by Tanith Lee
The umpire waved us to the centre of the glade, where the ground was flattish, though the snow truly hardened now, and would prove slippy, hiding also roots and other trap-trick delicacies under its mask.
We were next told, as is usual, that we might yet resolve the matter in some gentlemanly way.
“I am willing,” I said, “if Mr Templeyard is willing.”
“You forced my wife,” he snarled, his fine eyes flashing.
“I did not force her. I have never had to force that way in my life.”
“You lie! She swore you misled then forced her.”
“And why did she tell you this?”
“Why? In Christ’s holy name, you feculence, why?”
“Would it be, mayhap, she heard I had—shall I say to content you—misled and forced also the actress, Mis’us Peck? As I have been doing, I must add, and no penalty to it since most of the city is aware of it, and her husband with them, for the past six months?”
“What do you mean, vile debaucher?”
“I mean that jealousy, the green-eyed monster, has urged your wife to invent unkind tales of me.”
Templeyard drew and flourished his polished weapon in the air, nearly taking off with it, in the flurry, the nose of the unready umpire.
Then headlong the brat runs at me, red in the face and yowling.
54
Well, it is nothing but God’s truth, to be an actor is to gain many skills, to dight and diddle with a sword but one of them.
Why, not four years gone, I played the role of Hamlet, albeit in a much foreshortened version, at The King’s Theatre in Covent Garden. And even now, though reduced to strutting about the lesser stage of The Obelisk in Stampwell Street, (off Cartwheel Lane, you cannot miss the place), I maintain my fensive ability.
Nevertheless, it is no quiet thing to contest with a madman, strong with youth, passionate as a girl, and careless of his strokes as a drunken windmill.
Such an adversary may kill one from sheer clumsiness. At the least, take out an eye or off a hand—or choicer part.
As we skidded and lurched about the boards of Hyde Hill I came to think I had better duel with him another way. I spoke of jealousy, and I have seen that work curiously, and something of that too I had, abruptly, on the hill, attributed to Templeyard himself.
Best now to try my luck, for I should like that sport better, certainly, than this.
I lured him soon into an almighty lunge where the ground was at its most glassy. (It is all actors’ moves, I find. Life, that is. Or most of life.)
The blade wheeled wide of me as he staggered, and I, making as if to dart in again, stuck the side of my boot to his so that he skidded worse, and let go his sword in a crazed dance to save himself a plunge.
At this I caught him and wrestled him close, both his arms pinned. The heat of his body against mine, I sincerely own, was a great delight on such a frigid morning.
He struggled, naturally, mad as a boar under a net. The rest were some way off by then, huddled wisely to the brazier. Since Templeyard and I must one kill the other, let us get on with it as quick as able.
“Listen, Jeremias,” I murmured at his ear, “before one of us ends, you’d better hear me out.” He made a gobbling sound but nothing else. Untrained, though far younger than I, he was mightily out of breath, panting like a boy at the hoist of the scenery-shift. “It is you I have my eye upon. You, if you will, I had intended to mislead and—no, not force—but dally with. Your dear little wife, why she was only the means to the end, and I must suppose she guessed as much, and there we are again, before the green-eyed monster.” I had held him close as I said all this. Close enough he could feel against him, if he would, my eagerness beneath the belt. And sure enough, praise the saints, I began to detect a replying eagerness from him, hard as a stone, but restive as a serpent.
So I let him go, and at that he almost did fall down. Legs to sawdust, as they say.
“Well,” said I, “if the truth offends you worse than her lies, better kill me.”
He had righted his balance, and stood there gaping at me. “What do you mean?” he whispered—again.
Heaven spare me all virgins. (For he was virgin enough in this.)
“I mean I should like to tup you, sir. Kiss and coddle and feel and fondle and pierce and ride you until you could barely lift your sweet arse off the floor or bed or wall I had layed you on or by. It’s you I’d like. And if that’s not to be, then take up your blade. Then tell the world I died of unrequited love. Not such a bad end, for an actor.”
