Learwife, page 30
The glimmer-stream of your hair is the light, Regan, the dark is your mouth opening. I walk into it, I walk into your body, I am engulfed. So you punished. So it is.
Ruth, out of the bed, hears my breathing as I return, and takes my hand. My lady, sleep. You have been walking all the night. I am afraid for you. You are sad, you are sick, sleep. I breathe but am silent.
Lear. What a fool.
My body has known two men. In between these two points there could be no third. What else could fit in the space filled by two kings? Of course others would not understand this. That Lear was all men, that no other male existed! He swept the landscape before him. He laid it bare.
But it would hold; for him, the story would hold. My body and Kent’s, cooling like honey in a bed, as we attempted a son that would inherit all. And Lear outplayed, outworked. The world folding on him. Older Lear saw conspiracy in the fold of a curtain, a whisper behind a tree. He would believe his little daughter, creeping to his ear.
It was as I taught him. Lear, I am undone by the success of my own vocation. Better you did not tell me, better I never knew – because I’d come to find you, throttle you at the neck, till the blood ran out of your ears.
I look at Ruth and want to tell her, but cannot, as she is no mother. What we pass down is mothering, and bear it between us like a burning tree. Mother on mother on mother, pressing through the earth. And each daughter making it new, taking the weight, declares as she rounds herself and makes a new sum (nought, one, twice herself) that she will be as the others were not. I will not do this to my own daughters, the mother says. I will be better.
Did they have daughters? I ask Ruth.
What? Lady, please. She is weeping. I do not know why.
The messenger, did he say? Did my daughters have girls?
They were childless, Lady, there were no daughters.
Nonsense. How could they die if there were no daughters to kill them?
I do not understand.
Regan will tell you. Regan is so beautiful but I worry for her. Magdalena says she will not have a child, does not want one. I do not know how to tell her father.
Oh, sleep, sleep, Lady.
I relent then. And let her half get up from the bed, with her eyes held shut, and fold me in fur, and cover her mouth with her sleeve while she cries softly. I reach out and hold her face, between my hands, until she is quiet and the air is still.
In the shadows the Fool sang, A willow, willow, willow. A pretty maid rode and gave me a ring, a willow, willow, willow.
A sweet song. What do you say of a king who sees plots against himself in every shadow? Is there a tune for that occasion?
He was silent.
No riposte? The parts of this drama are terrible. I must send for better ones.
I have no daughters, no sons. I sold them all for a white jerkin and a tilting-horse. Still, Highness, I greatly pity you.
Nobody pities the queen.
He left me.
15.
I wake from blank cold dreaming.
Early. The nuns are singing. It is matins, and the air is thick with the shards of sleep as they push their voices through their slumber, propping themselves against the cold pews.
Shouldering up into knowledge. Adulteress. That Lear died, that my daughters died, thinking me faithless. That they went into the ground slaughtered without the knowledge that I was true, that I held fast, that I had never broken. It is unholy that I cannot plead, that their eyes are stoppered, their ears filled with moss and dark water. Bread of my bread, my girls.
It is as bad as the first night. Where their deaths crashed over my skull, and I was drowned. But I know more, now; I have aged, it seems, one hundred years. Who knew little nuns could teach so much.
Kent was not in my dreams. Such a sour idea. Kent my lover! Kent who only ever loved Lear, and would lie at his door at nights against ghosts. And from this Cordelia! It is – it is an intimate slur. Regan, you strange girl. When I find Kent, wherever he is, he can tell me all: how he claimed our innocence. How he fought for me. Oh, Kent, oldest friend.
My head is as clear as wine. The night passes off me and I am ringing, like a bell. The bishop comes now. I am ready.
The bishop comes. Stallions at the gate, storm grey, which must be the fashion. Four, of a single sire. The gate is cracked; the quarantine is over. As a hymen breaks. Regan, Regan. I will wear the grey cloak, and meet him with the other women.
Greetings to you. May the Lord bless and keep you.
And to you. Has the carved face of a man of cultivated pleasure. Aesthete, weighing his rings. We heard of the death of the abbess with sorrow. But, spreading his hands, there has been an accident.
