Somnium

by Steve Moore

  And next Medea, daughter of Æëtes, she appeared, a haughty beauty, proud of breast and long of leg. She looked the first to Hecate-Diana, and made obeisance, though Lee he thought it grudging. All ruthlessness was in her face, but vast he knew her power. With magic you can rule the world, her message all too plain. Give up your soul and cease to love, then take and take and take. Take riches, women, lives and all, and crush the lesser under foot. And I’ll be there to laugh and ravage with you.

  Diana at his side, rejection was too simple; and yet Medea made him think. He told himself that, never had he seen the Moon, he’d say her nay quite natural; at least he hoped he would.

  Semiramis next, the gorgeous Queen of Babylon, and naked as its Biblic Whore. By turns she rode her horse, and let it ride her too; dressed herself in soldier’s weeds, executed husbands, slept with guards and conquered half the world. Said: Believe and nothing there is you cannot do, even disadvantaged as a woman. For Babylon I built, that was the city of the world, and never was there like it. Its fame is older far than any other, and more, its fame, it will survive far longer than the others too. And this is mine, and while its memory lives, so I live on immortal too.

  At last, fair Helen she appeared, the bane of Ilion and, he knew, the darling of the world. A golden girl and lovely past compare, she had no message but her beauty. Diana it was who spake on her behalf. Said: The apex of all beauty can be yours; the aspiration all men sought and failed to find within their wives and sweethearts; the longed-for-one that patterned all men’s dreams for twenty-five whole centuries, and will another twenty-five besides. All your life, in any land you choose, you’ll spend in bliss, with Helen. With Helen of Troy, the World’s Desire, and like there never was. And as for me, you cannot have me while you live, and all you have’s my word that anything might follow. And I tell you now, we Gods, we are capricious. So, dear Endimion Lee, I ask you now to choose.

  ‘There is no choice,’ he told her then, ‘and needless did you ask. My dear Diana, Queen and Goddess, and call you what you will, I love you. No other will I ever choose. And if, beyond these merest days, I love you unrequited, then sweet Diana mine, I love you just the same. And if I die, and find there’s nothing more, I’ll tell you this, my sweet: the little love we’ve shared, though others think it unrequite and far from consummate, to me at least, it will have been enough.’

  Diana then she was again, and Hecate no more. She clasped him close, and wept, and kissed him, sprinkled him with tears and pressed his head unto her lovely breast; then raised him up, her eyes so wide, and kissed him all again.

  At last, she banished all the mirror-images, put aside the snake, the key and all the other aspects of the Carian Goddess; made away with Hades-stuff, laid him on the couch and beamed Selenic on her love. A deep, snug cave within the English Latmos now they occupied, her own Endimion with his own and much-beloved Diana.

  A goblet next, with Moondew brimming, she placed into his hand; raised the other in her own. The toast was Love Eternal, tender, sweet and all-consuming; the foaming draft a nectar to the tongue. Almost, lost in lovely depths of wide brown eyes, in drinking he forgot to swallow; but did, and knew he’d never drunk the like. If ever the essence of a young and tender Moon-girl had a taste, then surely it was this.

  He drained the goblet quite entire: aphroselenos, it warmed and bubbled in his stomach, spread its lightsome glow down to his groin and perineum, rushed up then along his spine and burst out effervescent in his brain; and wheeled on down again to tingle all his cods and stones. Such bliss he never felt before, not even spending in his first-beloved. Entire body ravished up from toe to crown, he sank upon the couch and trembled, gasped and moaned and shuddered as the waves of fearsome pleasure pulsed all through him, all unbearable, raptured more than he could ever think, his mind quite gone to heaven. Transported with beatitude, enchanted up to paradise, his pleasure would not stop.

  And second after second, stronger then it grew, and hours they seemed to pass away, and still there was no cease. And sweeter than was all of this, he heard Diana sigh besides, and knew she felt the same.

  And so eternity passed in bliss, until he knew no more.

  Tuesday, 9th October 1803

  As I wrote last night, and smoked, and drank, I thought much of the cellar, and all its underworld connotations. The inn is new, the cellar old, that door is older yet. And beyond it? Æonic darkness? Ancient tragedies? Antique hideousness?

