Learwife, page 26
As I watch, three of Calyssa’s women move across the garden paths, and say something to Mirabel as they pass – it is tossed away in the blue wind. I do not hear it. The grass is sour and dark.
From the expressions of Mirabel’s girls, straightening from the ground around her, I know that the words were cruel. Their faces are locked things: they have heard something coming and risen grasping their armour. One speaks angrily, and holds out a hand in retort. It is a stark gesture: hand, woman, white bulbs, black ground. Their heads outlined in silver against the light. The memory of the brawl restrains them, but the thoughts are the same.
I turn towards the locked gate of the abbess’s grass garden, and unlock it (I have a key, she gave me one once for your solitude), and move through, clicking it behind me.
The grass is snow-covered; it is quiet. There is a bench by the wall. I sit to pray for a while.
Nuns! I should pity them but cannot, there is no bend of my heart that will do it. Goneril, do you remember? In another life – alongside this, spooling out its ribbon – you are a nun, and I visit you in your abbey; we sit strained, in the receiving-room, as your austerity sweeps all before you into deserts. Instead, instead.
I think I see a glimpse of her in the dazzling snow, and close my eyes. Daughter, I remember.
Your beloved nuns, Goneril, who arrived in Lear’s court after Regan’s marriage. They stayed a month, petitioning for something; and you found them, Goneril, in their brief streak across your sky, and followed. Astronomer-girl.
Lear had no concerns. Though I saw you together walking, you and the nuns, touching hands, and your face, and observed in you a flash of some ardent thought, like desire. Oh, of course let a princess talk to nuns, and learn their self-rule. Better that than men.
Better men. When will she be married? Her sister’s bound up with the marriage-rope, and she being the elder …
When we command it, and she shall be consumed by our will. He could double himself so easily in speech, by then. In first marriage the plural of his tense had been weak: he could not see himself as the flush of so many hopes, the multiple parts of the crown, land and sea and sky. But the habit came upon him gradually, and so by Regan’s marriage he was we – his will had easily expanded to twice its size, thrice. I had turned away, snorting.
It was perhaps my doing. When young you and Regan had asked, Tell us of your first husband, the pious one, the one who was a saint; and I had embroidered Michael for you, pruning his sins, pluming his righteousness. So that he was as he had deserved to be, not as he was. Regan, ghoulish, had found the thought of widowhood appealing, as you could be married twice and have many nice dresses. You, Goneril, clearer, had simply loved: Michael, folktale, saint, golden man. May we all live so well in the minds of children.
It was before a procession you told me; it is so clear in me, it runs like water. An anniversary of Lear’s accession, we had made it a carnival. Wheat for the serfs from the storehouses, entertainments in town squares. Striped silks, sugared sweets, hot plums. The whole country was merry-drunk from skull to shoes.
And we were to process before the people. Thick in our furs and painted leather, upon horses so hung with medals and veils that they looked like us, or we like them. A bastard-animal of bare skin and bridles, gold ropes and braids. I was preparing your hair, I remember, cursing it for it would not lie, and cursing for a maidservant to make you look proper. Magdalena, that hairpin is a crime. I will skewer you with it myself. You sat quiet.
The quietness was a fresh thing. I had seen it enter you softly, from the bitter arguments of your youth, and foolishly thanked God for it. A muteness that was not defiant but a withholding: a still held breath. As if a thing lay to be said and would call upon you soon.
Mother, I will not do this again. Under the weight of the headdress you were rigid, Goneril, like stone. The gold pulled the sallowness from your face, so that you looked metallic.
Be quiet if you cannot say sensible things.
I am being sensible. I am decided upon my course.
Regan, fetch my combs, will you? The wood with the ivory bells.
I have laid myself before God, Mother. I have heard the angels. I will follow His call to be a bride of Christ. Beatific. Your face like a horizon after a battle: serene in beauty, uncaring for the havoc before or after, because it was not its business.
So. How dare you do this now? You picked your time correctly. Just as we process. To embarrass me before all the highest people on my most important day! You are conniving, I see your design. I had thought you better, Goneril, far better than such a humiliation.
