Learwife, page 25
Enough.
I look at the eave nearest me, its thick weight of snow, borne upon its back. Two hands high. I move closer and hit it hard, once, twice, with my fists. Ruth notices and follows. Mystified, but obedient. She has tighter fists.
The snow moves, then booms over the edge in a mass, one white hand falling to clap the other. Swallowing the world.
The women are hit so smartly that some of them fall. Bruises on their legs later, perhaps. The sound dissolves in them, knocked right out with their breath. Ice in their mouths. Looking up to see the judgement of Heaven, and seeing me, Ruth, the ring of other women still shouting, leaning and slapping their hands on the wall. The woman herself is dazed and shakes her head slowly, like a bad-born calf, as women rise around her, dusting off their sudden weight. Blood on one temple.
I think of Goneril in the yew. And would call out to her – but she is gone.
The black berry of blood on the woman’s face does not feel real. I think of the waving boughs on the river, with their purple globes; platters of crimson meat, on tables. Colours, fragments.
And I laughed, in the moment. Why did I do that? It was ridiculous, the black women falling against one another. Their clumsy grappling. (Regan, Goneril, fighting, tearing at baby-flesh, over a toy, a bangle. As punishment I pulled their soft-sprouting hair at the ears, made them sleep apart. In a day they were reconciled. Like weed in water, they tangled, drifted, came together again, in the tides.)
This is so small, their little world. Gash above one eye, it will barely scar. Only Ruth heard me laugh.
I have other matters tonight. I kneel. The nuns, their miniature wars, will keep.
Regan, my bloodied girl. Why do you not come? Why one visitation and no other? You have been severed from me so slowly – like your sister. Clipped clear like hair.
Stages and stages, in which you were removed from me. Your marriage. You and Cornwall had been married months and still you were being kept in the court, Lear throwing up amusements to lure you: saint’s days, special feasts, hunts on new horses. Cornwall was thin-faced and would not raise his opposition, not yet.
You were speaking to Lear of your husband. Sunlight streaming through the halls. I have not spoken to him yet of servants. I would like Hana with me, and a cook who knows my favourites. His kitchen folk may make bitter food. And horses, whether we will have a carriage, and if the horses could be bays. Remind me.
His face. Beneficent, a saint’s face, shorn of a halo but doling out grace nonetheless. I have a surprise for you. Infinitely better!
Father?
You will not be leaving your father, whom you love as the very line and centre of all your doing. You will be staying in this court, in your house of childhood, with your husband. He reached for her. Is it not a fine thing? Come, kiss me.
You were still. The corners of your mouth, only I was close enough to see them, had turned sweet white. Your hand remained in mid-air holding the silver tassel of your gown. Lear’s hound whined, and you smiled, you returned, moved like a wooden doll.
Forgive me. I am – overwhelmed by your generosity, King. I had thought I would be far from you, in a strange new home, and now am told I will stay, and it is more than my small woman’s heart can bear. It may crack apart from happiness. Measured your voice in small steps. Like drops from a cup. Not a shiver in it. I placed a gentle palm on the base of your neck; you were cool, you had caught yourself as you fell.
You may leave us, Regan.
Was she not pleased? He was a beam of light, ricocheting around the room. Leaned to ruffle his dog’s ears excessively, to demonstrate this great glowing love on everything.
Surprised, I believe. I was slow.
I must give her another ermine. She seemed cold. But she was pleased, yes. I saw it in her.
Yes, King.
Later I went to you. I wanted to be sweet and soothe you, your old hopes, but it was stuffy, and Lear had been over-charitable all afternoon and ruined several delicate affairs (sent one peasant off with two pigs from the royal store, and roared at the boy’s surprise!), so I was thinly tempered.
You were raw. Goneril stood away from you, as if frightened to touch you.
I have had to explain it to Cornwall. He’s gone to his horses. Do not give me harsh words. I have had a surfeit. Had evidently wept but was done; your voice had glass in it.
