Ophelia's Fan

by Christine Balint

  “Couldn’t we look around the garden before we look in there?”

  Molly shook her head. Harriet took a deep breath of windy air and ducked her head under the small doorway.

  “Josephine!” She called. Her voice was swallowed by the darkness. There was nothing frightening about darkness, Harriet told herself. It just made it difficult to see. She would have to tread carefully. But if someone were to light this space with a candle, she would see wooden stumps and spiderwebs. She could be backstage in her father’s theater. There was no reason at all, Harriet thought, why ghosts or other such creatures should choose to hide here in the dark underneath Mrs. Baird’s house. Harriet heard a knocking sound and jumped. Her back was beginning to ache from being hunched over. She sensed the ceiling caving in. She reached up to steady herself. The boards crumbled slightly under her fingers. They were vibrating. Something was banging unevenly on the ceiling. Harriet realized that one of the other children must be jumping on the floor.

  Harriet ignored the small voice calling her and dug her feet into the dry earth. It was almost as she imagined sand to be. If she closed her eyes, she could be by the seaside. She did not want to play with Molly anymore. She feared what Molly would make her do next. You could never be sure what was in Molly’s imagination. If Molly thought Josephine might have found her way into the stream, she would make Harriet search for Josephine in the water. Harriet decided she was far safer in the dark place under the house. She heard crackling leaves outside and a whistle of wind. She closed her eyes and imagined brightness. Something furry brushed her hand and she jumped. Harriet could smell rot.

  Harriet was in a cool dark crypt. Father Barrett had begun telling her the real story of Romeo and Juliet. She smoothed out the dust to make a long, narrow strip that she could use as a bed. As Juliet, she sat on the strip and straightened her muddy dress so that no one could say she was not a lady, even in death. She lay back stiffly, spreading her hair around her shoulders and straightening the crown of daisies on her head. Her first real performance would be in the dark where no one could see her. Harriet closed her eyes and imagined cold, clean, white marble. Sleep came in the shape of thick rose petals falling from the sky like scented rain and showering her in pink and mauve.

  She woke to the sound of wailing. A chorus of wails of different sizes and pitches through a small hole a few feet away. Thick leaves rustled somewhere in the wind.

  “Harriet? Harriet, are you in there?” Before Harriet could remember what had happened, she answered Mrs. Baird.

  “Come out, dear. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  Harriet opened her eyes, which were crusted over with dirt, and sat. Her neck ached, and her thighs were stiff from being held so tightly together. She stood and felt the crumbling ceiling. Harriet blinked in the light.

  “Good lord,” Mrs. Baird said. “Harriet, you look a fright. Molly, run and tell Aunt Ruth to warm water over the fire. You both need to be scrubbed. I can hardly see your noses under all that dirt.”

  “I WON’T TELL MOTHER about Josephine,” Molly whispered, lifting strings of Harriet’s hair to find her ear. Harriet felt sleepy all of a sudden and did not mind, when she looked into the brown, grainy water, that she could not tell Molly’s limbs from her own.

  “You two have grown a second skin,” Aunt Ruth said. “You first, Molly.” Molly stood in the tub, her hair in tails around her shoulders while Aunt Ruth, a pink glow in her cheeks and smelling of lavender, leaned over and scrubbed her with a rag.

  Harriet stared into the crackling fire. One of the logs glowed deep orange while gray ash collected under the flames. At home, Bridie was always quick to sweep away ash. She said it reminded her of death and that if too much of it built up, it would bring bad luck. Yet Father Barrett had told her that ash was purified and clean. There were even some civilizations, he had said, that used ash to thicken up open wounds on their bodies.

  “What did you see under the house?” Molly asked when Aunt Ruth went to get towels.

  “A tomb,” Harriet replied. “It was all marble, and I was inside. And,” Harriet peered at Molly’s wide eyes, “a solemn dirge and funeral procession. And a distinct view of Mount Vesuvius on fire.”

  “Just as well we came to find you, then.”

  Harriet smiled.