His face was white as the snow where it was unmarked. His eyes had darkened. He panted heavily, and now it could not be from duelling. For sure, I thought I had him.
Imagine then my offended horror when off he sprang, grabbed up the dropped blade, and leaping back at me before I could reassemble my wits, he gave me a nick across my left upper arm. The cut was shallow, more the bite or scratch of a cat, and would do little harm. He had pinked me, as the gamblers have it. Pinked, then reddened me, for my sleeve was quickly bold with blood.
“I am content,” shouted Jem Templeyard to the others. “That will do. I see I’ve misjudged this man. I will say he has insulted my blameless wife. But only by his words and in error. Nothing worse—I have misunderstood her complaint. And so I have dealt him only this little punishment. Let that,” growled he to me, “be a lesson to you to watch your manners, Mr Thessaris.” The surgeon was coming up, looking most disappointed one of us was not now lying on the earth with his viscera poured out wormlike all around. Before he reached me with his bandaging, Jem added, in a once more breathless whisper, “I will meet you in the coffeehouse on Parnassus Walk, at noon.”
I smiled. I had cause. I can deal with both, the ladies and the jacks, and am good too at that. And he was, as I have remarked, a pretty fellow.
55
The snow had begun to fall again, and more heavily than before.
I sat at the window of the coffeehouse, drinking the brew, (far superior to that of The Black Sheep, which its cost reflected) and, as I waited for my new amor vitae, I thought idly enough of my childhood and my cruel father.
It was no current love-affair, nor injury, which occasioned this, but the snow itself. In my infancy I recollect only days and nights of sumptuous heat or other days and nights clad white in snow and rime. Such were the general excesses of my beginning, supposedly, only such painted back-casts remained to my memory. (In just such a manner the back-casts behind Macbeth, in which I took the part of Banquo, are most of what remain to me of the play.)
My dam had fled my father, Jonathon Irridemus Thessaris, some seven months after I was born. Whether she had wished to take me with her and been prevented by circumstance, (most probably that of another gentleman), or purely had no wish for my company, (for infants are addled, piddled, leaky and squeaking creatures), I do not, nor shall I ever, know.
Small odds. I was left. And so, sour-nursed and whipped up by drunken sucklers and unkind servants, but none of them so dedicated to the Pitiless as my male parent.
I am sure he mauled and slapped me often, to prepare me, perhaps, as one must prepare certain types of wood, cloth or canvas, for the ultimate onslaught to come.
What I recall is the first beating, when I was five. I shall not write a word about it. By this alone, you must judge its harshness.
He had, my father, taken up the cause with me, as later, in my thirteenth year, he undertook to educate me upon, because I, being got by him on her, (my mother, that is), and brought by her in the usual way into the world, was half her child. Though half his, too, and therefore perhaps a recoverable commodity, since I was male. But being also half of her, inferior I was, too, detestable and loathsome. He had thus aimed to cast her out of me, as priests and prophets of the Church cast out demons from human flesh.
At fifteen, however, I had seen a play and found a longing in me which outweighed all doubt and fear. I, as possibly had she, would have stolen soft away. But he
caught me. Accordingly, I turned upon him, and myself taking up the instruments of his wrath, I battered him senseless and left him in his house for dead. As he lived, some credit, I confess, should be given him that he did not call up the pursuit of the courts upon me. He let me go my own way, as he had once let go her.
The house is miles off, in the province of Sussex, far south of the Capital. I have never heard more of him. And if ever he has of me, which is unlikely for I am not of colossal fame either for good or ill, he has never come to chide my loss. He may even be dead. It is some fourteen years behind.
56
In comes my paramour, at some minutes before the clocks strike for noon. He is ready shaved, washed clean and perfumed, having on fresh linen and another silk coat.
“Thou art fair, my love,” say I, “and the bull bellows from the pasture.”
He grins, boy-like. And says I am an actor, what else would I say?