  Or is Diana Regina’s Hecatean cave down there, obsidian mirror of the waning moon and all?

  None of these, I expect. But I must go back and find out soon. It preys upon my mind. As does the fact that I have not had a letter from my darling Liz. I wish that she would write.

  I did not dream of cellars last night, and yet my dreams were strange. On other nights my dreams are quite full up with Lady-Goddesses, from Lizzie and Cynthia to Diana Regina and Selene, a cluster of lovelies in my mind who seem, somehow, to all be aspects of a single wondrous Moon-girl; last night I dreamt again of that strange future-author living close at hand in space and far away in time. I wonder sometimes whether he will ever exist in daylight (or Moonlight) reality, or is simply manufactured of my fevered dreams. I know not. But what I do know (and yet I don’t know how I know) is that he dreams of that self-same Moon-woman, who is Selene guised as Liz and Cynthia, and all the rest. Occasionally, I feel I should be jealous; at other times I rejoice to share a treasured love with another of the same mind. For I know that he is Moonstruck too, though whether in quite the same way as me I cannot tell; indeed, so much of his life and times, and how he thinks, are utterly incomprehensible to me. It seems to me he lives and works alone, to a pace of his own choosing, and that far slower than the common population of his time; and yet he achieves more in one day than I would in a week. Or, perhaps more to the point, than I would want to. Strangest of all is the way that, dreaming, I see him write. He does not use a pen, but rather plays at something like a harpsichord; yet when he hits the keys, not musical notes but words come out. I simply do not understand it.

  I confess I’m thankful that I do not live in the high-speed hell of future-time. Perhaps, if ever I finish my Annals of the Palace of Somnium, I might write a romance of the distant future, where time is, simply, fast. Where journeying to the Americas takes but a single day; where food is cooked in minutes; where love is made in seconds. And all the world is full of mad, unending chatter. Sometimes, my thoughts are frankly horrible.

  And yet, if I did write so, and made that writer of my future-dreams a character, would I then, or could I then, write him into full existence? And if I could, then of whom would he write? Of me? And would he then make me exist?

  I think perhaps it’s time I thought of something else.

  And yet: if I made him exist, and he made me exist; then what of Endimion Lee? I know I made him up; he never could be real.

  And yet…

  And yet my mind keeps straying away from this to other things. I cannot any way forget the cellar, and all the underworld of dreams it represents…

  I think I’ve not been awake for long enough to get my thoughts in order. So let’s away to dinner.

  Wednesday, 10th October 1803

  I hardly can begin to say what happened yesterday afternoon. I tried to write a letter to my darling Liz describing it, but gave up after a page or two, because I knew it sounded drunk or mad. I don’t think that I am either, so let me try to write things down within this journal, and see if writing makes them sense. Such wonders I have seen. So many marvels, buried beneath the ground, has dearest Cynthia revealed unto my awestruck eyes. I wish I had the draughtsman’s skills of Signor Piranesi, to show them to the world.

  And more than this. The night before I wrote a Somniac underworld; but yesterday I found myself within one.

  I woke refreshed, and enjoyed a dinner of boiled bacon and leeks (though the fat I left beside my plate; I know that others eat it, but it merely makes me retch and choke). I heard the
rattle of the midday coach, just leaving as I ate; then Cynthia was sitting there beside me all-a-smile. It seemed Jude Brown was on the coach, a-posting off to London, intending there to stay on business quite unknown to me, and not returning until tomorrow late. She asked me if I had things to do that afternoon; when I said no, she told me I should dress me for adventure. I was not sure quite what she did intend.

  Returning to my room, I barely had my boots pulled on when she was at my door. The key to that ancient cellar door was in one hand and, I have to say, I cannot think to ever have seen the larger; in her other hand, a ball of thread; I did not know quite why. She looked so saucy, with her eyes so full of mischief, I hardly knew what best to do: to laugh or just to kiss her.