  Aunt Ruth rubbed her dry far more gently than Bridie ever did. She even let Harriet and Molly sit in front of the fire without any clothes on to warm themselves, without saying anything about God seeing their nakedness. Aunt Ruth pulled a nightdress that was too tight over Harriet’s arms. Harriet could not move very well, but she did not mind. She wondered if Father Barrett would let her live here with Molly forever. Mrs. Baird said that Father Barrett had left as he had to prepare a sermon. Harriet asked if Father Barrett had done his duty by her, and Mrs. Baird looked puzzled.

  Aunt Ruth placed a steaming bowl under Harriet’s nose. Harriet watched Molly dig her spoon into the stew, close her eyes, and chew. Molly swallowed and opened her eyes.

  “’Tis good, Harriet,” she said. “Try it.” Harriet looked at Mrs. Baird and thought that perhaps she was not a witch after all. If she had been a witch, she could easily have left Harriet under the house. And if Molly was eating the stew, perhaps it was not poisonous. Harriet lifted the spoon in her right hand, dipped it into the bowl, closed her eyes, chewed, and swallowed.

  Juliet

  I KNOW I HAVE NOT yet the wisdom of years to guide me. Though these past days could have filled books and years. I can now say I have lived a life, though others would say my life has but begun. The rest of my days, should I survive them, will be not a continuation of this life but a new one with no past. With this opiate I shall drown the life I know and birth that which is unknown.

  I wonder, had my mother not come to me with word that I must marry, whether love would have known to flutter within my breast. For it is true that I had never until that moment thought upon it. Oh, what sweet days I had known! My nurse did love me more than a mother, bent to my wishes, held me to her breast. And oftentimes in the day I would walk the streets of Verona with those young ladies I have always known.

  But I confess when my mother told me that I was to marry Paris, I looked forward to such a change in my life. For it had been the same as long as I could remember. My nurse even now could not be stopped repeating those tales of when I took my first steps and spoke those first words. Sometimes I would stare at her and wonder whether she had not slept through my growing years. My mother had told me that her own father had found my father for a husband, and she had always seemed happy enough. For some hours I lay under the orange tree, a white and fragrant mist coating my dreams of marriage, in which I was allowed all manner of beautiful objects and all gowns of my desire. I held balls for all the ladies of Verona, I chose exquisite meals and furnishings. Within this dream, Paris was nowhere to be seen. While these imaginings occupied me for some hours, they never seemed more serious to me than my childhood dreams of sailing the seven seas. And it certainly did not occur to me that they would be any more binding.

  With the milk from my nurse’s breast I know that I drank the bitterness of hatred for the Montagues. My nurse was well taught, and my mother and father did not need to tell me whom to hate. For I slept to the sounds of her tales. There were swords and battles. There was stolen land and sheep. I believe even a tale of one murdered in his sleep. There was not room in Verona for us all. And the nurse played her part by averting her eyes whenever we chanced to come across a Montague or his servant in the marketplace.

  As a small child I played with my nurse’s daughter, Susan. My mother had not asked the child to be banished which was as well since the nurse would have left her employment rather than abandon her daughter. As babes we sucked at the same breast, and as we grew we ran together in the garden while the nurse sat under the oak tree watching. I remember thinking that Susan was my own angel come to look after me. For she climbed the branches first to check their strength and ate the gr
een fruit, saving me the sweetest and plumpest we found. And so I tried not to dirty my dresses, which were always crisp and bright and well laundered. In this way they were only slightly worn and faded when they became Susan’s, for she was smaller and thinner and paler than I. It was Susan who slipped into the pond early one winter’s morning while I was still sleeping. Peter happened to be passing and hauled her out by the hair. He wrapped her in his own greatcoat and carried her to her mother. And that was the only day my nurse did not come to me. When I was told of Susan’s quiet passing, I wondered what she had seen in that pond and whether something dark lurked there and she had wished to protect me from it. And if it is true that something of the soul is imbibed during an infant’s sucking, then I had lost my sister. A sadness came over me and my nurse then, and she moved her cot into my bedchamber, swearing never to let me out of her sight.