I was soft. I stood at your back and smoothed your veil around your shoulders. Your husband will have his seat, but your father expects you both to be based here, for most of the year, and to partake in the life of the court. Your hair was in thick plaits under the married woman’s cloth veil, nicked at the corners. Your husband must have demanded it so because of fashion.
You could not persuade him?
I did my best. Your king has his will, you know that. I was touched that you both thought this, that I could have hauled him backwards out of this new desire.
Goneril says it was your plot.
Goneril looked at a fixed part of wall behind my head. I would, I thought then, rather have you both running like wolves on the moor and living on rabbit-flesh than keep you here, muzzled and sworn. Better bare ground than this.
Aloud, I said lightly, I think it would be best if you went to your husband. We will prepare apartments. You will be well-kept. And when you have a child you may speak again.
How can I soothe Cornwall out of this? You sounded so weak. Had never yet lured any man out of poor temper, except your father.
I kissed your cold scalp and relaid the veil, pinned behind the ears with twin clips. Bears made of gold. You are his best-loved thing; be mournful and let him soothe you. Make him one of your poultices. Go, run. It will be well.
You rose and left. Your shoulders were higher; perhaps you were feeling comforted. Your neck had always been bloodless: there was no emotion to be read in it. Goneril stayed, still watching the wall.
And so. I attempted brightness, a let-us-work-with-this solidity, like good plate. She will reside here, with her court, and her husband’s men. I smoothed the front of my gown with both hands.
And myself?
You will sleep in our bedroom, or with your sister. As you choose.
A slender choice.
Don’t be insolent, Goneril. I do not have patience for it today.
She raised both brows. No patience! Remarkable, a condition unlike any other day.
I was so suddenly tired that I laughed. This surprised her. I know. It is what it is. We will find you space, girl. I will make you a set of rooms above the stables, eh? Magdalena, get her good gown, the one with the birds.
This at least bought a smile from her, a little bargain. I thought then it could be balanced: two girls, the husband, the many desires of the king. Great vanity! But we passed through the doorway into the inner room, undoing her stays.
And then (time slips) – you had been married years and came to see me. Spoiled, hardening at the edge of the mouth. As women do when left too long without occupation, direction for their will.
Your husband is well, Regan?
He is. He thinks too much of horses and the cost of things.
In charge of curtailing your expenses? He has my pity. Extravagant. Always, even small, layering yourself in laces.
You told me a queen should be extravagant.
You are not a queen, Regan. You are a little lord’s wife of a little breadcrumb of land.
If Father would give out the dowry—
Your husband took you despite it, in the hope of future grace. It is a proof of heart, and of patience.
Yes, eminently patient! But you smiled, knowing your beauty, and the captivation of your husband, who still escorted you off your horse like a young page. You could always be soothed through your vanity, Regan. Goneril through her intellect. Lear through his prowess, his knowledge of men. Small keys to many drawers.
If you had the dowry you’d spend it on furred gowns and monkeys, anyway.
Monkeys! You turned, in your yellow gown. I miss the Fool. Where is he?
In the garden entertaining the king. Goneril, would you fetch another linen? This is disastrous. Goneril looked at it, laughed at my puckering stitch, left.
I would take him with me. Father will give him. I must speak to him on it.
I placed needles one by one in my shift. Lines of silver, surfacing, holding hem to body. I said, Bladwen tells me you still have your courses.
I do.
Don’t cast that foul look. This is my household, I will command its tongues.
I had no look either way.
I did wonder if your husband were well.
He is, as I said, well.
That is good.
It is.
And you?
I am sound, Mother.
Of course you are. You are healthy, and well-provided. What kind of woman are you, Regan, in your bed? Do you kick him on his heel and force him out to sleep nights in the snow, if it pleases?
Mother.
I merely ask. As it seems you forget all your duties.
Oh, are we having a party? I should call for trumpets. Goneril entered. Skirt, swimming over tile.
Hush, Goneril. You’ll be married soon, too.