I have no design to humiliate.
You are a fool and a liar. God will not have you, Goneril. He has no desire for servants with forked tongues.
Your sly white face, performing innocence, lying that you were not cruel, that you did not wish to see me red with rage and misery in my highest crown. That you had no wilful need to punish me. And the nuns! Why did I trust holy women? I should have learned.
The garden is breathing; the light will consume me; I will be devoured.
Goneril, I had raised you and your sister to turn to each other, to be twinned, like two lines of light. And still it was Regan who came to me and said, She is gone.
What?
Gone. Goneril. With the nuns. She went hours ago. Pale, and so still, when in this moment she was casting off her sister in flame, and burning all the small tendrils that knitted them together! As if flinging it in my face. I saw Lear in her lips, the line of her chin. Defiant, like wearing a crown.
I hit her, as she knew I would hit her. Then I sent out guards. The stable was full, no horses gone: she must have left on foot. The sentries were roused. Regan daubed her face, held her tongue till I saw the edges of it turn white between her teeth.
It was the Fool who found you. Occasionally I believe that it was I, and that we alone saw each other, in the yew maze. But he was there, and had held to your sleeve, and asked, Listen, Mistress, oh, it is so cold this hard night, let us back to the hall.
You had packed so paltrily, my girl. Barely half a loaf, and coins that no merchant would take, being round fat gold and ceremonial, Lear’s coins for the giving of alms and honours. You picked them from the purse, perhaps. A peasant’s clogs, a cloak from the stables. I wanted to laugh, seeing you.
Coins. Coins in the dark mud; coins in the bodice, sewn tight as scales.
The yew maze was thick and severe in the heavy dark, steaming with cold. You could take it with your eyes closed, could navigate it as a child with Regan hand to hand, blind and deaf, all in the shade. I pretended then to be lost for you – Oh, find me, I will never get out! – but in the night snow I walked without a lantern. The black walls rose. From here it was as if the palace, the lights, had never existed.
I found you in the centre, clutching your cloak, the Fool holding you fast. Or perhaps you holding him. The two of you struck together.
It is my will to be gone. It is my royal will. Against the dark branches you were a hare, a deer, a white apparition. Your voice throttled, so tight. The walls high as a man closed against the wind; the air was still. I wish to be a nun, and to serve God.
You will never be a nun, Goneril. Though in that holy dark you shone, and looked like a saint’s icon, one circled face painted in black wood. Your service to God will be through marriage and your king. And added, irritably, And no nunnery will shelter you without our command: you are known, you are the king’s child.
I can be disguised. I can mutilate and scar my face, and sever my hair.
It is so cold, Mistress, said the Fool.
My fury rose, then. So little you knew. So much we protected you. And will the abbey accept you then, a dirty lack-girl coming nameless to their door? And how will you pay for your novice state? Sell your signet ring? You are out-thought, child. Your ambition runs far wilder than your possibilities. Tame it closer.
Men had arrived then.
I moved to you, to give you the rawness of my sympathy, to make you understand.
You were wild, you showed your fingernails. Have pity, Queen. I cannot stay here, laid next to my sister’s marital bed on the dog’s cushion! Where is the part of this vast palace that could be declared Goneril’s? There is no place for Goneril here! I will eat the yew berries. I will eat them. And I will die. You wanted to crawl without a name, beholden to nobody. Your arms clutched at me, you threw away my comfort.
Bear her inside the house.
When Lear was told he would not believe that one of his girls would leave. Of course he turned it backwards so that it was my fault. Your Christian God! Turning girls against their loving fathers! Get those nuns out, throw them into the river. And kissed your hair, Goneril, and I saw you retreat, into mute acceptance, into the middle distance. Held in his arms, under his beard, as he gave you a new ruby ring, and told you he knew how to make you happy, never fear.
And he did, so he thought. A week later he said, Albany has raised his hand.
For her? I thought he’d never wear a bridal crown. Bachelor for decades. Gentle, yes, and with speech that calmed hot mares.