  When I was five years old I recall visiting the marketplace with her. She led me by the hand, chattering all the while. I do believe my nurse taught me how to listen well. When we arrived she began speaking with the fishmonger. She let go of my hand so she could point into the different boxes which held the glimmering fish. I stepped backward, for the smell overcame me like something rotten and I felt faint. And three steps away I saw another thinner, sterner nurse reaching for a cabbage while a small boy stood quietly at her feet. The boy was a little shorter than I, and there was not a hair out of place on his head. We stared at each other, and after some moments I lifted my hand and waved to him. He stood thoughtfully for some time and then looked back at his nurse, who was now feeling the weight of a melon. Then he gently lifted his hand and waved back. And suddenly my nurse was grabbing roughly at my hand while his nurse jerked his arm and led him away.

  “A Montague,” my nurse hissed. “And that was the youngest boy, Romeo.”

  Now Paris I had known all my days. Many mornings when I was taken to see my mother after her breakfast, she would tell me that my father was unavailable for he was entertaining Lord Paris in his drawing room. Occasionally I would glimpse the two of them in a cloud of black smoke through one of the windows from the garden. As I grew older I was sometimes required at dinner with Paris, my father, and my mother. During these meals I ate very little. I spoke quietly and carefully, answering everything Paris asked about my days and my books. But then he and my father would move to other subjects, and my mother would lower her eyes. She would attempt to converse with me a little, and eventually I would be dismissed.

  After my mother told me I was to marry Paris, I wondered if he would continue to visit my father so often. I wondered whether he would still think of polite and meaningless questions to ask me. I wondered whether he and my father would continue to make that foul-smelling smoke that drenched and darkened the curtains. Sometimes I imagined we were already married, for were we not already living as my mother and father did? And in the moments when the thought of such a marriage made me feel ill, I consoled myself that he was old and would soon leave me a widow of considerable means and liberties.

  On the night of the ball, Mother left the room and the nurse fussed over me, helping me dress in a new gown, combing my hair until it was soft, adorning me with jewels and flowers. She spoke of Paris all the while, saying what a handsome figure he was and how fine a gentleman and that there was none better. And so it was only with slight disappointment that I descended the stairs to the ballroom where my father was entertaining a large number of guests to supper. For although Paris himself was of little interest to me, the life of a married lady appealed to me more than continuing maidenhood.

  And so began a merry evening. Servants were all about opening doors, serving cakes and sweetmeats. Musicians piped and swayed, silks flowing in vivid hues around them. Everywhere people clustered or danced, laughed, and ate. The house was awash with candlelight, and there were places to hide among the shadows.

  In the earlier part of the evening it was our duty to stand in the hall and greet guests as they arrived. My nurse stood near me, ready to adjust my hair should any lock chance to stray, or to straighten my gown if any sudden movement caused it to slip. At times she beamed with tearful pride as though she were my own mother. At other times she chattered absently with whoever would listen, or to herself when she lacked an audience. I discovered my good cousin Tybalt, who joked with me and told me wild tales of galloping across the countryside on his horse. And I felt a pinch of sadness that those early days, when Tybalt’s adventures were confined to the garden and I was free to join him there, were now gone and we were being forced more and more into the separate spheres of life preordained for a man and a woman.

  It was growing late in the evening and black as pitch outside. The servants had closed the door, and my mother and father were beginning to move into the light of the ballroom when a knock sounded.

  “More guests!” my father exclaimed in delight, and moved to open the door himself. It was with some surprise that I noticed a band of nine or ten masked men. These men were in fine condition, slim and strong and not a gray head among them. If they were my guests, I had not been told about them.

  And my father welcomed them, called them to dance. Oh, how often I have recalled his warm invitation and wish’d he spoke thus and knew to whom he spoke! The musicians began a lively jig, and the servants began clearing the tables and folding them away. Something called me then to look at Tybalt for he was of a like age to those men and I thought he would know them. He had wide eyes and a thoughtful expression but did not echo my father’s invitations. After I had followed the crowd into the ballroom, I turned and saw Tybalt and my father in animated argument. He alone could reason with my father, soften his countenance, and bring a smile to his lips. It was often as though he were my father’s son while I the tiresome child of some other. If I could be granted but one wish it would be to know of what they spoke. For this could have been the making of me or the undoing.