It is not so simple, Mother. Children are a blessing’s burden. A larger dwelling, well-provisioned—
Oh, plead to your father. He has a new child to provision. He’ll doubtless have time for all your woes. Poor Regan. You spent your life in pursuit of better, thicker, sweeter.
It was a bad stratagem, Regan, said Goneril.
Have you brought forth a child in some secret way that wins you superiority, sister?
I was tired. God save us. How did such fair advantage breed such weakness?
Luck, madam, and too much meat i’ the evenings, said Goneril.
I am not weak, you said.
No. No, you are not. Forgive me. I am old and just out of childbed, and may well still die, and your father crawls towards his final age, and neither of his daughters prove their love by any provision of an heir.
Mother, Death couldn’t find you, and if it did you’d beat it off with sword and shield, said Goneril. And you, Regan, were silent.
What was it that you said of Cordelia, to yourself? Fie that a child of mine and its aunt may be years or so apart. Fine indeed. Oh, give it away, it cries too much. Sickly thing. Not knowing that I heard you. Cordelia was dark-eyed, spitting. The next day I would be banished. Fie, fie.
It is long past midnight; I have poured myself through darkness to find you. But you elude, daughter, you escape every time.
In the morning I am angry, and sore. Exhaustion runs from the corners of my mouth. Ruth comes to say, The woman from yesterday has repented. Brother Manfred says she must be pitied and all need to confess today. Then says, What is it, Lady? Can read me easily, like a map, like the crossed anonymous wood that marks a grave.
I miss my girls. I am honest, the truth breaks off from me and floats.
Ah, Mistress. She will hold me, as a child holds a dog. I will surrender to it.
How can I have more tears, Ruth? How can I have any more sides to pierce?
You will survive this, Mistress. I have faith. And kisses my hair, on the balding pate where I once had a plait thick as a sheaf of wheat; and we are weeping together, in the quiet grey daylight, as the nuns sleep.
9.
Iam awake. Slept all the next day, but sleepless now. I want to mount a contest today: these women are clawing into one another; without activity they’re squabbling. It is a waste of energy. The snow-hit girls will be feeling their bruises today, and finding themselves foolish. After a rush of primitive emotion, people return to the surface, breathing, pretending they were never raw or furious. Reclaiming their better selves.
I think, I must redirect it, somehow, this brutality. Before we see more pain. But the chance, it seems, has been taken away from me.
I hear the notes of matins, in the dawn air. Something strange: the notes are veering, the singing distracted. It bears the marks. An event.
Well. I rise, dress, and wait.
Presently the brush of the hands on the door: a congregation has arrived, with the sun. The whole courtyard grows like the inside of a rose.
Sister Mary Luisa has had a vision, in her sleep. An angel came to her, messenger of the Holy Virgin, and told her that Mirabel be anointed abbess.
A visitation! They crowd through the door. The nun herself is flushed, has let herself show sweat. She has a thick chin, with a pleat in the middle, like pinched dough. Calyssa comes behind, and waits.
I am grinning, careful. You dreamed of this? God help us, women and their dreams!
I dreamed that the Virgin Mary came to me, and she was so beautiful, like the statue in the chapel. This being a statue in wood that the abbess had privately repudiated, wondering why the Virgin had to have such pronounced lips, such a sensual smile. She told me of God’s wish for the abbey, for it to be great and last a thousand years, and that Mirabel would be abbess.
I smile as I would at my girls, at their frail wants. A lovely thing to dream.
But Mirabel’s girls are pushing. One has her ardent hand on another’s shoulder. It is a sign! After the fight, with its animal feel, they think this is something else: a gentle blessing. When brutality and God are the same, the same thing. I know. The Lord wants blood for sacrifice: no meagre fruit will do.
I am pleasant. Dreams are not miracles; you know the Church’s view on this.
Calyssa says, Precisely. They give her mute stares. She exhales with restraint.
One says, If it paved your own path perhaps you’d be kinder to it! Stupidly, some of them have begun to sing, beating their palms against their sides, stirring the early grey air like dust.