“It is the Bible has that,” I loftily tell him. To his credit he does not know enough of religious text to correct me. He is both excited and nervous, as one must expect.
As he sits down, he blushes.
A pleasing change, this, from the choleric red of before.
We quaffed the black drink and our spirits rose high and knocked upon our hearts and skulls. Then there was a crimson wine from Girtland, or some other clime.
After that, along the whitied street we swaggered, lords of the earth, and so into the winding back ways of London’s prodigious skirt-hem, and down to a certain tavern, where I acquired a room.
He was all agoggle. But I, of course, have done such stuff.
In the room a sudden girlish terror came over him, but I’d anticipated no less. I gave him brandy, kissed him, and so began upon him. In afterthought, I am not entirely sure he was quite innocent. He took to the procedures, once in, with the willing devotion of a lion cub to meat.
As I had promised him, so I did. And at the last we rolled upon the floor, he screaming in a joyous extremis. Luckily it is a noisy spot, and well used to such jolly uproars.
Then, after, like any maid, he began to weep, and begged to know if he had sinned. I told him he had, and would do so again. And proved to him he would, as we both did so promptly.
Following this he slept, and I, well-satisfied enough, lay wondering a little which of the two of them, Jem or his white-bosomed wife, I preferred. To their credit, I decided to allot them equal pedestals.
When evening fell, and snow lay outside deep as goose-sauce, he told me he must get home. For all that we spent another hour, nor wasted it in chat.
Our quarrel certainly was made up. And he, good lad, paid off the inn-keeper. Having regained the outer byways we parted. For him the road homeward was not too taxing, for he had money for a horse well-shod against the ice, (though I could think it might cost him more in the horse’s motion and saddle under his own well-ridden rump.) I, however, must make my journey as best I could. Which, fortified with a snap of chicken and a pint of bitter ale, I did, slipping and sliding all the way under the blue jeer of a full moon. Three hours it took me. And what a weirded and awesome scene it was when reaching, through the outer lanes and ever more ramblous houses, the track that runs above the water-rill and the rough pastures, where bare trees stood with branches like cat claws, most being coppiced. This too is the rare world I look on from the back window of my hovel-room.
Once indoors, and very glad I was to be so, I climbed the doleful stairs and went in. Cold as a grave the bloody pesthole was, though I have paid the old brown hag who owns this tenement to light me a fire when the weather is inclement. Nevertheless, the work of minutes prepared and ignited a blaze. And then at least all took on a cheery look.
It was quiet in the house that night also, which is seldom the case. They are a queer parcel of citizens that dwell in the building, and where I have glimpsed them, (which, as in the matter of the landlady, brown as a withering leaf, is infrequent); they seem dressed in a diverse and Bedlam manner. So I have pondered, now and then, what they are at or do, to maintain body and soul as one.
I glanced once from the cracked window, and the ground was whiter far than both Mis’us Templeyard’s soft bubbies and her husband’s fine hard haunches. No friend to me, the winter earth, nor that frozen watercourse I musingly call the Nilus Stream.
My arm now ached where he had pinked me with the sword. But I have had much worse in my mature life, yes even from the accidents on a stage. And in childhood, as I have said, a millionfold worseness more.
The dog had not condescended to return, the faithless devil. The yellow bone lay where it was. And for my supper what? A heel of bread and a gulp of brackish wine. Thereon to bed, and might Hell fiddle for the rest of them.
Emenie:
57
Days passed quietly, and the leaves still hadn’t all come down. Clotted yellowish and dried-out, grey-green and brown, they stuck on the taller or smaller trees, as if glued there. It was unreasonably mild, as sometimes happened now. The year would turn its twelfth page in just under another month. But back When, this was how things would have looked in mid-October.
Micki remained in my bedroom, sitting in the chair.
She had firstly tightened up, but by now she had loosened.
Even I had to be aware of the growing stench.
Somehow, and this is absurd, I couldn’t bring myself to throw her out.