  It was understood that these masked young men would be the last guests to arrive, and so we moved into the ballroom where the servants had stoked the fire and all was aglow. After the greetings at such gatherings, my father and my mother would be occupied with entertaining their guests, allowing me the freedom to speak with whomever I chose. It must be said that there were rarely any young people invited on such evenings, for my parents thought only of their own pleasures and social obligations, with little attention to mine. And it was of interest to them that I should be able to converse easily with those older than myself.

  So it came about that I had the chance to weave among the people, to feel the warmth and savor sweetmeats and punch upon my tongue. When I look back upon this night I like to pause here, for this was the last hour of my contentment. My life was a straight line, the past still visible and the future an unwavering road into the distance, uncluttered, uncomplicated, and whole. I would go to Lord Paris, not happily but without objection, and would thus follow the life my parents had wished and planned for me, remaining within the fold of the family and the people of Verona who were my parents’ friends.

  Then suddenly a masked man was before me. Beneath his mask I discerned a handsome countenance, and I was not afraid when he took my hand, for his hands were soft and gentle; a gentleman’s fingers. And when he spoke those honeyed words, I drank them in and his kisses were the sweetest fruit I ever tasted. He did not know my name, and as my nurse called me away all tolerant thoughts of Lord Paris were forever banished from my mind.

  It was as though I had awoken from a deep slumber. I was like a kitten suddenly learned to see or a babe opening her eyes for the first time. And before me were no longer beautiful objects or gowns. I no longer desired to hold balls for all the ladies of Verona, or exquisite meals and furnishings. I wished only to see that face unmasked and to taste those kisses once more.

  I bade my nurse discover the man’s name and whether or not he was married. On my nurse’s return, it was no longer the possibility of marriage that would weaken me but something that seemed far w
orse. This man was the same fair blue-eyed boy from my childhood. The Romeo whose eyes I had stared into and who had waved to me as though passing a secret message before we were whisked away, each by our own nurse. The son of my born enemy. But I had known his kisses, and this promised me to him.

  When finally I was alone and all believed me to be in bed asleep, I crept to my balcony. For it was a warm night, and at times when I have trouble sleeping it is my custom to whisper my thoughts to the moon. On this night the moon was full, casting a glow over the garden. The air was warm and sweet with summer blossoms. So I stood in my nightgown and told the secrets of my love to the heavens and was most astonished when the heavens replied. Then I saw that it was not the heavens but my love himself, returned, for he could not keep away. On this night I promised myself to Romeo in words.

  That was but days ago, and I have lived since only in a dream. I remember not my days or how I spent them. It was only my nurse who knew my troubles, and she tried to tell me that I should wed Paris. For she could see all that he was and that he would look after me as Father did. But when she saw that I spoke and breathed only for Romeo, she consented to assist me in my plans. For suddenly I understood the meaning of marriage and that this marriage was more important to me than my own life. In my heart I hoped that once the deed was done my mother and father would forgive me. For had they not told me themselves that it was time I married? While my mother and father planned my marriage to Paris downstairs, my nurse prepared me for my marriage to Romeo in my bedchamber. It was a quiet and fast ceremony, and Friar Laurence prayed it would finally unite the Montagues and the Capulets.

  Oh, how I wished I had kept my lover with me that afternoon, or calmed my beloved cousin’s fury and sat with him under the apple tree. For fate was not to keep them apart, and I cannot choose but feel that what struck that day was intended to punish me for the rest of my days. My nurse soaked me and scented me, smiling all the while as she prepared me for my wedding night. My thoughts were full of Romeo, of holding him in my sleep and not having to let him go. And at this time I did not know that thunder struck the streets of Verona, that brewing furies could no longer be contained and a fight broke out among the young men. I have seen the battle one thousand times in my mind. Romeo could not be killed on our wedding day, so buoyed was he by his love and his dreams. They strengthened him as air in lungs. And my sweet Tybalt’s heart was poisoned by hatred for the Montagues as he reached to strike. Romeo slew him dead, and the prince ordered Romeo banished from Verona.