger the Lady Mevrian stood up from the table. Corinius, something unsteadily, leaped to his feet. For all his bigness, so tall she was she looked him level in the eye. And he, as when in the face of a night-ranging beast suddenly a man brandishes a bright light, stood stupid under that gaze, the springs of action strangely frozen in him on a sudden, and said sullenly, “Madam, I am a soldier. Truly mine affection standeth not upon compliment. That I am impatient, put the wite on thy beauty not on me. Pray you, be seated.”

But Mevrian answered, “Thy language, my lord, is too bold and vicious. Come to me tomorrow if thou wilt; but I’ll have thee know, patience only and courtesy shall get good of me.”

She turned to the door. He, as if with the turning away of that lady’s eyes the spell was broke, cried loudly upon his folk to stay her. But there was none stirred. Therewith he, as one that cannot command his own indecent appetites, o’ersetting bench and board in eager haste to lay hands on her, it so betided that he tripped up with one of these and fell a-sprawling. And ere he was gotten again on his feet, the Lady Mevrian was gone from the hall.

He rose up painfully, proffering from his lips a mud-spring of barbarous and filthy imprecations; so that Laxus who helped raise him up was fain to chide him, saying, “My lord, unman not thyself by such a bestial transformation. Are not we yet with harness on our backs in a kingdom newly gained, the old lords thereof discomfited indeed but not yet ta’en nor slain, studying belike to raise new powers against us? And above such and so many affairs wilt thou make place for the allurements of love?”

“Ay!” answered he. “Nor shall such a sapless ninny as thou avail to cross me therein. Ask thy little gamesome Sriva, when thou comest home to wed her, if I be not better able than thou to please a woman. She’ll tell thee! I’ the mean season meddle not in matters that be too high for such as thou.”

Both Gro and the sons of Corund were by and heard those words. The Lord Laxus schooled himself to laugh. He turned toward Gro, saying, “The general is far gone in wine.”

Gro, marking Laxus’s face flushed red to the ears for all his studied carelessness, answered him softly, “ ’Tis so, my lord. And in wine is truth.”

Now Corinius, bethinking him that it was yet early and the feast barely well begun, let set a guard on all the passages which led to Mevrian’s lodgings, to the end that she might not issue therefrom but there wait on his pleasure. That done, he bade renew their feasting.

No stint of luscious meats and wines was there, and the lords of Witchland sat them down again right eagerly to the good banquet. Laxus spoke secretly to Gro: “I wot well thou takest in very ill part these doings. Let it stand firm in thy mind that if thou shouldst deem it fitting to play him a trick and steal the lady from him, I’ll not stand i’ the way on’t.”

“In a bunch of cards,” said Gro, “knaves wait upon the kings. It were not so ill done and we made it so here. I heard a bird sing lately thou hadst a quarrel to him.”

“Thou must not think so,” answered Laxus. “I’ll give thee still a Roland for thine Oliver, and tell thee ’tis most apparent thyself dost love this lady.”

Gro said, “Thou chargest me with a sweet folly is foreign to my nature, being a grave scholar that if ever I did frequent such toys have long eschewed them. Only meseems ’tis an ill thing if she must be given over unto him against her will. Thou knowest him of a rough and mere soldierly mind, besides his dissolute company with other women.”

“Tush,” said Laxus, “he may go his gate for me, and be as close as a butterfly with the lady. But out of policy, ’twere best rid her hence. I’d not be seen in’t. That provided, I’ll second thee all ways. If he lie here the summer long in amorous dalliance, justly might the King abraid us that midst o’ the day’s sport we gave his good hawk a gorge, and so lost him the game.”

“I see,” said Gro, smiling in himself, “thou art a man of sober government and understanding, and thinkest first of Witchland. And that is both just and right.”

Now went the feast forward with great surfeiting and swigging of wine. Mevrian’s women that were there, much against their own good will, to serve the banquet, set ever fresh dishes before the feasters and poured forth fresh wines, golden and tawny and ruby-red, in the goblets of jade and crystal and hammered gold. The air in the fair chamber was thick with the steam of bake-meats and the vinous breath of the feasters, so that the lustre of the opal lamps burned coppery, and about each lamp was a bush of coppery beams like the beams