by Wray Delaney
My eyes deceive me – this cannot be Randa, she whose thoughts I used to hear, my constant companion who I called my little soul. I believed she, like me, was of the forest, elfin born – not this. No, I refuse to believe what I see. It is the result of my exhausted mind, of hunger, the vapours of an empty stomach – it dangles demons before me. I am asleep, lost in the death of a dark, dark dream . . . and if not? Think, think – this is not the first time I have seen such a winged creature. Rational thought tells me this malady has been brought about by delirium – my mind makes monstrous pictures, illusions conjured from the air. The creature is not here. I have a fever . . . yes, a fever accounts for this vision for there is no such beast, it is a fragment of a disordered mind, a reflection of myself. Before me stands the quandary of my whole being made into solid form. This is how I feel, this creature is the black side of my mirror. I am not beautiful . . . beauty be the monster.
I think I say that aloud. I close my eyes to stop the room spinning, to stop myself tumbling into Hell’s inferno. May she be gone, may this apparition be gone. . .
Yet when I look again – when I look now – the creature is still here, spiked wings spread wide, leathery, veined.
‘Forgive me, Randa . . .’ – I am laughing – ‘Forgive me, for I see you as a beast. Tell me that is impossible . . . tell me . . .’
Cold sweat breaks out on my forehead, vomit rises in my throat, a tidal wave rushes through my body, spilling out my insides . . . the chamber spins and I am falling into blood torn velvet.
LXX
In those half-remembered grains of dreams is the alchemy of truth. In this realm, behind the watery veil is where half of me belongs.
I wake, feel well again, with the clarity of vision that has long been lost to me or perhaps I never before understood. I float drowsy between thoughts and wakefulness. I note I am in a carved bed and through the window of this chamber twilight is giving way to a snow-laden night. A golden glow spreads from the fire burning in the grate to where I lie but apart from that the chamber is in darkness.
Now I realise I have lied to myself for too long. To what effect? That I might believe I belonged to the world of man, to deny I was faerie born.
She who gave birth to me loved me enough to protect me from my father. There has always been too much of the forest in my soul and now I think, what is there to prove that I am his child? A note left on a basket, scribbled in the disguised hand of the sorceress? The word of a fearful, cunning woman?
Perhaps my mother, she who bore me, knew better. She was of faerie folk who knew the magic to be found in nature. And so if I am not of Lord Rodermere’s blood, then I have no part in the sorceress’s curse, the curse which jarred my past and has blighted my future.
There is no more need to hide in women’s clothes, to play a part upon the stage and pretend. Is that not what all actors do, pretend? And when the play is over, the audience gone, then does he not put away his costume and become himself once more? Not I. Not I. Determinedly I pretend I belong to the world of man, that I am my father’s son and with that fantasy comes the chains that bind me.
In the shadows someone is watching me. A harsh, scratching sound betrays their presence.
‘How long have I been here?’
‘Three days,’ the shadows answer.
‘Randa?’ I hold my breath. There is no reply. ‘Forgive me if I insulted you. It was not you, Randa, not you, but the fever that made me see you as a monstrous being.’
‘Then you saw Randa, saw me as I am. For what I am is the beast.’
I am back in my body, fully awake. Her voice comes from deep inside her, the voice I had learned to love. A voice I long to hear more of.
‘Let me see you now, I beg.’
A silence thick with unsaid words. Finally her voice again.
‘You hung an image of your own creation on my invisibility.’
‘Please – show yourself to me.’
She takes so long to answer that I wonder if she has gone. I jump when she speaks again.
‘You will dine with me, dine with Randa, tonight.’
There is nothing to see. A door opens, a door closes and the sounds echo throughout the house. She has gone. And I am left with thoughts that hover above me, detached from myself.
I let the weight of them fall into me. I who have been cursed with beauty, who have longed for the wildness of the mirror turned, longed for the beast, for the beast … The harshness of a truth denied shocks even me: I will never find love in the symmetry of perfection.