Peace! I say. Too late: Ruth is waking, by the fire. Looks at them with small, confused eyes.
Mirabel has arrived up the stairs, moving slowly. The girls reach for her. Her confusion in the fight has been forgotten. They could forgive her almost anything, I think. The contest has become less about her, more about their own fervour, their desire. She will be hoisted on their shoulders like an object, to be covered with flowers.
Sister, she has dreamed of you! As abbess! Clearly they think this decides the matter; that I will take the fancy and give her the abbey-keys there. She is not fooled: she sees the circle, she sees the women preparing again to sing, something moving out in front of her, expanding perhaps beyond her reach.
A kind dream, she says to the girl, and I thank you for it. Dark, still water in that voice. You look feverish. Go to the nurse; tell her a cooling draught and some feverfew.
Mirabel wants to lop off the end of the thought before it can spread. Careful, careful woman. Is she pleased? There’s no pleasure on her. If she ever becomes a saint it will be a great artist who can give her face lightness, serenity lifting. She squints; the nuns, silent, rebuked, recede.
I think of her standing in the cloister yesterday with her buckets, a visitor from another world entirely, as women tore flesh for the sake of her. I press my hands to the corner of my lips, to feel the line scoring them into the skin. Ruth, coughing, has come to assemble me, my morning parts. Rubs her eyes like a child.
Prophetic dreams. Calyssa has clearly fallen entirely out of temper. What next? As if we’re all children.
Kings have fortune-telling dreams. It is strange that I tell her this; it drops out of me without a thought, as if it rolled free from a pocket. My first husband dreamed once of a lizard creeping over his head. He said it was a sign of the Devil. Then the next day a spider crept out of his hat and bit him.
They look at me sideways, as if there’s some portent or lesson in it, but I am thinking of Michael, his thin face in utter astonishment. I was twenty-one, I tried very hard not to giggle as I bound his pink ear.
Mirabel laughs, suddenly. I am at least grateful for the lack of prophetic lizards, then.
Are there lizards here? Ruth is fearful.
In winter? No. Calyssa is irritable, and still strained. Let us hope that ends it. Who screeches so in a courtyard out of hours? I have a chamber of birds to settle. Of course, the birds, I think, must know the pattern of voices, matins and vespers, night and morning.
Whistle at them, says Mirabel.
Calyssa gives her the look of a person searching a merchant for a fraud; sees nothing, is dissatisfied. The Fool called that expression ‘smelling an orchard for an apple-john’. She goes. Mirabel looks to me.
You were awake early.
I was. I have the all-awake look, and my face still has the singe of painful places. We should all sleep now. One thinks clearer in daylight.
She nods and departs. When I dip into sleep for the first time, a little later, my daughters are absent, but the two contenders are visible, looming: Mirabel potato-fleshed with hot steam across her scalp, Calyssa fringed with feathers, great pinions from her neck and spine, pressing close to her skin, the secret soft down.
By daylight the dream of the Virgin has gone everywhere. It moves through the nuns as if they themselves had known it; by the night perhaps it will come to all of them, in its own shape.
I cannot harness it, Kent. This hare moves away from me, out of reach.
Mirabel and her followers are in the garden again, after a small snow-melt, pushing at the soil. Bulbs, for spring. Her women look at her with maternal pleasure. Calyssa’s women are scalded, muttering. Several leave anxious tokens at my door, including a text on the treachery of dreams; bless them, bless them all, I am benevolent. Ruth tells me to go out for the air and I go, floating, bearing wisps of dream behind.
I am in the cloister-garth, feeling the white air; sleeplessness and ghosts have made me fretful, I have come for relief into the cold, which is inarguable. Mirabel is pressing bulbs, holding each in her hand to smell for rot.
Kent, your last test is fear of God. Was this dream sent to try me, too? Is it the Lord’s decision – or Lear’s last gift, daunting me from the heavens? It all seems possible. Though, no: Lear wouldn’t have the wit to be so frustrating.