My initial plan was to gather her up and take her down to the canal in the depth of night when, mostly, nothing human is about. I could put her in an old canvas bag, (she would be easy to fold in the primal state to which she was reducing), and sling in too four or five empty wine bottles to give my cargo its clanking excuse, should anyone accost me. (The bottles would be useful, too, if I needed to stun somebody.)
But I never made this move. I simply left her sitting in the chair, with the cushion behind her head, while little pieces of her flaked off like petals, and some of her dark hair fell out on the floor.
I took to sleeping in the main room, on the couch, as she had.
I didn’t speak to her, of course. I was perfectly aware she was dead.
One morning, I took one of my rambles round the entire house. I went into the empty rooms, and ran the taps in the two upstairs bathrooms. Flushed the lavs. The water ran, but looked a bit dark. Sometimes it doesn’t run at all.
In the attic there was an old pigeon agglomerate—a sort of nest, but now vacated, with just a few white splashes and baby feathers left. I admire their tenacity, the pigeons. You get gulls sometimes, from the Thames, or even the sea, God knows. Probably the whole countryside has run to rank seed and is full of fat overfed bugs and worms. Plenty to eat out there, and in the city too.
In the afternoon, I wondered what Wales was like, now. Couldn’t think why I’d started on that, and then recalled how she, (Micki), told me he, (Bruvva of Sy), had gone off there. Certainly he hadn’t turned up here again. Perhaps the Celtic Picts of the west had done for him.
That evening I began to feel defensive. I do sometimes. There doesn’t always have to be a direct reason.
I blacked out the back and side windows with the thick curtains I long ago put up there but hardly ever draw. Each pair has a central zip, and this cuts out almost all vestige of my low wattage bulbs.
It occurred to me I hadn’t gone out for days. I still had plenty of supplies, but it’s never wise to let it go too long. There would be a dearth of certain things quite often. And always the inevitable idea that in the end nothing at all would persist on the shelves. It was a miracle, even with the reduced contemporary population, things had lasted this long. There was always possible vandalism, too. Some furious loony might burn down the leftovers of the Co-op, or Marks and Spencer’s, or the entire High Street, (they had done for the cinema ages back), or else truly manage to poison every can, bottle and package in the freezers.
No, I would have to make a decision on Micki. I would have to put her in the bag and carry her out and dump
her in the canal, although right now the water was rather low… there had been little rain for months. But anyway, not tonight. No. Not tonight. It was chillier, frosty perhaps, the stars were up and watching like bright hard eyes on wires.
58
At some point near dawn I dreamed I took the corpse into the back garden, and in among the trees. I had a sturdy spade and dug a grave for her and put her in. When I’d filled up the grave with earth again I lugged along some paving stones and laid them over. They should be heavy enough to keep the badgers and foxes out. In the dream this was straightforward.
As soon as I woke up I lay there on the couch, smelling, tasting the stink from the bedroom, and asking myself if this was indeed a workable plan. Of course it would be a tougher job than in the dream. Aside from anything else I’d have to smash through tree roots and generally clear the ground a bit, even before I could properly start. I would have to find any paving, too, (or other heavy materials—big stones, rocks—perhaps from a garden centre like the one there had been nearer the outskirts of the inner city, if it still existed. And that was a two hour walk, and the same back.) Anything like that around the houses here was worn and broken up too small.
Finally I got out of bed, and precisely then was when somebody began thundering blows on the front door.
59
I knew who it would be. It had to be. It was.
But behind him was another man, a little younger, and in a ruinous old uniform—police, army, it was difficult to tell, it was so torn and filthy and had gone a sort of brassy mothball colour.
As with the first time Bruvva and I ‘met’, I’d gone to bed the night before fully clothed. And as I’ve said, I never look a mess. Clean, combed and tidy. And today about twenty-four. Just something I can do.
I didn’t greet him politely. He had been potentially violent before, and only Micki had kept him off. She would have said to him as well, obedient child as she was, that I didn’t want him there again.