This unknown companion, my little soul, she who I could not see, only hear, who now in spite of my terror I long to look upon – she is who I love.
Oh, night, do not be slow in your steps. I bid you come fast and light evening’s candle.
The majordomo arrives without his mask and in the light of the lantern he carries, I see he has the face of a baboon, his ruff marking the divide between the simian head and the torso of a man. His arms are long and his hands without gloves are those of a monkey. It is his tail that holds the lantern.
By his manner of intimacy I can tell that he cared for me when I was ill. He takes my face in his hand and turns it to the light. His grip is strong and I have a memory of his touch, of fingers that ache to heal. There is a glint of pride in his eye and on seeing I am recovered he pats my face.
I am shaved and washed, all with silent efficiency. He disappears for a moment and comes back cradling the gown I had worn and feared I had ruined. Now I see it in a new light. He helps me into it and ties the cords at the front. It fits me as if it has been tailored for my body. He stands back and examines his work, then comes forward again and adjusts the gown so that it sits right on the shoulders.
‘It looks well on you, my lord.’
‘You speak?’
‘Yes, as do you.’ He hands me slippers and tells me to call him Papio. ‘When you came here with the thief and his friend you spoke in a language I do not know, in words I do not recognise. But when you tossed in fever you spoke our language.’
‘Tell me what she looks like,’ I beg.
‘My mistress is more glorious than ever you will be. To me your looks are ugly, an insult.’
‘With that I would not disagree, but you have not answered my question.’
‘She is the most magnificent of beasts. The like of her we have not seen for many an age. One day she will rule these lands.’
And I think, I will be beside her when the time comes.
I follow him downstairs to the banqueting hall. He lights the candles but they do not illuminate all of the chamber. I know she is here – perhaps in the room beyond. She has no intention of announcing herself.
I wait. And still I am patient. In the candlelight, again I study the fabric of my gown but now I see in its intricate stitches embroidered stories of magnificent beasts, kings and queens, far-off lands and castles that sit precariously high on rounded hills.
When I look up, she is there. I stand and hope my legs will not fail me. I bow and raise my eyes to hers. She is as I remembered, but I am ashamed of my reaction when first I saw her. What a petty man I am. I have only pale, white skin, the veneer of beauty. She is glorious in her unfathomable being. Who created such a magnificent creature, half of woman, half of beast, the whole more glorious than any puny man? Oh world, such unknown treasures do you possess if we have but eyes to see.
Her wings, two tall steeples, rise to a god that would say she is the Devil’s own. And by her side is my fox. She lurches towards me and with her comes a perfume of iron, of earth. With difficulty she sits and the fox jumps up onto the chair beside her.
Three different dishes are set before us. My dish is a roast of mutton, served with the finest wine. For Randa, a bowl of dead mice; for the fox, a hen’s carcass. His manners are not inclined to furniture and he takes the bird to the floor where he devours it. Randa peels the skin off the mice with her sharp talons as if their small bodies be no more than grapes, holds them up by their tails and c
runches on soft bone with her sharp, pointed teeth. The wine swims in my head.
We eat, we do not speak. I have an advantage over Randa: I can hear her thoughts but her thoughts are a turmoil I can make no sense of. At last she breaks the silence.
‘Tell me,’ she says, Do I – I, Randa the beast – do I have a soul?’
LXXI
‘You told me once your soul is ancient,’ I say.
‘My father was an educated man yet he believed in the Devil and in God. He taught me that a beast has no soul.’
‘Was your father – the dealer in magic – was he like you?’
‘My father, if he lives still, is an alchemist.’
He is thinking how is it Randa was born a beast? Shall I tell him my mother said it was nature’s design for me? And that my father talked of the alchemy of transformation? And how he near sent himself mad with the grief of it all?
I am on the verge of giving myself away. Her thoughts interest me far more than what she has to say. Did her father create her? I must tread carefully.