That one – no. But he is an honourable man. Has served me bravely. His beard may no longer be full red, but—
I thought, But he is so old.
I have given him no answer, said Lear.
No. Not yet. Good to make him wait.
I thought of the yew maze, of the flailing wrist in my hand. You crying, Have pity, have pity.
He is an honourable man, I said. Let him wed her.
Your wedding to Albany was farce, Goneril, you knew it. He laid your hand upon his to take you to the dinner, and you accepted; but at the feast you turned your face from his conversation and laughed indecorously with companions, passing musicians, any other person. Accepted his remarks with the briefest of replies. He ate quietly and with quick appetite, a stunned man, still shaken by his blessing. Had never thought to marry, Kent told me.
When they departed he took some rice from your hair. You moved away, swiftly, as if ducking from a gust of rain.
A cruel wind’s coming, said the Fool beside me.
I open my eyes. There is no Goneril: she has been lost, the light has gone from the garden. Blue shadows are cutting it at the edges. The court nuns died, or else were banished, I do not know. They walked out of the story and vanished, as if through a gate. Women flowing out of a hand, into the forest. And my girl, who could have been a nun, yes, and lived still, and been hungry and delighted. But was it not better, Goneril, to live and die royal, than to sit and crumble towards God without a name? You will thank me; yes, I think so.
I gather myself and move out of the darkening garden.
In the evening Ruth finds me painting my face. Putting my hair in thin, thin plaits. I am dressing, in case they come back, my daughters. I want to be ready, to look masterful, a filled-out woman. Have unwrapped the royal circlet from the packages, which I have not worn in years. Wheatsheaves shivering in gold, against the candlelight.
I am seventeen again, I am just-married, I am perfect, awaiting my king in the dark.
Ruth is confused. Her hand on my shoulder smells of mallow, of grasses; she has been sorting sweet hay for the floors.
I promise I am not mad, I say hurriedly. Thinking of the hedgehogs, eating, blind. Thinking of Calyssa, her sweet lining.
No indeed, she says, and is troubled, my sanity, the plane of my exacting thought, being the place on which she puts her body. Which could smash, she thinks, which is made of earth, of fired clay, tiles that collapse under a foot-weight. She sees this suddenly. I bare my teeth, to prove I’m still balanced.
No, truthfully, I have all my wits still. I will hold together.
Yes. She moves carefully away, as if wondering.
The girls do not come. I wait; I wait all night. I wake with the circlet fallen into my lap, its sprigs and golden harvest crushed, against my hands.
10.
There are to be flowers; the last of the season, gathered up for the Advent.
John the Baptist, my favourite: animal-man, relinquishing women, stepping fresh from the water with his body bound in skins. Like Kent. And born to the elderly Elizabeth, whose womb itself was a dried river, which the Lord shifted aside, and let through the flood, and darkened the silt with tides.
I am plaiting an Advent wreath out of slack flowers in the chapel. So little remains: little folded dry hasps, burrs, petals crackling like fire. I am quiet. I cannot see the cold brows of my dead girls under their mourning crowns. I cannot kiss the chin and the eyes and the fingers of my king. No night visitations; no shivering gifts in my sleep. I am lack and lack and lack, barely a soul at all.
Brother Manfred is here, so I rouse into politeness. Are you well? I say to him kindly.
He has a mouth with an unwieldy bottom lip. Drooping, licked at the centre with pink. Biting, he hides it: this evidence of body-want, the fragile pink of his self. He is, I think, a soft man. And women frighten him.
I fear this is becoming unholy. He is speaking to me as an equal, as if we contend with the same problems. When all he does is tie their little sins at one end and send them off to Heaven, and read services in his quiet voice, and sit in the sacristy with wine while the women do the work of loving, grieving, building and rebuilding belief. He sounds concerned. They spend so much time thinking of their competition. We are here for the strictures of God, not these tussles for power.