The razed ground as we stand in an arc to meet him. Ash, still, and the scorch of stone rises through his hair. For days he will smell it. Passing a hand under his face he will pause and remember.
A candle. Mirabel is on my left. It is all managed. Calyssa says nothing. And is dulled, her hair scraped back under her habit once again. Looks blurry against the starkness of the dirt, which shows deep shadows.
I would clasp at Mirabel now and say, You will not be abbess, and it is all for the best, but I cannot: the light is diving into me, and my daughters, and sickness, blood-tasting, and Lear is walking along the edge of my eyeline; I can see him, he is half turned, his hair pulled through with water. So I am silent.
Well. The bishop claps, has men, who rise to him. Watching this I feel the click of some dim thing. Desire. Tomorrow we will perform the ceremony for the new abbess.
Has travelled long, to come to this, and carries his weariness obviously: give me wine, give me scented wood for a fire. Pushes his arms deep into his sleeves. What can he sense? The women gazing, the exhaustion. The abbess’s white soul, the souls of my ghosts.
We take him to the old abbess’s rooms (still warm, still possessed with the scent of sickness). I linger.
Calyssa will be abbess. It is decreed. I give him her name, her rank. It is arranged. I have done well, daughters. I have made the last step; I am close to you now.
Thank you. He takes note, then looks at me. Stark glance, appraising. In it many scales, many weights.
I meet his eye, his measuring; I have known all the calculations. I could turn you out by the lineament you wear next to your skin, the hidden crystal crucifix under your cassock, given by a wealthy woman. I know you, to your bone. Do you know who I am? I say.
You are wearing the charms of a dead woman. Girdle, necklace of power. Pearls, with Lear’s crossed dogs, his emblem.
I smile.
He sighs. I wonder where you found them. She’d be, what? Over fifty. Older than Lear.
Years older. It is a new thing, to discuss myself as if absent. Lear never had the knack of it. Planetary king, so afraid of his own death. The thought clamps down; it is pain.
And dead, of course. A sinful woman.
I am not offended. I think of this. Sin not as a choice but as a pooling thought that spills outwards from a body. A nun reading by a candle raising her head for the sudden flicker of an idea. I ask, Was she so terrible, then?
Only a devil could breed those daughters. One good child, perhaps, but even God makes accidents. He is tired – I can tell by the weight of his head as he moves it. Nods at me. That necklace came from a naughty, naughty woman, sister. He puts out a hand, would touch it, the weight of the stones over my neck.
I move away. God forgives. And bow, and leave him.
So: Calyssa is settled. Te deum. Takes the oath, and rises queen. No, not queen, abbess. We perform the vows in the refectory, with a hastily produced altar, old embroidered cloths found in a chest. I am weeping, as I never could when my girls took a throne.
Mirabel’s face when Calyssa’s name was called was hidden. Smoke, from massed candles. The women looked to her, but she was still. The unreadable stone of her body. They looked to me, but I was glittering, pitiless. A relic left upon the plain, to be rent in half by ancient weather.
I feel a fierce dark sadness for Mirabel’s hopes, which are torn apart now. But it is done.
And I will go. I will go, after they have settled, after the light has paled and the singing is done. I have been too long here. The ghosts whisper, Rotting. I can already feel the journey shaping around me; the horses that’ll warm me when I am cold. Perhaps I will build a little hut by the graves, and live nestled in the folds of my memory, hibernating among layers and layers of daughters and husbands, emerging only for holy days. Ancient priestess, with a mossed roof, and dogs. Yes.
As the prayers go up I am whispering to myself. Ruth, bound around the face like Lady Justice, who has come to witness with her body if not her eyes, leans and touches my lips, and I stop.
The ceremonies go on till the early morning. Afterwards I come to see Calyssa. She is in the abbess’s apartments now. Gleaming in the accomplishment of her hopes.
I come to pay my respects.
Yes. Her face is glimmering with energy still. She welcomes me: I am kingmaker, the engineer of her visions.
You will be tired. I am generous. We may discuss plans later.
Plans? She looks puzzled. The abbess-chain drips along her robes; her forehead is still damp with anointing. She is ruffled, fresh, as if just baptised, as if emerging from the water.
Be settled first. I will let her rest in this new dovecote, and expand.