  The plan proposed was simplicity itself: that leaving the running of the inn to young Watkins and the harlots Squires and Smythe, she and I should once more descend into the cellar (alone, and quite deliberately in the absence of her husband, and with the upper cellar door locked behind us this time to shut out further intrusions; all of which things were most emphatic in her description of the scheme) where, fortified with claret and illuminated with a flickering pair of lanterns (only two, so that she might hold my hand and lead me on), she would open the forbidden door, and show me mysteries, and darkness, and I knew not what. Some part of me thought this a scallywag’s invitation; that perhaps she wished to seduce me and play the strumpet down there in the dark, her husband gone and none to know her loose ways in the cellar. Another part remembered Severndroog, and what she did and did not permit there; and yet a third part thought that Severndroog had never ever happened. All this was quite forgot when, at the last, beyond that cellar door, I saw just what I saw. Oh, Liz who is my sweet, and Selene who is my Goddess, the things I saw beyond that door. The wonders and surprises. The things that should not be.

  But I get ahead of myself once more. Descending to the cellar with our lanterns lit, we then found a bottle of claret and poured ourselves two large glasses, and she proposed a toast: to Diana and the Moon, to Somnium, to me, and all I loved here in the world; I told her, of the last, she should include herself. For that, she smiled and kissed me softly on the cheek. The second glass, the toast was mine: I do confess, all couraged up somehow, that in the blithest fashion then I consigned her ‘loving’ husband (who, I know not how, I thought was on some business most nefarious) straight away to hell; not only that, but added imprecations too. And when the words were out my mouth, I wondered what I’d said. And yet, she looked at me all wondered and delighted, and then she gave me such a grin. Thereafter (and only minutes later than it had been opened) we emptied out the bottle.

  She led me next toward the ancient door and paused a moment then, her lantern in one hand. In the other she held up the brazen key, tapped it once or twice against her chin, looked at me big-eyed and licked her lips with the sauciest of smiles. I knew, before she spoke a word, that little tongue would soon be licking mine; and yet I could not help but think her gesture so familiar and Dianic, I almost expected that, beyond the ancient door, Somnium’s longed-for library would be found. I put my lantern on a nearby cask, held out my hands, and so she flung herself into my arms.

  She clung so soft and kissed me then so long I asked if anything might be wrong. She shook her head and hugged me all the tighter. I thought this rather strange. Nonetheless, when at the last the embrace was broken (by whom, I cannot quite remember; I doubt that it was me, she was so warm and such a comfort in my arms), she took the key and inserted it in the lock. It turned so easily I was surprised; it seems that someone has been keeping it well-oiled; unlike the hinges. I had to put my shoulder against the door to move it, it was so stiff.

  Beyond was, simply, blackness.

  She took my free hand then in hers and, raising up her lantern with the other (as I did mine as well), she led me through that ancient doorway; paused and demanded that I push it almost closed behind us. I half expected further kisses then; instead she paused and tied one end of her thread around the door-handle. I realised then she played at Ariadne, and this would be our clew of thread in labyrinthine darkness; I hoped we’d not meet the Minotaur. I hardly had the time to mention this before she took my hand once more and started for the darkness.

  To begin with, I thought that on the other side of the door was simply another cellar the same as that we just had left. A couple of old chests and boxes stood there to my left but, squeezing my palm warmly, sweet Cynthia led me past these swiftly. And what I’d thought to be a simple cellar turned out to be, instead, a broad corridor, some ten feet across and thirty long. At its end, a flight of nine stone stairs led downward into deeper darkness yet.

  At the foot of the stairs she paused, lantern held up high, and turned toward me. Her hand slipped out of mine and slid around my waist and, as she pressed herself so close, she confessed (rather sweetly but obviously rather trepidatiously) that twenty feet further on than this was all, before, she’d ever dared to go. I really was quite touched. Rather than being the adventurous Amazon I’d thought her in the past, she suddenly seemed so soft and trembling, and reminded me, I confess, of dear young Liz. I took her in my arms and kissed her once again, and from that fond embrace she seemed to gather strength. It’s only now I write of it that I realise she may have been offering more than I could quite perceive. My Liz has always told me that I do not understand women, and perhaps indeed I don’t. There’ve been times when I’ve had her in my arms like that, and wanted many things, but never known quite what to do. But now the time’s gone by, it does not matter anyway.