‘Were you cared for, treated well?’
‘My father’s apprentice was a kind man. My father’s apprentice who called me Mistress Randa. His apprentice had more magic in his breath than did my father ever possess. He wept when the chain and iron collar were placed on me, the collar that burned my feathers away.’
‘Who would do such a thing?’
‘It was my father, the alchemist, who did it.’
‘What of your mother, the angel?’
‘Bess was her name.’
She loved me, loved me even when I killed.
To conceal my shock I pour myself more wine – which I know to be unwise.
‘Pour me some,’ she says.
Her eyes are bright, they never leave mine as her talons clutch the glass and lift it to her lips. Full, sensual lips.
‘I killed her,’ she says.
‘Who?’ I ask.
‘She who spoke against my mother. Bitter tongue full of evil, her voice too loud, heard too far away. I was but a child, a beast too small to know my power. Her fingers tasted like butter. How could such vile flesh taste so sweet?’
You do not look away, but perhaps you play the part of hero. I admire you for that. But how long will manners that make fools of men keep you seated here? Ask me if Randa killed again . . . ask me . . . I dare you.
I will not for it would be as if I judged my fox for the killing of a hen when it is implicitly a part of his nature. Does she know I can hear her thoughts? Perhaps instinctively she does. She smiles, her lips blush red.
He sees me, sees the beast, and does not waver in his glance. I expected him to scrape his chair upon the floor and beg for his freedom.
Again I nearly give myself away, muddling what she says and what she thinks for her thoughts make me tender towards her. Speak to me.
‘Speak to me, Mistress Randa.’
I had never thought we might talk like this, as if I, Randa, mattered to him, as if what I thought truly concerned him. But his beauty is an enchantment, it undoes me. I tremble to find desire ignite the embers in my heart, to flare again as if the flames had never been quenched. I cling once more to the possibility of love, a love in which I would be transformed. Banish the thought, Randa. Drink wine.
‘Speak to you of what?’
‘Of what you think, of what you dream.’
‘I think,’ she says, ‘that nothing good will come of this. You once humiliated me and I wanted my revenge. Now I know it to be pointless.’
‘Why did you not have the courage to show me yourself then when you stayed in my chamber and near convinced me of my insanity?’
‘Do I not repulse you?’
‘No. I am in awe. You are a mystery.’
She laughs. It is a high sound, wind rustling in summer leaves and I doubt not it is a sound that is rarely heard. I too laugh.
‘Once,’ she says, ‘I believed that if you could love me for who I am, see me as I am and not flinch, that perhaps your loving would transform me, that there might be inside me another form more human, a woman waiting to be unwrapped.’
He says nothing. What can he say? Only that it would be impossible for him to make love to me, that the thought would wilt him. Oh, I am tired and this is all the sadness of uselessness. Tomorrow I will set him free. Tomorrow I will resign myself to this world and its beasts. And what of him, what of Beau? He will marry and be unhappy with his lot. If he remembers me at all it will be as no more than the stuff of dreams, tales to tell to his children while dancing them on his knee.
I want to shout at her: you are wrong, so wrong. Let me in, let me know you better. But I bite my tongue.
She stands, Papio comes to help her to her feet. I hear her talking to him and suspect it is about my leaving.
In the language I learned as a child, that Papio understands, I say, ‘Randa, please, dear mistress, do not send me away.’
She turns to look at me.
‘What point is there in your staying?’
‘To know you better.’ She says nothing and I say, ‘Let me lie with you.’
‘Why? To add a beast to your list of bedfellows? It is but the wine speaking. It has enchanted your eyes with rose petals and made me into an acceptable form. Go back to your wormy bed, Lord Beaumont, be gone. This is the Land of the Beasts. Here we feast on men like you.’