Oh, I am settled already. I knew this office better than she did. I must send messengers, the quarantine has delayed so many plans. She is talking to herself, fast, as if held back for a long period and now released. The ambition, met and filled, is to be replaced with larger vessels, demanding other sacrifices. Women like this are never sated by a prize, not for long.
I say, The spring is coming down. I think the roads will be clear soon. Beetles, and mud bubbling, rising to swallow the ash in the garden. The world is rioting down, daughters, and your bodies will be growing bulbs and fingerlings of green, and breaking out through the ground; you will be living.
The roads? Why the roads? Has turned; I have her attention fixed.
I know three horses cannot be spared so long. But I could take two. I smile. Lear will be pleased to see me. He’ll make those old dancers come up again. I hated them, their legs were too thin.
Lear? Lady. What are you saying?
The wind is fresh. I come to hold her arm so that she moves to the window. I feel her yield. The abbey beneath us still burns with lights: many women drinking, blessing themselves, feeling the dip or swing of their hopes. Sun for a few days, at least, so it will be a good journey to start with. Did I say Lear would be pleased to see me? Of course he will not. He is dead. It is strange that I made that mistake. But perhaps not so strange: she would understand, if she had met him. He was the substance of all. Though gullible. And killed me for it, but I would not die.
She takes me, and directs me to a chair. Come, sit here.
Yes. She gives me a cushion; and I fold my hands over it. Greedy, yes. Old, yes. The ghosts are raucous, and pleased. Or that is the birds – they sound similar. The birds are dead too. They are part of the same chorus.
Now tell me clearly. What is it that you want?
I must have my little house by the graves, you know. And perhaps my daughters. Who might be kind enough to visit, if I have enough baubles for them, and a little entertainment. It will be a fine summer. I think there will be many good days. So I must go. This fills me; I am bursting, the hope of it, the great wave of the future. Breaking over my head. I will ask. They may have had children, you see. They said they didn’t but I don’t believe it. To have had no daughters! Girls lie all the time, you must understand.
Are you sleepy perhaps? Calyssa asks. Are you dreaming?
No, no, I am quite awake. She is very young. Why is everybody young, and myself the only one privileged to age? I will leave Ruth with you, you understand. I am whispering. She is old, she is infirm; it may be difficult, and she deserves to rest.
I will do my best for Ruth, Queen. Her hair hidden now beneath her headdress, so that she looks gentler, more tamed. Though around the edges light flickers. But I do not feel— Well. I must do what is best for all the women in my charge. I wonder if you realise that.
I do. You are a wise girl. No men are likely to gull you. Don’t get yourself married. I’ll not see your heart broken up. This room, the flowing lights: time is broken apart. It is moving freely, and I am falling through it.
Oh, Queen. Her hands are held to her chest. You will not go. I cannot let you. You are dreaming, you are not well. You must stay.
Oh, bad girl! I will help you see. I take her face. I hold it. I press it to my own, hard as death, until she cries out.
Stop it. She pulls my hands off, at the wrist, and is not Regan. I had thought she was. I had been gripping her like stone.
Other women enter. Get off her. They take me by the arms, I am laughing.
Be gentle with her. She is dreaming, says one.
I am to go on a journey, I say to the women. Generous. Calyssa does not understand. But I will.
Calyssa has marks across her cheeks, but the confusion passes off her, she is restored again. Queen, can you understand me? Comes to press her hands upon mine. I feel their weight, the loam of her palms. Please. You are my child, my charge. Take direction. You are loved here. But I cannot permit you to leave these walls, not when you are ill.
Goneril yells, and will bite. Small teeth, a mark round as a crown. Though it is myself, and the ring of red is on the arm of Calyssa’s woman, her skin-taste is on my tongue. She screams, like the birds caught in frets of fire. More women are appearing; the world is crushing in upon me.
I gave you all of this, I call to Calyssa, across these protective bodies.
And in good time you gave it. Take her out, please. And turns to bathe herself, to be revealed, as a pearl out of a stone. I hate her: the walls of her fold in and reveal intimate flesh. See, daughters, the incarnadine innards of blessed women, see what we will discover together.
The women steer me down the stairs, into the garden.