  But more’s the point, with further thought, I have to wonder. If she never had been farther, how could she have hinted, Monday afternoon, of all the wonders found beyond there in the darkness? I cannot solve this mystery.

  We stepped away from the stairs then, arm in arm, onto an uneven floor of earth and stone, as if we walked across an open field, up above there on the surface. How high the roofing was above us, I’ve no idea at all; the lantern light failed to penetrate that far, and the ground below our feet continued to slope gently downward. Again, the walls to either side seemed out of reach as well, and as for what might lie ahead, I simply did not know.

  The first things that we found (a little beyond the twenty feet dear Cynthia wide-eyes said she had explored) were three or four ancient, fluted column bases carved, with the most exquisite craftsmanship, from pink and sparkling marble. They were shattered no more than a foot above the ground, while close at hand lay a Corinthian capitol of the same stone, its leaves almost (if not pinkly veined) compellingly real. What building once stood here, I could not tell. I knew not if this was Roman, Greek, or what; and even if I had known that, the workmanship seemed far too fine for provincial craftsmen, no matter how near they might have been to old Londinium. My first thought was that I looked upon a temple, but the palatial remains we saw thereafter leave me without any clue at all.

  A few feet further on, I was completely staggered to find a giant slab of whitest marble lying horizontal to the ground. And somehow, though I could not tell anyone how I knew, it seemed to me that this was imported stone, brought all the way by ship (and carted somehow up the hill, I can only think by oxen) from the quarries of old Etrurian Luna, the city that the Byzantine Stephanos called Selenopolis. More than this (again, I have to explain by intuition, or Goddess-given revelation) I knew that this marble had been brought up here by choice, because the stone was lunar. And the carving of that marble: Phidias never carved the better, and neither did Praxiteles. The exquisiteness of those reliefs (no, not reliefs, for some of that carving was fully in the round), I simply cannot describe its loveliness. The entire surface of the slab, except the edge, was carved as water, lapping in gentle waves and heaped up by the tides. In its centre, sweet, sweeter and sweetest Diana rose up all lovely from the swirling water (not relief, but fully rounded; and rounded oh-so-gently), bathing her lovely naked body in the world-encircling Ocean stream, her two-horse chariot standing by,
her beauteous Moon-nymphs gathered all around, though submerged all breast-deep in the milk-white sea. And smiling, all of them, naked, playful and playing with one another in sweet and sparkle-eyed Sapphic delight; and dear Diana with the crescent on her brow, just as naked, far the more delightful, and looking so much like my Liz, my sister and my love. And yet somehow I was not so utterly surprised, when Cynthia clutched herself quite close, and told me that she thought, in that dearest image of Diana, to recognise herself. I confess that when I heard that, I looked the more at bared Diana’s form, till Cynthia plucked my sleeve and simpered. We both knew exactly why I stared; but who’s the deeper blush that then ensued, I really cannot say.

  Some ten feet square that marmoreal slab it glittered in our lantern’s light, more marvellous than any sculpture anywhere in all the museums of the world. If Periclean Athens or Imperial Rome they ever saw the like, I doubt it very much. This was, quite simply, divine: the artistry of the dreaming Moon, the sculpture of a supreme Selenic hand.

  Yet there was more, though this itself near robbed me of my breath and put my brain to sleep. Another descendant flight of stairs, nine more again, and what had been a corridor before expanded widely out to either side; and I knew that, though so far beneath the surface of the ground, we stood now in a cavern of a size that grew unfathomable. And somehow then, within the glass-panelled lanterns, the candles began to flicker, and it was all that I could do to lead poor trembling Cynthia onwards (if this, too, was not itself an act); and yet, she seemed so tightly wrapped around me, I thought I had to walk for both of us. Only a few feet around us did the lanterns light; beyond was illimitable blackness and the unknown void. How glad I was for that small clew of thread; without it I feared we never would escape.