THE BEAST
LXXII
I want him gone for my soul is sick with the love of him, with longing for him, making a mockery of my senses. I disguise myself in dreams of what I might be if he, if Beau, was ever to truly love me. The eye of my mind makes possibilities where there are none. I labour hard to find joy in hope and I know the task to be hopeless. I fear I will study his face and when I do his golden eyes will tell me the truth of his loathing.
Does he think me half-witted? That I would let him lie with me? Is that the price he puts on his freedom? Perhaps I have misjudged him, given him more valour than he is worth.
When he is gone I will banish any thought of him. I will be a blown egg with only air to fill its oval space and let that be my heart.
I return to my chamber heavy of limb. I am no eagle that can fly into the sky, touch the sun and let it burn this pain from me. I know the truth of my being, I saw it mirrored in his eyes. I will have no man’s pity and if that is the sum of his desire for me then, Beau, leave me to my dreams.
THE BEAUTY
LXXIII
I return to my chamber full of anger at the injustice of her words. She judged me too hastily, too harshly. What – does she suppose me a whore? And for all my rage at the perceived injustice, I realise she knows me better than I do myself. Her nature is the source of stars and shines just as bright; mine the world of words – words that have not wings enough to reach her.
Who have I loved? My mother, my sister, Master Goodwin. No one else. All else I might claim are moments of deluded passion.
What a clown you are. You who have so little liking for yourself, how would you ever have enough love for her? What conjuring cap do you need upon your head to make such magic happen?
It is not she that repulses me. It is myself, hidden in all this vile beauty, the truth of who I am concealed from human eye by the glamour of a charmed man. If I had one wish – one wish only – I would ask for it to be gone, to not be seen in the light that blinds and corrupts others.
I should have had the courage to speak with an honest tongue, to tell Randa that when she left me in the House of the Three Turrets, I felt abandoned. I missed her, missed hearing her thoughts. Yet tonight I said none of that truth. If I was a man, more a man than this, I would have said what I feel but I did not. I would have said that I know her.
While I rant my fox watches me.
‘What am I to do?’ I ask him.
Tomorrow I will be sent on to Sir Percival Hayes’s house to be an apprentice to a thief once more, to be discovered and no doubt sold back to Lord Rodermere. What then? Held pri
soner again in my father’s house, the sword of the sorceress’s curse hanging on a spider’s thread above me. No. I am not a puppet to be pulled this way and that by the whims and fortunes of others. I am an educated man. Think. Tomorrow it will be too late.
This is the moment to act and perhaps by doing so I can change the course of my life.
I expected I would have to force the door and was surprised to find it was not locked. I picked up the candle and made my way into the cruel, black darkness. The house felt abandoned. I heard the creaking sound of neglect in its timbers. My candle flickered in the draught and threatened extinction. All around I heard the howl of wild beasts.
‘Where is she? Where is Randa?’ I asked the fox. He set off down the long passage, his brush straight out behind him.
I came at last to the largest of the large double doors. They opened on to a vast hall whose lofty timber beams threw menacing shadows across the floor. Nothing here apart from dying embers in a huge fireplace, and one tall, latticed window framed by blood-red velvet drapes.
It was cold and I was on the point of leaving when the window blew open, and the drapes, great sails of fabric, billowed into the empty space.
It would be wrong to leave this room to the elements. I battled to close the window and just then I smelled the earth and iron of her perfume. Still I saw nothing and went to leave. But my fox did not, he was staring up at one corner of the velvet drapes. I lifted my candle high and that is when I saw her there. I saw the winged beast, her talons sunk deep into the fabric. I stared and did not look away.
She descends, shredding velvet in her wake.
‘I told you – it is not safe for you here.’
She stands before me, puts a talon under my chin and I feel it pierce my skin. She puts it to her mouth, licks my blood away.
I do not flinch.
‘What is it you want?’ she says. ‘I have given you your freedom.’
I touch her talons, feel the power of them as if they were a prayer. I kiss them and Randa pulls them away.