I am out – in the evening light, unsteadily. I stagger. Were bones crushed in me? Am I walking on sand, on smashed soles? I can barely go upright.
Mirabel is sitting looking at the burned garden with her hands crossed in her lap. That patch at least is green, at her feet; it has the light fragile hair of shoots, and will be bravely thick with them. I must tell her. I walk to her, and smile.
I am leaving.
She looks at me evenly. Has balls of seed in her lap. Has never drawn a breath that does not come from some deep place. Never breathed hard under a man.
I will be going to the graves, and my own little house. Perhaps I’ll be leaving even tonight. And would ask her to come, perhaps. She may come. I could have a garden, for her, a court garden, rare trees, and biers of rose, under which I could shelter.
When Michael died I walked in the palace garden and cried and cried. The frost was on the leaves, I laid paths through the white grass. Later when I looked back I had paced arcs and rounds and twists, like a swooping swallow above a field.
Mirabel still looks. Unmoving.
You could express good wishes, I say peevishly.
You are not a stupid woman. Are you a stupid woman? she says.
I am not. I am surprised. The ghosts are rioting now – the light sends them sparking.
She has the bare still gaze of an animal. You are. You are old and have less solid brain than a rotted bread loaf. You bit Sister Mary Luisa’s hand.
She deserved it, I say, with dignity.
Well, the abbess has decreed that you are here till death, and you had better get used to it. Something moves in her, something I have not seen. Vicious.
Scrape, on the stone. It is not truth; it must be.
But you will allow it, I say. You will help me.
As an abbess I may have helped. But you chose elsewhere. Violence shudders her voice, the only part of her that moves. I am afraid, for the first time. After the shit and foulness of your contests. And the wreckage. What a thing to ask of me. And wanted; and is thwarted in her want, and so turns, a furious animal, and devours. I see.
I had to choose. You do not know. It was for my girls, but you are my friend. You will understand. Would reach to hold. This human woman, who loves me.
I am your friend in God. But otherwise, no. She gets up and shades her eyes against the torches. Green, nun, light. Be grateful, woman, and don’t snivel. Here there is food, and a roof, and we’ll keep you well enough. Better that than running around naked on a heath. Which is where I would leave you. If I had my way.
The world trembles. Here is the noise of the ground, which rises.
Now I must pray. And leaves me.
Oh, here is my poor lady, says the cook. Come, don’t cry. I have a honey cake for you. There’s a good woman. Open your mouth. There.
16.
Spring breaks open.
I go out to watch every day, now. I walk past the fields of whispering grass where men and women with kerchiefs and bare arms are bending – over what? To sow something? Perhaps I have been told, and it has fallen out of me – to the crossroads. There is a low stile and a scoop of shade. I go bareheaded now, in the nuns’ old robes, as things are denser, the air is fleshier, the light a bronze caul across my hair and face. I do not fight this density but move deeper within it, sensing its smoothness, the heat of the mud path through my sandals, the sky and pollen and smell of coming wind.
The holy women watch me pass silently; some cry, though I do not know why, and some come and kiss me upon the hands, and tell prayers upon me. Mirabel’s face is turned away.
I laugh, and am gentle. They are filmy, they do not signify.
There is such singing, from everything, everything. As when I took all the packets from my bedroom, in my arms and my skirt, and conveyed them to the river, feeling myself under an impulse I had ignored; and now it cracked out of me, yolk out of shell, and was revelling, and the new grass-growth stippled the melted ground. So I took the packets, and pulled them open on the dry bank (a place of history, which had names and deeds attached, but could not care; and simply brooded in the sun, as the mirror of the river observed itself placidly), and made a gift to the water. Handfuls and armfuls, from the sodden packets, given in great arcs: scissors, a shoe embroidered (I saw as it flew out of my hands) with a bird, by some small ancient maid, cracking leather red as a mouth, gold and gold and gold. I was immense; I was the goddess who grants all boons. In the fresh crash of tide they blushed and dulled, and attained new life: after decades of eminent stillness they were moving, flipping over rock-moss, caught twinkling in the throat of an eddy. Elation! The shoes tossed and showed themselves fitted to some water-nymph, who danced and turned their velvet nap to silver. I was releasing.