Ah, but God knows power and its tenderness, and where to wield and fold! Did He not lay a competition among Cain and Abel for His love that led to a bloodied skull, and push Abraham to the darkest part of himself at his son’s throat? (Though perhaps it would have been different, had Isaac been a girl. Daughters being lesser, bringing fewer gifts, in the desert, and generally.) What’s holier? And I ask for so little. No smashed brother-brain, no hands dyed with son-blood. Just pledges, small tithings, proof of their desire. Crumbs.
I smile. The wreath is full in my hands. It is a dark time, Brother Manfred. So many dead, and the abbess gone. Without an occupation I fear they’d brood, and become melancholy.
That terrible fight! He is self-castigating. As if he could keep forty women under his own power, in such a season.
I shrug. Isolation and grief will cause extremes, naturally. But I think a new abbess and the opening of the abbey will cleanse us. Like a bloodletting.
Yes. Yes, I hope so. He looks to the ceiling: the painted stars, their wheeling circuit.
I want to flatter him. Little boys complaining to the bishop when he arrives would be distasteful. Brother Manfred, I wonder: how does one judge the piety of others? You must have thoughts on this point.
One cannot. He looks perturbed by the idea, if pleased by the change of subject. Faith has no earthly mathematics. The acts and deeds of any soul are measured only in the ledgers of God.
And we cannot peek a little at the page?
Men of the cloth can, perhaps. Who have been trained in the point. Smug, smug. Like a little rooster, fluffing his chest feathers. But the rest, no.
I see. Well, I must create my own ledger, Kent, woman though I am. Swiftly, before I dissolve.
The women process to the service. The one who brought forth the prophetic dream is last, and nods to me. I am possessed of a sudden desire to be kind to her. Pain gives out these moments, grasping hands in the dark.
And have you had more visions, child?
None. She looks at her hands. Is young, still. Given to holy orders with her pup-fat still on.
But you are not sad about it, I think.
They all treat me so strangely now, she says, almost in wonder. Well, this is what one gets, I want to tell her, when marked out, the gulf that expands between you and your fellows, that new country. Queens know.
I am sorry. Would give her the wreath, but it would be interpreted as a sign, a weight on the scale, so cannot. But my pity is sincere, for her. I hope your dreams give you no more messages.
She bows her head. All I dream about now is fire.
We had been a brittle group, the factions souring at one another. But it is the season of feasting, now; and I relent for twelve days, for the birth of Christ. There is shrieking: one novice chases another with a whip of dry wheat. Resin in the fires. Indecorous! I look out of the window to see several women with hoisted skirts, grappling up the orchard trees to cull the halos of gold mistletoe. Singing. They could be fourteen, or forty.
The feast nights are extensive. Pig-blood sausage, the wealth of our work, and fish, served to me as the cook smiles. Every evening I withdraw early, prominent with my bare head, a woman beyond pleasure, scalding their happiness white briefly with shame. But it passes. Conscience does. And they go on singing late; a sugar-house is carried to them; the novices break off windows and panes. The chapter-house is dizzyingly hot: the atmosphere thins, till a person seeing another observes only scraps of colour, a flicker, each alone in their wild joy.
Truthfully I am sitting with my own feast in the nights. Memories. Lear coming back from war into a hot winter hall, blue with bruises. Taking water from a bowl in my hand and pushing the whole fistful of it back off his forehead, till his skull became a tilled field of dark red, upturned soil. Cordelia, with her soft mouth against my heart as the fires banked and spat. The education of a queen is slow, but it forms hard; I am the sum of all my secrets, and I forget nothing.
The ghosts do not come. I grow desperate. On the last night I tear apart the bundles. Perhaps you want something, daughters. Perhaps I can lure you.
I never told you what I kept. The scales you both dropped: teeth, ribbons, dark tears of stone from a pocket, split child-skirts messed in play, ruffs made for a kitten all afternoon and abandoned, the cool pomanders hung at your necks as babes. These pressed hearts of childhood, folded smaller and smaller; I kept them. In the white parcels I still carry them, brimming; I could not leave them behind. My children, my gifts.
